Stone Play by Stone Country

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ÂŠ Stone Country Press 2007 www.stonecountry.co.uk 2

ISBN 978-0-9548779-1-0 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed by Fratelli Spada, Italy

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STONE PLAY

THE ART OF BOULDERING EDITED BY J S WATSON

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Contents

8 11 13 14 17 18 21 22 24 26 29 30 32 51 52 55 56 59 60 63 64 67 68 71 72 75 78 81

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Beginnings Oscar Eckenstein Claude E. Benson Gritstone Fontainebleau The USA The Salescounter A Bouldering Paradigm I Climb In My Heart The Golden Age Yosemite Midnight Lightning Meanwhile, back at Fontainebleau Henry Moore or Lou Ferrino? Une Vie à Bloc Magic-Lantern Adventures A Mirror of Ourselves How I Mis-spent My Summer Vacation Transcendence Boulderers & Rock The Boulder at the End of the World A Radical Topography Native Stones The First Bouldering Photograph Little Wonderland Common Ground The Thumb Distractions

82 86 89 90 92 95 97 98 101 102 105 106 109 110 113 114 132 135 136 139 140 143 144 147 148 151 152 155 158

Execution Flagstaff Mountain Braincrash or Technique? Training Microscopic I Boulder Therefore I Um... On Cheating Imagining Lupino Lane Power Failure Understanding Sanction Fluid The Mattress People Chicken & Egg Story The Magician’s Hat Futuristic Parenthèse – Something New The True Nature of Difﬁculty Discovery C’était demain Modern Bouldering Bigger & Bolder The Ape and the Monolith A Perfect State of Mind Silent Hunter Mutations Brick-edge Cruiser Joy

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Mike Tweedley bouldering at Ben Ledi, Scotland Pic John Watson

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HISTORY Stone Play.indd 7

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Beginnings

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As a climber, bouldering is the most primal of rock conversations - there is an immediate simplicity in these short phrases of climbing, and when done properly it is not showing off, nor does it boast the grandiloquence and existential machismo you sometimes ďŹ nd in mountaineers. The boulderer is content to stand under a stone for a similar length of time, hands dipped in chalk-bag, puzzling at the wall in front...gawping at the chalky petroglyphs on the crux sequence, not quite there yet but unable to walk away, the light fading or the rain starting, breathing deeply and, not unlike the mountaineer, sensing that in a small cosmic kind of way, we are being screwed with...

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Alan Cassidy in Arrochar, Scotland

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Harold Raeburn ‘striking a pose’ Pic by R Adam

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Oscar Eckenstein Oscar Eckenstein was an Edwardian boulderer. Friend and mentor to the likes of Aleister Crowley, who described his climbing style as ‘supple’, which is like saying ‘he was weird’, Eckenstein did not appreciate full tweed contact with the rock, or body-jams in off-widths, nor did he much like leading with ropes and was content to bite down on a pipe and pontiﬁcate about technique. That said, he had a few boulders named after him and is rightly regarded as the Grandfather of bouldering. He wrote a little about his feelings in a rather odd collection of essays in the 1900 edition of Sandow’s Magazine of Physical Culture, which included sober pieces such as Rational Riding for Women, The Nose as a Sign of Development and Athletic Queens. Oscar’s piece was the straightforward Hints to Young Climbers:

‘Climbing is, as far as I know, the only sport in which the absolute humbug can reign supreme without instant exposure… on your way you will occasionally come across boulders, which are so placed that it will not injure you if you slip off them…climb these boulders by as many ways as you can devise. Should any special way prove too hard for you, do not therefore abandon it, even after several failures… many short pieces of rock exist where a special ﬁngerhold, or a curious way of twisting the body, or a start face out, or even a jump, may be required.’

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‘A Fancy Bit of Bouldering’ Pic by Claude Benson

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Claude E. Benson Claude Benson was author of the instructional British Mountaineering of 1909. He saw bouldering as a challenge to traditional climbing and a young man’s affront to the weaknesses of age, but also therefore, an art in itself. He warned that it was no preparation for ‘proper’ climbing (‘he disregards the half-ball hazard, the backbone of the game’) – the cod-philosophy we usually get from friends who are in the midst of a traditional renaissance, or are planning a big trip where they will mostly haul gear and get rained on, or argue with their partner and end up bouldering anyway. ‘A solitary boulder is by no means to be despised. I experimented on such a one the other day…it was not more than ten feet high, and in shape somewhat resembled a penny bun. I found seven different ways up, all affording genuine climbing, and two or three other problems which proved too much - for me, at any rate. By the time I had done with that boulder I was feeling wonderfully fresh and ﬁt. Now a man with a boulder like that in the neighborhood ought to be able to keep in fairly good form...’

But that’s what it’s all about for boulderers: the limits of ability and what is actually climbable. It is a manic hunt for limitations and elegant solutions to them. Benson doesn’t dispute this philosophy, just sagely tells us not to take it upon the mountains with misplaced conﬁdence (wise words). In fact, he positively encourages us to take a playful attitude to the rocks, even to our own furniture: ‘I am blest with a basement staircase of stone, and at various periods of the day I am to be found hanging by my ﬁngertips to the outside thereof. I recommend all who can to imitate me. Let not false shame prevent them. Let them be bold, and brave the suppressed laughter of the tweenie maid.’ British Mountaineering 1909 - Claude Benson

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Gritstone

‘Sometimes it would be Derbyshire gritstone instead. Those odd, bulging little climbs on low bluffs of rock scattered about the Midlands are known, almost every inch of them, to their devotees, who chart and name and classify every possible and impossible course with an ardour and perseverance that may seem inversely proportional to the size of the crag. It was easy I found to lose both the skin of one’s ﬁnger-tips and one’s temper on these problems… I never mastered enough of the peculiar gritstone technique to develop the appropriate passion for them, and would catch myself sighing desperately for Lliwedd or the Pillar in the midst of abortive struggles to stay on some rounded holdless ﬂange with a grass slope just beneath me and a bush marking the summit of the cliff just above. The true enthusiast may scorn me for an incompetent poltroon, but I never felt like scorning him in return. I was too full of admiring envy.’ Dorothy Pilley ‘Climbing Days’ 1935

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Irish Giles on The Ripple Pic Niall Grimes

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Tim Carruthers bouldering at 95.2, Fontainebleau Pic by Sue Tyson

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Fontainebleau After the war, the French found Fontainebleau and saved us all from having to explain bouldering at all. Go there, wander amongst the thousands of perfectly mis-shapen boulders and you will see feats of levitation proving that dedication and technique are the hallmarks of the boulderer. The 19th Century saw some training potential on these boulders, but it wasn’t until Jacques Wehrlin and his Groupe Rochassier was formed in 1910 that ‘Font’ was seen as a future rock-climbing heritage site in itself. Fontainebleau received its first named problems just before the First World War, ‘La Fissure de Prestat’ being the first grade 4 (the beginnings of real technique rather than thrutching your way up) - climbed at Cuvier by Jacques de Lépiney. Prophetically or clairvoyantly, he banned hobnailed boots in bouldery respect for the sandstone, maybe visited by traumatic visions of eroded holds and the disappearance of subtlety, friction and the boulderer’s quizzical love of blankness. In 1934 Pierre Allain found a compromise between the primal urge for summiting at all costs and respect for the rock, slyly inventing the rubber-soled rock boot and bringing footwork a new lexicon for improvement… standards jumped dramatically - ‘L’Angle Allain’ (the first grade 5 in the forest) being the immediate result. By 1946, the first 6a (‘Marie Rose’ at Cuvier) was completed, utilizing balance and smears on the slopiest of holds. Since then, technique and strength has combined its magical brew and we are now up around the heady grades of Font 8c… not bad for a century of pulling on to boulders with small summits in mind.

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The USA

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Meanwhile, elsewhere, bouldering was developing in league with the rings and ropes of the gymnast. In the States, John Gill, a budding mountaineer and mathematician, found himself doing a quarter in the gymnasium at Georgia Tech, Atlanta. Innocently taking chalk from the gym out on to the rock, as well as an awesome strength, Gill found himself bouldering and buildering round Stone Mountain, Georgia and he didn’t stop. Throughout the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, he grafted gymnastic methods onto rock-climbing. Gill bouldered round America and created some of the most physical and dynamic bouldering testpieces in this golden era: the terrifying ‘Thimble’ in the South Dakota Needles, the ‘Eliminator’ problems at Horsetooth, Colorado, and ‘The Ripper Traverse’ at Pueblo. Soon, legions of other American climbers were addicted to the dynamic, physical climbing that Gill had begun all those years ago in a college gymnasium. By the late 70’s bouldering standards were accelerating way beyond the moves found on traditional climbs – Fontainebleau and the USA had problems that could only be pulled from the boulderer’s magic hat, and were no longer found inside the mountaineer’s doughty sack.

