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Guaranteed
to Last
The distinguished professor of worn-out boots is hell bent for leather |
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Describing the loyalty of Dave Page's clients is like beginning a joke: a man in Chamonix buys his boots six blocks from his home and then sends them to Seattle for orthopedic inserts. A pair of Vasque Sundowners is pecked to death by a Costa Rican parrot, and the owner turns to Page. In fact, almost every major boot manufacturer sends its warranty work to his Seattle workshop. |
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Page
was a University of Washington history professor in 1968 when he
financed a climbing binge cutting hiking-boot uppers at a small
factory in Kitzbuhel, Austria. The menial labor sang to the 29-year
old academic's soul. "It was the 3,000-year history,"
he says. "The materials-the leather-hooked me" By the
next summer he'd left the university and was cobbling in his basement.
Now, 30 years later, he schools eight craftspeople in the minutiae
of Vibram outsoles and D-ring eyelets. "I'm drawn to boots
that aren't gimmicky," Page says. "I do most of my mountaineering
in ten-year-old boots-nothing fancy."
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"He's a phenomenom," says climbing monolith Fred Beckey. "He's resoled tens of thousands of boots. How many of mine? Seven? Seventeen? I have no idea. That's like asking Madonna how many times she's had an orgasm." Written
by Eric Hansen / Photo by Dave Emmite |
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Dave
Page, Cobbler