To critics, Bachar cut a stubborn, self-righteous figure, uncompromising on matters of daring style and minimal gear. To admirers, he represented the vanishing purity of a simpler age, a time when rocks and mountains were to be ascended only from the ground up, without advance rigging. For about half a decade at his prime, Bachar enjoyed a reputation comparable only to that of Royal Robbins in the 1950s.

“Since Bachar, I don’t think there was anybody you could say was the greatest, most influential climber in the world in his time, ” said Pete Mortimer, a well-known climber based in Boulder, Colo.

In the early 1970s, Bachar arrived in the Yosemite Valley with a pair of boots, an alto saxophone and a stunning physique, joining a group of brash young climbers known as the Stonemasters. The big-wall climbing styles of the 1960s were making way for a style known as free climbing, whose practitioners sought to minimize their gear, using ropes only for protection. Bachar took that kind of self-reliance to levels that could appear dangerous.

Image John Bachar free-climbing in the Yosemite Valley in 1984. Credit... Los Angeles Times

“If ever a Stonemaster carried the name on his sleeve (and he scribbled it on his boots as well), it was John Bachar, Grand Templar of the entire movement,” wrote John Long, a founder of the group, in an online history. Bachar once spent an entire season climbing without using a rope. He offered $10,000 to anyone who could keep up with him for a day. He found no takers.