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John Gill dyno problem in the 1960â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

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Escaping the East Mountain Maze at Hueco Tanks Pic by Nuno Monteiro

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The Salescounter In 1947, Pierre Allain – that rare beast of accomplished mountaineer and boulderer – had published his seminal work Alpinisime & Competition, a typically Gallic philosophical appreciation of moving on rock. What he had to say about the new sport of bouldering is what attracts everyone to this day: ‘It is only a question here of pure climbing, mountaineering is much more complex… to tell the truth, it’s not solely in view of mountain routes that we go to Bleau and climb there, it’s chiefly because we make it a game that impassions us in and of itself. It’s training? All the better, but even if it weren’t, for most of us nothing would have changed. Each week just the same we would find each other just as diligent, just as persistent on some route which rebuffs our assault, and just as satisfied when it gave in through our efforts and technique…to this passion for climbing is added the pleasure of camping and the benefit of thirty hours of pure air, during which forgetting the cares of the office, workshop or salescounter, each Saturday we rediscover with the same intense satisfaction, one could almost say the same need, the special atmosphere of our rocks and its group of habitués.’

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A Bouldering Paradigm Bouldering always seemed to me in my formative years to differ from climbing in a fundamental way that was only superficially connected to levels of difficulty. Although I first observed bouldering in the Tetons, watching the guides exercise at Jenny Lake in the mid 1950s, I became fascinated with it while learning gymnastics in the Deep South, where climbing was almost totally unknown. Removed for the better part of a year from the subtle coercion of climbing vernacular, it was natural for me to see a correlation between two of my favorite activities. Thus, I came to see bouldering as an extension of gymnastics, and this, over time, influenced my view of climbing as well.

I began doing gymnastics about a year after starting as a climber in Georgia in 1953. There were very few other climbers around to guide me on established paths, and so I made up a philosophy of rock climbing that was strongly influenced by gymnastics. As soon as I began working on the apparatus in the gymnasium I saw what appeared to me to be a close correspondence between gymnastic routines and short, well practiced rock climbs – i.e. bouldering (although I didn’t know of the word at that time). I observed that gymnasts had much greater strength in the upper torso than climbers, so I was more than merely curious to find out what climbers could do if they were to develop that kind of power. But I also observed gymnasts using momentum in most of their routines, whereas climbers - American, at least - were still devoted to static technique requiring three point suspension. That restriction seemed a little absurd if one climbed close to the ground, where jumping off was not a serious matter. The idea of swinging or flying over blank spots on the rock surface – ascending pitches where intermediate holds were lacking – seemed a no-brainer. And I felt that the graceful performance of a gymnast on his apparatus could be duplicated in this natural environment. Considering it an ideal application of gymnastics to climbing, I became quite possibly the first (and for some time, only) climber of any consequence to primarily focus his efforts on bouldering, both participating in the sport and promoting it as a genuinely worthwhile specialty... John Gill

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John Gill - Pennyrile Forest Dyno

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Pat Ament on Pumpkin Rock, Boulder, Colorado Pic Ament Colledction

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I Climb In My Heart For many years I had virtually a photographic memory of my climbing experiences. I remembered (and still to some degree remember) every hold, each small flake of rock, every twinge of a tendon, or facial expression of my friends. In a bio-psychology class some years ago I learned that memory is greatly enhanced by the flow of adrenaline. Perhaps that photographic memory of mine was in part the result of the exhilarating art in which I was involved, the art of climbing. I use the word “art” because climbing never was a sport for me, at least not in the traditional meaning of the word. “Sport” has always implied explicit, overt competition, one person striving to outclass others, and sport involves the further realities of resentments and jealousies and shattered egos, or elevated egos. John Gill, my bouldering partner many times during the later 1960’s, and I both were university gymnasts. Of course that meant we had a little competitive blood in us. John, I think, was more competitive, though, than I. He seemed to take a certain wry pleasure in establishing a series of moves that required more imagination or strength, or subtle uses of strength, than others could find. That smile of his is absolutely fixed in my memory, a smile of forgiveness and acceptance while at the same time sadistic pleasure. Fortunately it was never an evil smile. He always has been one of the kindest, most generous spirited people I’ve known..

In the later 1960’s there weren’t very many of us who viewed bouldering as an end in itself. The mountaineering spirit pervaded most climbing areas, and bouldering was thought of as a way to play a little or to warm up for serious climbing, or to train, etc. Greg Lowe, in Utah, Barry Bates in Yosemite, Dick Williams, Rich Goldstone, and John Stannard, in the East, and Rich Borgman, fellow Coloradans, were others who tended to focus on bouldering as a pursuit worthy in its own right... Pat Ament

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The Golden Age ...now, ﬁfty years later, I’m able to assess and relate how my activities ﬁt in the chronology of an athletic craft that is international in scope and over one hundred and twenty years old. As it turns out, my predecessors in bouldering history, the early advocates of the sport - Oscar Eckenstein (British -1890’s) and Pierre Allain (French -1930’s) - were, foremost, alpinists and rock climbers who, in addition, valued bouldering and accorded it some measure of status above that of a training exercise. Many others - throughout the history of rock climbing - found bouldering to be somewhat effective as preparation for longer climbs, or saw it as a light-hearted divertissement - but failed to perceive (and thus support) it as a legitimate and independent activity. Times change, however . . .

During the late 1950’s through the 1960’s new, hard bouldering routes were done in America by Ament, Robbins, Kamps, Cleveland, Goldstone, myself, and a number of others. I became fairly serious about this new sport, and acted as its principal advocate and promoter during this period. Usually (but not always), problems from this era could be done by a competent boulderer on the first or second visit, although occasionally they may have taken a bit longer to initially work out. Generally, difficulty levels were such that unusual physical traits were not required - merely persistence and some degree of training and dedication. Most boulderers were also traditional climbers. I had devised a personal, three-level rating scheme that some other climbers used as well. Its simplicity frustrated controversy. This was an era of exploration and initiative, although competitive spirits were rising as climbers sought to discover their personal technical limits. The 1960’s were a transitional period when “Can I get up this section of rock?” gradually gave way to “How hard a problem can I do?” After 1970, a new, talented generation perceived bouldering as a challenging, legitimate, and competitive form of climbing that could occupy a considerable portion of one’s climbing time. Discoveries of new bouldering gardens continued, but the focus on competitive efforts in existing areas flourished as well. In Colorado, for instance, Jim Holloway and a few others began systematically attacking potential problems on Flagstaff Mountain, Horsetooth Reservoir, and Morrison with the intention of creating extraordinarily difficult test-pieces – short climbs that few if any others could do. Sometimes these required literally weeks - even months - to accomplish (in California’s Yosemite, Midnight Lightning took two months of effort in 1978 by Ron Kauk, an all-round climber and exceptional boulderer). I have no problem with this goal – it’s part of a natural evolution - but I do feel the ‘Golden Age’, with its exhilaration, spontaneity, naivety, and unpolished charm, had ended by this time... John Gill

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John Gill bouldering at Fentonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Corner, Estes Colorado 1962

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Pat Ament on Supremacy Crack

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Crack

Yosemite I was more overtly competitive with Royal Robbins, my greatest inspiration. This was because Royal was openly competitive and enjoyed it. Never to a fault, and always generous, he approached the rock with a zeal and with amazing cleverness and technique. He could place the heels of both hands on a mantel shelf at chest level, with fingers pointing inward toward his chest, and bring his elbows together at about head level, then press up with both arms. This shoulder flexibility was just one of his creative tricks. He wasn’t as strong in the arms as I but made up for it in many imaginative ways, including exceptional footwork and balance. Royal was impressed, though, when I started getting stronger and taught myself a pure muscle-up on a bar. This little feat starts from a hang, and you pull very slowly up, going over (above) the bar without the slightest jerk or sudden move, and with both hands and arms rotating above the bar at exactly the same time. I actually never saw another climber do it. There was very occasional application for such a strength on certain rounded mantels, such as going up and over some horribly rounded, sloping tops of boulders. I needed all my strength when, one fall visit to Yosemite in about 1969, I repeated all of Chuck Pratt’s notorious mantel problems around Camp 4. Over a period of a few days I systematically repeated Pratt’s mantels, many as yet unrepeated I was told. Chuck was one of those natural geniuses, absolutely gifted at climbing. He never worked out per se. Yosemite’s two most dedicated boulderers from about 1967 to 1969 were Barry Bates and Jim Bridwell. I had the privilege of being taken on many bouldering tours, with Bridwell showing me the test-pieces and the various classics. The year of ’68, I managed any number of first ascents on the Camp 4 boulders. A handful of these became “standards” for the dedicated Yosemite boulderer. I was impressed recently with Peter Croft’s kind spirit, when he phoned me and said he had repeated one of those routes, named by the locals “Ament’s Arête.” A vastly superior climber to me, Peter for some reason had found the problem to be a nemesis. I took a tiny measure of steam away from his victory when I confided that I had done the first ascent after eating a couple of huge plates of spaghetti.

