“He had climbed with Robbins,” Dean Fidelman, a Stonemaster who also made his name as a photographer, said in “Valley Uprising,” a 2014 documentary about climbing in Yosemite. “He had climbed with everyone. That passion and commitment was something that we were looking for.”

Mr. Bridwell was a teacher to the younger (though not much younger) climbers who congregated at a Yosemite site that became known as Camp 4. He was also one of the creators of the first formal Yosemite search and rescue team, volunteering his skills to park officials in exchange for a campsite. And, in those brash and colorful years in the 1970s, when the Stonemasters were drawing attention in the news media, he was a fashion coordinator.

“Bridwell kinda dictated the dress,” Dale Bard, a climber who arrived at Yosemite in 1971, was quoted as saying in a 2016 interview with GQ magazine. “When we were doing special routes, Bridwell actually would dress us. It was for pictures, photo ops, that kind of stuff, to make us stand out, to look as rebellious as possible.”

That meant loud shirts (though the male Stonemasters often went shirtless) and colorful headbands holding back free-flowing locks.

Mr. Bridwell was known for enhancing his climbing experiences with hallucinogens.

“That was still when we had good drugs — you know, psychedelics,” he recalled in the documentary. “It was a definite fearlessness that comes with that liberation of the personality.”