Bob Candelaria and Jim Holloway were the next generation to follow mine, and they were remarkable, as were John Bachar and Ron Kauk and others in Yosemite. I enjoyed taking Bachar on a tour of the Split Rocks boulders and watching him diligently figure out many difficult routes. By the time the amazing, 6-foot-6 Holloway arrived on the scene, my finger injuries and weight gain had finished me off to such a degree that I could do little more than follow him around and repeat a few of my old classics, although on occasion I applied what one might call the artistry of experience to problems that required more technique or footwork or balance and less strength. I often had to rely on my creativity to stay anywhere near the league of the best boulderers of the 1970’s. I had high enough standards and adequately challenging goals to need no other validation than the friendships I was blessed to have. Pat Ament

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Midnight Lightning The modern era of bouldering (you may disagree, but let’s say bouldering cut its own umbilical with its mother and went public) began with one remarkable sequence of moves on a granite stone in Yosemite Valley, 1978. John Bachar and Ron Kauk, tipped off by John Yablonski, had climbed the powerful wall to the overhanging lip of this Camp 4 boulder many times over the previous months, but surmounting the now infamous impasse proved frustratingly hard. For all their efforts, it seemed unlikely that this piece of climbing would ‘go’. The pine needles would scatter beneath the highball dismount, crowds would gather, but it was no easy shakes even getting to this position…John Sherman takes up the story in his book Stone Crusade:

“While tripping on acid, Yablonski envisioned the line then rushed over to Bachar and Kauk… ‘I found this new problem man. It’ll go.’ Yabo’s beta worked, and soon the two were reaching the lip but having no luck turning it. The resulting fall was, as Bachar says, a ‘slapper’ onto the granite slab below. Over and over the two whistled off… Finally, on what promised to be another heel bruising day of attempts and failures, Kauk was again at the lip. The crowd figured he’d jump off for sure, but instead he rocked over his right foot while popping a quick mantle with his left arm. He grabbed the finishing jug and the crowd fell into a shocked silence…” Despite doubts that it would ever be climbed, Midnight Lightning had finally been born. This did not stop Ron Kauk mountaineering, but it certainly galvanized bouldering and became the most sought-after boulder problem in the world – it is visited and attempted by thousands of boulderers every year. It may have been entirely accidental that this problem should achieve such notoriety and not others… for example, in the same year, John Gill, then aged 41, climbed the unassuming Groove on the Fatted Calf boulder in Pueblo, Colorado…which in modern terms is a grade harder (Midnight Lightning is considered V8, The Groove is at least V9). This is remarkable for so many reasons, not least John’s age and the fact that it was so hard Bob Williams tore his chest cartilage on it! Maybe it was changing times, but Yosemite was a cauldron of climbing activity and everything is noted here…so Midnight Lightning, because it was such an obvious challenge and was seen as such a publicly groundbreaking ascent, became the cause célèbre of bouldering. That single intuitive twist of the left arm into a pressing mantle gave bouldering its right to silence and it was now obvious bouldering had divorced itself from the ‘onsight’ mentality of traditional climbing…now bouldering would mean alpine-style sieges on short pieces of rock. Two months is now nothing to a dedicated boulderer…years can be spent on a single sequence. It is now obvious that the visitational style of traditional climbing was now no longer the boulderer’s motivation. It was all about secrets in a deeper well of gravity.

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John Bachar on ‘Midnight Lightning’ V9 Yosemite Pic by Bill Serniuk

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Meanwhile, back at Fontainebleau

Whether it was ‘morphic resonance’ or simple one-upmanship, similar divorcing standards were being set elsewhere. More quietly, and in a much understated Gallic fashion, (also a year earlier - 1977), Jerôme Jean-Charles climbed ‘Carnage’ at Bas Cuvier, Fontainebleau - the first Font 7b (V8) in the forest and a significant jump in standards and approach. These were moves that would be inconceivable on traditional climbs and it wasn’t until bolted sport-climbing really took off in the 80’s did bouldering begin to inform its cousins. The 1980’s saw a similar explosion in standards and the ‘Bleausards’ of Fontainebleau were pushing the envelope further, at the beating heart of Fontainbleau: Bas Cuvier. Jacky Godoffe climbed the first Font 8a in 1984 (‘C’Etait Demain’) and was also responsible for three of the ‘Big Four’ at the nearby venue of Cuvier Rempart (all high seventh grade masterpieces): ‘Big Boss’, ‘Fourmis Rouges’, ‘Tristesse’, the fourth being ‘Big Golden’ (Olivier Carrière)… a sea-change had occurred, boulderers were now going ‘off-circuit’ and you could spend all your time working ‘projects’, failing again and again yet still being considered a climber!

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Jacky Godoffe on the famous Cul de Chien roof at Fontainebleau Pic Godoffe collection

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Dave Flanagan on Split Arete, Echo Rock, Poll Doo Glen, Donegal Pic by Ped McMahon

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Utah Bouldering Pic by Beat Kammerlander

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Justin Critchlow on the Baldstones, England Pic Niall Grimes collection

Jacky Godoffe on Fahrenheit 91.4 Fontainebleau Pic Godoffe collection

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Klem Loskot in Gondwana Pic Uli Loskot

Chris Boutell at Apremont, Fontainebleau Pic by Tim Morozzo

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Sebastian Loewensteijn on The Joker (V8), a Spittle Hill test piece, New Zealand Pic by Mark Watson

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Bernd Zangerl on New Base Line, V15, Magic Wood Pic by Beat Kammerlander

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Diarmuid Smyth on Crack Cradle, Glanakeera Rock, Wicklow, Ireland Pic by Dave Flanagan

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Hampi granite boulders on the Rishimuck plateau shaped by the light of sunset Pic by David Balcells

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LANDSCAPE

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Cir Mhor boulders, Isle of Arran Pic by John Watson

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Henry Moore or Lou Ferrino? ‘Moore’s sculptures tell me what the crags and boulders tell me. That our bodies are our worlds, their interiors never seen but the self is in there, hard to reach yet as material as the grains of rock or the fibres of roots...’ David Craig Like the gritstone crags and boulders of the Peak, Henry Moore’s sculptures remind us of something playful and physically irresistible – just such sculptured shapes give us a stony yearning that needs satisfied. Which boulderer wouldn’t be tempted to try and flash one of Moore’s sculptures? Under a cool moon, conditions perfect, toes sticking, slopers holding? Bouldering has never been about comparing itself to mountaineering. Once it had got this out of its system and found its own playground, it needed a philosophy of its own. Bouldering requires more than strength - after all this wanes - so it had to have its own sense of being, its own Zen… this is fundamentally a sense of being in nature, or at least responding physically to beautiful places. The ultimate goal may be the same as the mountaineer, that is, getting up the bloody thing, but physical elegance has us in thrall, which is why we jump off problems, or scuttle quickly back down to do it again, as if to check we weren’t delusional about our stolen triumphs. Okay, some pose like Lou Ferrino and make like The Hulk, that’s up to you, but most of us, like mountaineers, come down with a deep sense of satisfaction and gratification, so it’s all the same game I guess... if there’s a mountain or monolith in front of us, we aren’t built just to leave them alone.

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Une Vie à Bloc The story of my life as a boulderer is essentially the story of a love affair. Not a jealous, possessive love but one that has allowed me to pursue other passions, each one of which still ﬁlls me with joy, even after all this time. Because even though I have still got the same mad desire to climb new problems, it is not as a means of escape from a boring life. On the contrary, I love life more than anything and for me climbing has been a great way of looking towards the future. 52

People have often joked: “What are you going up there for, have you lost something?”; “It’s easier round the back!” or “What a waste of time!” All perfectly true! And, as in any love story, my life would no doubt have been much easier without this passion. What have I ever gained from it? Some ﬂeeting moments of happiness, occasional disillusionment – but what a journey it has been! I guess this explains why I have continued for so long on this path, which I stumbled upon so long ago, almost accidentally. All it needed was for a friend to suggest that I go climbing with him one day and matters quickly became beyond my control. The rock, particularly Fontainebleau sandstone, has become part of me. It is a means of self expression, at times almost pathological, but also an endless source of inspiration. Jacky Godoffe

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Jacky Godoffe bouldering in Fontainebleau Pic Godoffe collection

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Light and Stone in South Africa Pic Zangerl collection

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Magic-Lantern Adventures When I remember climbing and bouldering, it has a rich, detailed feel. I think of times when fall approached, the leaves changing, and a certain point in afternoon when I sensed the end of the summer season. It was time to get back to school, or to write poetry. I think of those beautiful days of spring, that sense of youth, the innocent joy of when I was discovering climbing. That memory is formed partly of smells of flowers of the city, as I walked alone or with some other young mate in a hurry upward toward secret treasures of rock. Climbing is a memory of magic-lantern adventures among the flatirons, those towering rocks that rise toward sometimes tumultuous, moving clouds of spring, and where every move could be a kind of bouldering – not very difficult but enlarging attention and bringing to the soul a new awareness. I have clear memories of light angling through pines, or seeming to flow across the sky; of gazing upward into the caverns of clouds, the sky silhouetting the bigger rocks. Light existed at a micro-level, as I gazed into a brilliant crystal – a certain hold of a particular route. I did countless bouldering routes literally hundreds of times each, because each time was different, and each time was the same. Light varied, and seasons changed. The companionship often was different. The essence and beauty remained the same, in all its glorious variety. I had favorite no-hands routes I made a practice of walking up, along certain trails. I knew every fern on every tiny ledge...

Pat Ament

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A Mirror of Ourselves A lump of rock. One day you decide to climb it. You clean it; it ﬁlls your thoughts. To begin with it resists you. You understand that, if anything is possible, nothing is allowed. And this rejection is like a mirror; you begin to see hidden aspects of yourself. With each new problem you try, you get a profound feeling of pushing back your personal limits. Whether you succeed or fail, you end up better off than before; richer in experience but also richer in humility. 56

In the end there is no success or failure, just the joy of the moves and the satisfaction that comes from combining physical and mental strengths. If either of these elements is missing, then you have not got a hope, but if everything works together then you get a kind of alchemy, where the difﬁculty of the problem simply ceases to exist. It is at this point that the numbers fade into the background. Grades again! Those scales by which we all like to deﬁne ourselves! But ultimately grades are just a distraction; all that really matters is the quality of movement that the climber unearths in the problems he creates. This is why some problems remain endlessly popular while others are fashionable for a few months and then forgotten. Jacky Godoffe

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Pic Godoffe Collection

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How I Mis-spent My Summer Vacation Formerly known as Vijayanagara, Hampi is famous for its ruins, which can be something of a disappointment. The ruins are too ruined. It’s only after clambering up into the surrounding landscape that you appreciate how richly Hampi merits its top status in the world stoner circuit. The boulder-strewn landscape is utterly demented: it doesn’t make sense. Everything is just piled on everything else; boulders sit on even bigger boulders. You come to realize, in a bold surge of post-bong enlightenment, that the planet itself is no more than a vast, densely populated boulder. You end up saying the word to yourself - boulder, boulder - until it either drains of all meaning or becomes so dense with meaning - so, as it were, bouldery with meaning - that it robs all sense from the surrounding world, until there is, in fact, nothing but boulder. “Boulder is great,” you cry. “There is no boulder but boulder!” The Tungabhadra River curves through the midst of the still-active Hindu temples of Hampi Bazaar, and sparkles in the sun like the Lost City of the Incas. What a place! When the author was there, Hampi was becoming a bit of an offshoot of Goa in that a trance scene was taking root. On the night of the full moon, there was to be some kind of party across the river at Virupapuragadda, a spot popular with hard-core Israeli trancers. The author arrived just before sunrise, but evidently the party had never really kicked off. It didn’t matter, though. He was happy to get stoned and set off over the boulders. Hampi is one of those destinations where it is never too early in the day to get completely basted, and it was wonderful to go bouldering like this.

The sun slanted over the rocks. Shadows curled up, stretched, and slowly began to move around. It was perfect - except that the combination of being stoned and needing to concentrate while climbing conspired to make him superconscious of where he was putting his hands as he hauled himself over the rocks, and as soon as he started to think about where he was putting his hands, he began to worry that he might be putting his hands on a snake warming itself in the risen sun. From here it was, of course, a short step to becoming concerned that the whole place was full of snakes, that it was actually snake infested, and that it was best not to do any more clambering, that he was better off just sitting there in a state of pathologically heightened vigilance (i.e., terror)… Geoff Dyer

Hampi Boulders Pic by Alan Donald

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Transcendence

One aspect of bouldering especially meaningful for me was what I might call transcendence. I mean the ability to move beyond my own weaknesses and mental blocks but also to go deeper into an experience and let it teach me, seeing past the smoothness of Yosemite granite, for example, to its hidden holds. I would stare at a surface of rock and see nothing, and then in a revelation I would begin to get images of things that might serve to support a foot or a fingernail. An incurable romantic, I often have believed each rock has a spirit. A scripture says the earth has a spirit. So perhaps there could be life inside the rock. I felt at times that the rock treated me as a friend, that it welcomed me rather than I being at odds with it. At other times I simply beat my fists against the immovable stone, unable to find passage upward. With a certain dedicated love, though, of the rock and of nature, and with the right spirit in me, I sometimes melded almost in some spiritual sense with the rock, becoming a part of it, as in two lives connecting where their spirits meet. The reddish-brown sandstone of Flagstaff and roughly textured granite of my beloved Split Rocks (half way between Boulder and Estes Park) seemed at times to communicate to me, to reveal their secrets. I took countless friends on my favorite Split Rocks tours. I showed friends routes where at first I had no chance of succeeding but where with a bit of contemplation or silent communion with the rock I found ways, sometimes mysterious ways, of doing the route, as though helped by some unknown power of my mind or the inner spirits of life itself. Some door of perception opened at times, truly. Bouldering could be a true art for me when I moved past the gymnastic strength years. I found a kind of mastery that continued to exist in the moderate routes that slowly began to replace the difficult ones, my mind for example honing in on a given touchstone foothold I had used for years, or a sense of oneness and balance, getting the mind to take up some of the slack of various failings of fingers and shoulders…. through the years, elegant and striking formations of rock drew from me an infinite host of expressions of body position, an endless number of ideas. That oneness and that balance, that association of any certain moment with all other times, occurred unlimited times among the resplendent colors of earth. Pat Ament

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Angela Riba climbing a V4 on the Bowling Pin boulder Buttermilks Pic Balcells Collection

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Dave Ma

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Boulderers & Rock What can we say about bouldering and landscape that is different from other branches of climbing? In mountaineering, we like to be hit by the sheer scale and elemental severity of the mountain landscape. It dominates us in a physical sense, so we are impressed by it. Even in sport climbing, where the challenge is ‘moves’ and not ‘mountains’, we look for that feeling of insigniﬁcance beneath a huge limestone wave with a few pockety chinks in its white armour. In bouldering we look for detail. Sometimes it’s a single hold that produces the spark of inspiration to keep trying a problem. Why else would be spend day after day trying to get to that one stupid but lovely sloper? We want to see what its like to hang that thing - it’s a journey inwards into the landscape’s details as opposed to mountaineering’s ever-widening outward journey. Bouldering lends itself to this focus on detail because we stay so long in one place. Most of climbing involves travelling over the landscape. There isn’t time or opportunity to sit and watch the tide change or the light go orange on the rock in between attempts. In other branches of climbing, far too often there are more pressing priorities than sitting watching a robin ﬁnish the crumbs of your sandwich. When we have to sit on the mat and rest, we start to see more than we realised was there.

In any type of climbing, the images we create of the experiences we are looking for are made up of both the physical climbing landscape and the people using it. Rock climbing is not just rock, its climbers and rock. So when we think about somewhere new we’re going to boulder, it’s natural to visualise its protagonists in action there. Think of Yosemite and you think of Ron Kauk creeping up the granite in flares with his bandana holding back the locks. Think of Cresciano and you think of Fred Nicole’s finger nails crunching as he crimps his way smoothly up some huge lump of V14 Gneiss without a glint of effort crossing that cool expression. Being inspired to climb things is about creating images and then following them. Climbers of the past and present are inevitably part of that. Even if you are climbing a first ascent, the images you have of perfect climbing come from what we have seen for ourselves. We can all pull a little harder if we have a little bit of Graham, Smith and Nicole in our minds. Dave MacLeod

Dave MacLeod on Pressure V13, Dumbarton Pic by John Watson

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The Boulder at the End of the World Next day, we packed carefully and headed into the mountains. The pristine, pathless landscape at the “Uttermost Part of the Earth” supports a rich variety of wildlife symbolic of the wild, open ecosystems of southern South America, including the guanaco, the Culpeo fox, the Huemul deer, Condors, Magellanic woodpeckers and Firecrown hummingbirds. The climate is unpredictable in this Land of Fire and violent winds; rain and snowfall are not uncommon, even in summer. We were soon several days walk from the nearest settlement, with no means of communication, so reliable equipment and clothing was a matter of survival, not fashion, and carrying pads was out of the question. Also, since there were only two of us, the margin for error was non-existent. Snap an ankle out here and you are in pain for a week – it’s as simple as that. We were mightily impressed by our commitment, and proud of our recklessness... 64

...it was out there, in the remote back country of Southern Patagonia, that we found the Boulder at the End of the World. Tectonics, time and glacial dynamics had shaped her and her satellites. Technique, time and dynamics produced a rich haul of new problems. We climbed on razor schist, giggling like children as the pristine stacked shards cracked like bubble wrap beneath our feet. We laid down highball sedimentary challenges, mined rich quartzite veins, micromanaged the micro-granite. We exerted intense directional pressure on the metamorphic boulders, then cranked up the heat and burnt out on the igneous blocks. Back at the tent, throats dry and fingers trashed and bleeding – the gift of the gabbro – we burned some lenga and replayed the day, miming the moves, naming and grading, reliving and refining the process of discovery until, minds mired in the minutiae, we fell into an exhausted sleep. During the night, the rain blew in on a savage wind, washing away the matrix of chalk traces, erasing all the problems, leaving nothing but a random web of memories. It was the perfect conclusion. I lifted my fingers to my nose and breathed the lingering aroma of sweat, chalk, rock and lichen. I noticed that she did, too. We smiled as we packed and left... Tim Carruthers

Fitzroy, Patagonia Pic by Sue Tyson

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Llanberis Bouldering Pic by Richie Betts

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A Radical Topography “I could not have believed, in those earlier days, that an intense appreciation of the mountains might be compatible with the most undigniﬁed gymnastics upon them . . . Experience has taught me that scenery is enjoyed most in pauses between muscular and mental efforts” - L. J. Oppenheimer in Heart of Lakeland, 1908 Living in Llanberis, I am able to make regular visits to the Pass; even during the winter months I still make it up there at least once a week. I am increasingly captivated by its ever-changing moods; sometimes it is sombre and foreboding, and occasionally it seems fantastical, particularly when the evening light show exaggerates the already radical topography. Yet, whatever the pervading temper of the season, it is always dramatic and stimulating to the senses. I feel profoundly connected to this ancient glacial valley. Wandering around from crag to crag, and latterly from boulder to boulder I have found a growing sense of fascination with the change of perspective that each new vantage point affords. For some, such thespian like contemplation has little to do with the severe physicality of bouldering, yet I ﬁnd the interplay of the two states of mind to be enthralling...

...with rock shoes removed and blood surging back into my ice block toes, I settled into a state of quiet rapture. Glancing around the valley, I was greeted by a powerful vista that matched my elated state of mind. Whilst I had been absorbed in the brutal mechanics of the problem, the evening light had noticeably intensiﬁed, transforming a once dour mountainside into a dramatic sweep of colour. The craggy slopes, high on the steep ﬂanks of the Esgair Felen ridge, were now lit up, the rich, vivid tones glowing with startling vigour. To my left the familiar outlines of the Llanberis lakes, Llyn Peris and Llyn Padarn, stretched away towards the western skyline, where soon the sun would be setting... Simon Panton

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Native Stones They occupied the foreshore like the Welsh rocks in John Blakemore’s photographs, standing for durance. The dictionary says this word is obsolete. Then we had better revive it, for what else means continuance and hardness and the further connotation of imprisonment? The rock is trapped, it will always be there. How ever it churned and bounced and grated in its earlier days, it lost momentum long ago. Although it is conﬁned ‘forever’ to this site, there is chagrin under the pity we feel for its simplicity and the respect we have for its hardihood, because we know it will outlast us. In itself it is innocent of meanings. It is so real yet so unalive. It is as present, in Blakemore’s portrait, as the two thousand-year-old bogman exhumed from the Danish peat, skin tough and blackened as the hardwood of a juju mask, yet the pores still show and the hairs that grew for a little after the rawhide strangled him at the moment of the sacriﬁce... 68

But this rock never lived, never changed by its own actions, never inched along the floors of lukewarm oceans or opened and closed little mouths as the tide filled and drained until the flesh died and the ooze packed each shell, moulding a cast that outlasted the dinosaurs and may outlast the mammals. This rock seemed as autonomous as an animal only when it welled or spurted in the torrents of magma from the volcanic furnaces where the planet smelts itself, outpouring material for the forges up above. It is azoic; it never housed the tunnellings and wormings of the spirifers. For a thousand million years it was a particle in the Archaean shield which the world bared to the sun’s tempering. It plunged to the bottom of a Cambrian gorge, the Ordovician ocean sluiced above its head until a volcano opened under it, tossed it clear into the only second’s sunshine it would know for thirty million years until it fell back onto the Cambrian seabed and waited for the Caledonian mountains to shoulder out of the welter of waters and boulders. It baked in desert heat, howling sandstorms buffed it, it chilled to the core as the Carboniferous seas rose round it, it could not feel the fingerings of seaweeds and bivalves that lodged in the grain of it where the sheer armouring of the bedding-planes had parted under stress... David Craig

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‘Durance’

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The First Bouldering Photograph At ﬁrst glance, the photo is just a man climbing The Scoop at Castle Naze. Then you notice he is barefoot. Odd, as this is the era of hob-nail boots and lassoing rock with hemp rope. The photo begins to take on a delicate, more thoughtful meaning. Why is the man climbing barefoot? It seems the worn patches of rock round his feet had seen the scrabbling toes of too many nails and the rock was used to spitting off such industrial attention. I can see the heavy tweed bodies peeling off into gravity’s well like so much felled timber. But this man - Stanley Jeffcoat - is poised, in balance, his bent right toe perfectly placed to allow him to reach up, his right hand touched to a hold like a painter’s brush. This man is listening to the rock, he is becomg a boulderer - it is the shape of movement he is seeking, which is why he is maybe barefoot and desires the closest contact with the rock. His clothes are light and billowy, allowing freedom of movement and the forethought that this will be required. Even the camera operator has gleaned that a different approach is required - he or she is focusing away from the summit and crag and down onto the technique of the climber. This is the landscape of the boulderer: intimate, close, the eyes seeking out unseen ripples of balance and composure. It is as if the climber is saying, ‘I do not care about the summit any more, this is good enough for me, let the moves be the thing, let me hang here suspended forever...’ John Watson

Stanley Jeffcoat on The Scoop at Castle Naze 1914 Pic by Alf Schaaning

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Little Wonderland On a cold day, as I set off, roots grow down from my ﬁngertips into the pores of the sandstone, ﬁxing me like a yacht at anchor on the changing tide. I swing left on the slopiest of nubbins. The bluff takes a chilled breath and lets me pass. This is Little Wonderland orange, brown, glowing and rich…

I live near a small cliff of perfect orange sandstone that glows in the evening sun and is shrouded by oaks and pine. Nesscliffe bouldering is quality and the traverse of the Northumberland block is classic. Tiny sloping edges on a slightly overhanging wall made easy by clever footwork and body positioning. I use this place to relax, walk Jasper and keep fit. The combination of the Little Northumberland traverse and a finish up one of the up problems such as Northumberland Wonderland or Rigpur or Kyloe-In is no mean feat of finger strength and in-fact has taken me several years of lazy, unfocused practice to achieve. Only occasional visits from climbers from Liverpool and Sheffield have dotted the solitary bouldering, so it has never felt like a rush to complete projects or links; a privileged and lucky position to find myself in. Climbing on this wall is best in deep winter when, sheltered and facing south, the full effects of the suns rays make the molecules of the rock dance. Energised and switched on, one is sucked into an early, primitive world that only the rock has known, now to surface from Triassic times. And so what of these problems? Why so deeply etching? Why for me as important as the Indian Face, Face Mecca or Gribin Wall Climb? Perhaps these climbs left a slight tinge of uncertainty about why I had done them, a questioning of the inner drive of my ambition and a dissatisfaction with the complication of the style used to achieve them. There is no clutter like this in my bouldering, just me and the rock, just application of gymnastic ability. No jiggery-pokery or after-bickering or publicity or hype and no Magazine People. Humble yet Colossal. In fact, there is no desire greater than the problem itself: an inanimate object given a soul, or perhaps its soul is released, always there, locked up, simply wanting out. Nick Dixon

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Nick Dixon bouldering at Nesscliffe, England

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Fraser Harle, Gritstone Bouldering, Scotland

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Common Ground ...I was lost in thought a long time. I looked over the chalked topout, to the landscape, and to strewn millstones, leftovers from distant days of quarrying. Huge handcarved remnants of men’s interaction with this rough rock, many generations earlier. I wondered how long each of these took to hew, primitive tools, bad weather. Men daily making the long walk from the city to spend their lives hacking at dense blocks or dying young in the tottering quarry below. Climbing all seemed like such a perverse adaption of this harsh life, and I wondered what the silent men would have made of it all, all this free time and recreation. Beyond that, in the distance, the site of an ancient hill fort, lives of unimaginable iron aged peoples who made this area their home, and I wondered what the landscape would have looked like then.

A yell broke my reverie. I looked up. My friends were at the top of the crag now, and beckoned me back to them. I waved in recognition, but in the wind couldn’t hear what they were saying. At the spot where I changed back to my shoes, I took a last look round at the problems I had spent the last while on, how long I don’t know. At the commingling of chalks, a union of efforts and success. Maybe I can’t really say I got to know someone through my experience, maybe it was more like peeking at someone through a window, but as I tied my laces and headed back towards my companions, I knew the happiness inside me was the one that came from sharing, and on arrival, listened greedily with a happy heart to their babbles and raves about their climb. Niall Grimes

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Ben Litster at Brin Rock

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TECHNIQUE

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The Thumb

‘Betwixt the west point of St. Kilda, and the isle Soa, is the famous rock Stackdonn, i.e. as much, in their language, as a mischievous rock, for it hath proved so to some of their number, who perished in attempting to climb it; it is much of the form and height of a steeple; there is a very great dexterity, and it is reckoned no small gallantry to climb this rock, especially that part of it called the Thumb, which is so little, that of all the parts of a man’s body, the thumb only can lay hold on it, and that must be only for the space of one minute; during which time his feet have no support, nor any part of his body touch the stone, except the thumb…’ Martin Martin, from ‘A Voyage to St. Kilda’ 1695

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Tim Rankin at Portlethen, Scotland Pic by Tim Morozzo Stone Play.indd 79

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Barbara Zangerl topping out in the Magic Wood Pic Zangerl collection

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Distractions ‘Bouldering is the pleasantest of off-day distractions; but too many men allow themselves to spend the time on the merely difﬁcult. Its use should be for safe exercises on rules of style. When you can climb an easy block with your hands, or balance up a wall with such light ﬁnger-hold that a friend can pass his hand under yours, or have discovered how to solve a shelf-climb by a push hold and a twisting arm lever, you have made a fair test that will be of future use.’

Geoffrey Winthrop Young – ‘Mountain Craft’ 1949

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Execution

Like Johnny Appleseed, I travelled, planting the seeds of bouldering in several areas in the south and the west and encouraging it where it had taken root. In those early days of American bouldering, only a few took the sport seriously enough to spend considerable time at it. We thought a problem to be of bouldering quality if it seemed harder than what we had climbed with ropes and pitons and took a number of tries to do. However, the idea of working for weeks or months on a single move or short set of moves seemed - at that time - a bit pathological. Exploration was a big part of the sport then. If I couldn’t do a problem on the first or (rarely) second visit, I usually moved on to other new climbs. Consequently, many of my “classic” problems are only moderately difficult. For instance, I did the three popular basic routes on the Mental Block - including the Pinch Overhang - at Horsetooth Reservoir near Fort Collins, Colorado, one cold, wintry afternoon in 1967. I felt that elegant execution counted equally as much as the difficulty of the problem. After all, this was a kind of gymnastic performance, and gymnasts relish smooth and graceful motion. If you are a young boulderer, does this make any sense to you? If I couldn’t do a route gracefully I didn’t think of it as being properly done. If I were to climb two problems, one moderately difficult done smoothly, and the other more difficult done desperately, I would value the former over the latter. Accordingly, I rarely put a premium on doing a problem the first attempt, although others sometimes disagreed. I thought it more important to make an ascent smoothly if I could, and sometimes this meant playing around on the holds a bit before I got serious. In my book gracefulness trumped minimum number of tries - or even efficiency - which put me at odds with the movement towards more measurable or formal competition. John Gill

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Matt Parker on the traverse problem Tricky (V10), Spittle Hill, Castle Hill New Zealand Pic by Mark Watson

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Figure-of-four Trick Pic Jacky Godoffe Collection

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The Dream Machine To start from a dream fuelled by desire and then to turn that dream into reality, that’s the alchemy that kicks in each time a new problem gets hold of you. Working the moves of a new problem and experiencing those moments where doubt gives way to hope and then to certainty – all this produces an intensity of experience which can seem out of all proportion to the simple act of a climbing a few feet of unclimbed rock! The moment I start climbing, the rest of my life seems to fade into the background; it’s as if a door has opened into another world. If I dare to speak metaphorically, it is like a strange photo, where the positive and negative no longer rest inert but react and redeﬁne each other….

Climbing doesn’t make anything better but it does enable me to view things from a different perspective. Going climbing makes me happy, calm and, ultimately, more open to people around me. When bad weather stops me climbing for more than a few days I begin to feel out of balance. You could say that climbing is a drug, but I am more of a lover than a junky. Jacky Godoffe

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Flagstaff Mountain

For a few years I was the master of Flagstaff Mountain bouldering. I spent hundreds of hours up there in that solitude. On those round, knobby boulders and slabs I invented many routes, even a few dangerous ones where I found myself spread out on tiny nubbins and with a bad landing of rocks below. The “South Face of the Flagstaff Amphitheater” was such a route, moving up a vertical, if not slightly overhanging, wall. The rock undercuts at the start and the footholds are very poor and difficult to use. A deadly slab juts out and you stand on this with tip-toes to begin. It might take off both knee caps if you fell - fortunately I never did. That was a route I prided myself in doing from the ground up, with no previewing or top-roping. I rarely top-roped, and usually only when the landing was very bad. At the critical move of this vertical Amphitheater route, while pinching two tiny quartzite crystals, a quick, completely committing reach is made with the right hand for another crystal that is polished and sloping down. Gill was a little worried about the strength of the Flagstaff nubbins, after having pulled a baseball size crystal right out of the rock one day, with a big laugh, just after I had assured him the nubbins were very strong and could be trusted. He thus declined to attempt this route. He also was content to watch me do my well-known one-arm mantel route on a formation called the One-Arm Rocks. One night, almost in dark, Bob Kamps and I had contrived about ten routes on this formation, using only one arm (holding the other arm away from the rock, or behind the back). A few of these routes were difficult enough with two arms. Kamps, a brilliant, very competitive spirit, and always fun, was able to do all these routes except for the one-arm mantel. Years later, John Sherman, one of the country’s most prolific boulderers, and one of the first to repeat in pure style Gill’s Thimble route in the Needles of South Dakota, told me he just walks by that one-arm mantel route because he has no chance of doing it. Thus it seems to remain a bit of a test-piece for those who know the boulders on Flagstaff. Gill was the master of one-arm and one-finger pulls, so I thought I needed my own specialty. I could be the master of the one-arm mantel... Pat Ament

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Pat Ament on the Overhanging Hand Traverse, Flagstaff Pic Ament Collection

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Justin Critchlow on the Inertia Reel Traverse, Peak District, England Pic by Niall Grimes

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Braincrash or Technique? Like any sport, up to a certain amateur level, you can take whatever skills come naturally and throw them at the challenge. Sometimes it’ll work, sometimes not, but ‘hey ho’ at least half the time you get a result. Maybe you like to forget about technique and get ‘braincrash’ when you look down in extremis and try to work out a killer foot sequence in the heat of the moment. What the hell, paste one foot on and campus, just because you can! Maybe you don’t like to slap and hang in there feeling around for some little edge to get between those distant rails. So you have your set of preferences for ways to tame each move, as well as a set of ‘horrible’ moves you hate doing. Somewhere between these two extremes will be the way demanded by the rock. The closer you want to get to your limit, the more the rock calls the shots. So, it’s necessary to lift some of those horrible moves out of the most hated category and into the preferred category. Bouldering is pure difﬁculty and in-your-face simplicity. The hardest problems demand you to not only be good at every type of movement, but to love them too. If you hate the move, it’s not possible to generate the mental energy for it - you can choose to love any move a boulder throws at you, if you decide to.

We are looking for a way to feel in control of the rock, to get to the top of boulders. We think that if we are in control then the climbing will feel easy. This is the problem; we can never be above the level of complexity of moves that the rock offers. Its repertoire of moves to throw at us is inﬁnite, while our repertoire is laughably small. The rock will always be our movement teacher. It seems a bit of a paradox, but if we can accept that we will always be its pupil, then we are open to heading towards mastery of our own moves. The best we can hope for is to try to match the level of movement offered by each problem, and then start all over again as a learner on the next. Dave MacLeod

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John Gill demonstrating the ‘Full Front Lever’

Training

...I worked out daily as a gymnast, but in addition for a time Paul Hagan and I worked out in the gym three times a week specifically for climbing. The workout involved 120 pull-ups the first five or ten minutes, then 120 deep dips on the parallel bars, then 1-minute finger-tip hangs, at 1-minute intervals, with 1-minute rests, for a total of ten minutes. This last exercise was tough, after all those pull-ups and dips. Then we did a lot of exercises, such as climb the pegboards with our finger-tips instead of the pegs. I supplemented the workout with a number of difficult gymnastic presses. I was able to do a pure stiff-stiff press, starting in a sitting “L-seat” position on the floor and pressing with straight legs through my arms and up into a handstand. I also had mastered a slow hollow-back press, starting by lying on the floor face down, with hands at my hips, and pressing slowly, with a straight body, into a handstand. After the workout, we would go to my girlfriend’s house, each chug a full bottle of Liebfraumilch wine and gorge ourselves on pizza. Already giddy from the workout, the wine and pizza put me right to sleep, and while sitting on the wood floor I leaned over slowly, hitting it with a thump... Pat Ament .

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Microscopic A friend of mine maintains it’s all bullshit; “All there is is easy, hard and impossible, everything else means nothing.” He often proves himself a hypocrite, but I see his point. Impossible comes in varying degrees, from the impossibles you’ll never do to the impossibles you might someday do. Easy is good. Easy is fun. Turning up at a new area and cranking off a load of quality problems is a great way to spend a day. But for me, the beauty of bouldering lies in the thin line of the hard.

Couldn’t ﬁnd anyone today, so out alone again. I’ve got a problem on my mind; the day is far from perfect, but somehow the moisture that has soaked the trees and ground hasn’t harmed the friction. A miraculous sticky damp. I have carpeted the ground in plastic to keep my feet dry; on top of this is my bouldering mat, serving more as a makeshift couch than a nylon spotter. Bliss. So, the problem. Big undercuts, sloper, slopers, shit pocket, top. I had considered it to be in the impossible category until I tried it last week in passing, and found myself almost holding the holds. So, four days of thinking about it leads me here today. After a little warm up I am doing well on the move from the undercuts round the bulge to the sloper, and I am almost holding the swing going to the next slopers. Getting and holding the pocket seems unlikely, but I keep trying. It’s hard to rest when I’m by myself, so I kill time. Brush holds, blow chalk, examine the textures. I place my right hand on a hold, feel it fondly mould to the rhythm of the rock. I could never hold it until I adjusted my thumb, an adjustment so tiny, yet so crucial, which turned rock from a feature to a hold; my handskin had a perfect memory of the texture of the holds, down to microscopic level, I swear. Of how much pressure each knuckle and pad should feel, where, to the eighth of an inch, my centre of gravity should be. When exactly my foot should adjust on the smear, how far down I should drop before popping. I knew too exactly how I should feel emotionally for each move and played them over and over in my head to become aware of my every action... From ‘The Medium’ by Niall Grimes .

Dave Kerr on ‘Mind Trick’, Trossachs Boulders, Scotland

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Kate Finnerty in the Quantum Field, New Zealand Pic Mark Watson

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I Boulder Therefore I Um... Sometimes I climb back to the ground and sometimes I fall - but my failure always makes me laugh, and like all practical jokes the more extended the better it is. Should I act as if what is happening is what I wanted or as if what I wanted is what is happening? I move in a state of constant confusion, through which I hope to realise an eventual consequential cascade. Fixation on my means distracts from my aims and my aims from my means ... the hold that wags the climber... Muscular and gravitational force are reciprocally constant and variable.The relation of the shapes of physical objects to my ďŹ fteen more-or-less independently mobile centres of mass so as to move my body in opposition to gravity is the catalysis in which I live, as some live in relation to their cultural or social environments... my satisfaction is in the subversion of gravity through the manipulation of projectile mass.

The boulders that motivate my interest are those predominantly devoid of generic shapes, with many potential areas of contact through which to apply force to their surfaces so as to resolve an eventual intersection of many ranges of motion. When a crucial hold snaps like a biscuit the joke is on me. Stones break, branches snap, buildings are demolished. What possesses me to feel anger or frustration at this? All that matters is resolution from moment to moment. Tom Charles Edwards

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Padstacking!

On Cheating Like most branches of climbing there are many opportunities for cheating in bouldering! Classic methods include the infamous ‘Yorkshire power dab’, whereby a subtle brushing of the ﬂoor or an adjacent boulder/spotter helps to stop a swing or provides that missing one percent of power for the crux slap. ‘Power spotting’ is also a popular method, but one that requires the cooperation of a trusted friend, who must swear, if questioned, that he never did push your back onto the problem as you sagged down from the crux. Another popular trick is the pad-stacked start: if you are struggling to attain lift off then just get the pads piled up to the required height. Missing out the starting moves on a traverse is a perennial favourite; as is the classic ‘heel touch down’ on a low foothold, or the hand pressed sit down start. The ultimate method is known as ‘web pointing’ - here you can claim to be one of the best boulderers in the world without any proof whatsoever. Sounds great, I think I’ll sign up tomorrow!

From ‘How to Burn Your Mates Off’ by Simon Panton

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Imagining

...I felt bold and exploratory and alone on these little twenty foot outcrops and had them all to myself. I sat down on an obvious boulder and changed into my boots, and made for the first obvious problem. A lovely problem it was - slopey, slightly dynamic, powerful yet balancy, all while still being very, very easy. It’s a pity sometimes that you actually have to exert yourself in climbing. Imagining moves is so pleasant, because you never have to pull, there’s just the movement, the flow, the body positions. Throw in a hold that you can’t hang and it all has to stop: reality. Well, this first problem had all the movement and space, but really only called for touching rather than pulling. From ‘Common Ground’ by Niall Grimes

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Pete Murray on the Langdale Boulders, Lake District, England

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Johnny Dawes attempting ‘Lupino Lane’, Ravensheugh, England Pic by Nick Dixon

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Lupino Lane Lupino Lane is a problem climbed (or perhaps ﬂown) at Ravensheugh in the bouldering heartland of Northumberland. Lupino Lane was also a 1920’s silent ﬁlm star at the time of Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin. He was well known within his own world of the very best stunt actors for his remarkable acrobatics: one stunt - in a chase scene in a Mosque - involved running from the back of one policeman onto another’s shoulders then another’s head before running a loop over a Moorish arch. This is no ordinary problem either, being of little substance to the campus board clingers, but the dancer or gymnast would see beauty to perfection. The cliff bulges out, barrel shaped: hold-less brown grit until at 4 metres two good opposing holds exist. These can be held easily in opposition, pulling in, but each alone is close to useless. The crag sits high on a moor-top footed by a neat lawn of grass - the goalie’s spot. A line of large boulders run up to the left of the bulge. The problem is simple and starts 5 metres from the base of the cliff: one has to learn the position of the boulders and get used to running along their tops without looking at them. Then, while watching the only vertical foot pad, kick up at just the right speed to collect the two side-pulls simultaneously. It’s a long way though, and half-hearted efforts are rewarded with long falls back onto the lawn. The crux of the problem really rests in achieving a full speed run into the crag whilst only looking at the kicking smear, and a determined effort to collect both holds simultaneously (regardless of the chest impacts failure brings)...

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Nick Dixon

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Power Failure Now I could write about how I sent Powerband, I could pretend that it was easy and that, in the postascent afterglow, I felt capable of doing much harder problems…but that would spoil the story… …I emerged from the van at 7 am. It was cool, misty and the spectre of rain hung heavy in the air. If I was going to try to link Powerband then I’d better get moving. Four cups of espresso later I was swinging along the Weedkiller traverse, stretching my ﬁngers and feeling warm blood pumping through my muscles. It was now or never. I sat beneath the starting holds, spit-shining my shoes and visualizing each move. 102

I felt light but too connected. I needed to relax and enjoy the climbing, not intellectualise it. The first series of moves went well. I had difficulty getting my chubby fingers into one pocket but managed to keep moving. After a week of rain, this was my chance to make something of the holiday. The first crux comes after six moves, with a difficult drop-down from a large sloping pinch to a two-finger edge. I snatched at the edge and barely held it. ‘Lucky’ was all I thought as I frantically matched and lunged left. After a few more moves I reached a large slot. Fitter climbers would recover on this hold, but I was almost spent. Despite its generous size, my fingers were sliding out of the slot – I had to do something, fast! I committed to the last, and hardest, move - a powerful reach from a shallow two-finger pocket. As I lifted my feet onto the small polished footholds, my body began to sag. ‘NO’ my mind screamed as I fought waning body tension. It was too little, too late. My fingers exploded from the pocket and I collapsed in the dirt beneath the finishing holds. I had failed. A week of rain, mud and night prowlers had taken its toll and I had nothing left… From ‘A Week in the Peak’ by John Palmer

John Palmer on Powerband, 7c, Raven Tor Pic David Woodman

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Jon Barton on ‘New Jerusalem’ V7 Caley, England Pic by Niall Grimes

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Understanding Then in a moment of clarity, I realised why I like trying hard problems. It’s the intimacy. The closer you get to the threshold of what you can do, the more diamond sharp everything must be; it’s like you have to get inside the rock as well as yourself, and see how it thinks. To learn to look, and look ever harder, at yourself, the rock, and everything around that effects the moves. To get the map drawn perfectly and then learn it so well that you can follow it without thinking for only then will the journey continue. Time passed. Not that I noticed, but it did. Trying, examining, holding, imagining, chalking, resting, trying. Then as I lay on the mat, I realised I had become hyper aware of resonant plinking of water dripping from a height; of the removed drone of a distant car engine, of my breathing, a raven’s despairing caw. For one moment the world and everything in it was pure magic and an incandescent thrill passed through me. For that instant everything had been experienced instead of just sensed, a feeling immediately unreconstructable, dissolving words and descriptions in its intensity. Only the memory remained that for one moment, you had it all, whatever it was.

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I lay in its afterglow, feeling so much the world I was in. I felt each drop of airborne moisture collide with my skin, every breath of breeze. I heard buds swelling on the trees and smelled the decay of undergrowth. Felt the passage of blood in my veins, my hair growing and knew every ﬁbre in every muscle. The world was at peace and everything was worthwhile. Contented, I was as happy to try the problem as not to try it, as good to do it as not do it. I randomly pulled onto the undercuts, moved up past slopers, and as I moved effortlessly past the pocket I counted every grain in the rock, and knew somehow that something had been understood. From ‘The Medium’ by Niall Grimes

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Sanction To sum up my feelings on technique in bouldering I would say that a good way to approach a hard boulder problem is not to battle with it and crush it with brute strength, but rather to listen to what movements it is looking for and then agree that it is right! If you haven’t got to the top yet, you just haven’t listened fully or openly yet. So a boulder ascent need never feel like a war, but only an effort to truly understand what it is asking of you. With this attitude, the right conditions are set up to move from an elementary understanding of choosing movements, to a higher level of discovering movement secrets that really become the high leverage points as you approach the limits of your physical capability.

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The hardest part of the process when you are trying a problem is when you feel very close. The temptation to inwardly decide that you have broken the back of the problem is very strong. If the climbing is close to your limit, then this is where the boulder will turn around and put you back in your place. The learning is not over until you have done the link. A trivial move on short links can become your nemesis on the whole link if you don’t give it the respect it deserves. During my efforts to climb ‘Sanction’, the central moves in the roof kept me confused for two seasons. The holds were there, and I knew there was a way, I just hadn’t found it yet. When I eventually cracked the movement code to bring my feet out from that heelhook, I thought the top moves that I’d done two years ago would just come together. They didn’t! It had to get to the stage where the once impossible crux moves ﬂowed with effortless ease before I had enough left for that brutal throw at the lip that seemed so straightforward on its own. Now that I write it down with hindsight it seems so obvious, but every good boulderer I know has been kept longer than need be by problems with the hidden ‘redpoint crux’. Dave MacLeod

Dave MacLeod at Dumbarton, Scotland Pic by John Watson

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Bernd Zangerl moving through a Hueco tanks roof Pic by Sandra Studer

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Fluid Bouldering is a very dynamic and powerful style of climbing. Bouldering is about performing acrobatic moves requiring full concentration and attention. When the mind and body find the perfect balance, then the movement becomes fluid… Bouldering is also a game. Finding a solution to a boulder problem could be compared to finding a solution in a chess match. Nature, the rock, sets the problem that we attempt to understand. One has to learn how to find a solution, decode it, and try it over and over again. Sometimes I try for weeks, months or even years to succeed on a single move. These are my “visions” for the future. With these problems I am not sure whether they are possible… You have two holds above you. One meter above is another hold in an otherwise blank wall. You just try everything, spending hours under the “desired object”. In my head everything just revolves around: ‘How can I climb this?’

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Every so often I dream of the problem. The next day I drive to it and try out what I dreamed. Naturally it is usually just the tiniest of changes that have stopped my progress on a problem. It could be for instance just angling a foot slightly different or bringing my body a few centimetres closer to the rock. That’s bouldering. Sometimes the amount of tries in a day are very limited. My strength is gone within four or ﬁve tries. With many of the difﬁcult problems the holds are so small and so sharp that the skin is worn through after a couple of tries. Fingertips are all dented in. Then you have to wait until the skin has recovered and try again later. With Sport-climbing it is often possible to do a move in various combinations, where in bouldering there is often just one solution. Bernd Zangerl

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The Mattress People Last week I left my job in DC and hit the road for a new life in Denver. If DC is good for anything, it’s people watching, and I have begun to think of myself as an amateur anthropologist. I decided that during my short break between jobs, I would travel some and do an anthropological study, perhaps study something new and make a contribution to the field. I had heard rumors of a rare and endangered culture of Mattress People living in the Rio Grande Valley in West Texas. So I packed up my car and hit the road. I made first contact with the Mattress People on Wednesday night and convinced them to take me to their holy land, a place they call “Way-co”, although the signs all said “Hueco Tanks State Park”. We spent our first day on North Mountain, where I first observed their habit of hanging from the underside of rocks. I found this to be odd, as often they would crouch down to get under the rocks and crawl as far back as they could go before hanging from the underside, and with great effort working their way back out to where they were standing earlier. When we were hanging from this one, my guide kept saying: No One Here Gets Out Alive but we all survived just fine.

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After that, I decided to actually climb to the top of something. That was fun, but from an anthropological study standpoint, I really needed to spend some more time immersing myself in the regular practices of the people I was studying. In this case, it was referred to as 100 Proof Roof. Although I could see the roof, there was no booze to be found. The next day it rained, which forced the mattress people into an odd dormant cycle, where they stayed in their homes and did very little. Their time was generally spent inspecting their hands, not grooming, and on occasion, drinking beer The following two days were spectacular, mid 50’s and sunny. As a result, many more Mattress People joined us. We tried some more of the very difﬁcult upside-downy things that we found in caves where I gather the ancestors of the Mattress People used to live. The Mattress People seemed to have an obsession with blenders, I can only surmise that this is simply a modern version of the depressions their ancestors made when grinding grains. This particular cave had no depressions like that, but was still referred to as Alf in a Blender. I had a lot of trouble, and paid dearly for my failures by falling 18 inches to the ground. This native Mattress Man had far less trouble and in fact made it all the way to the outside of the cave before stepping off and swearing a lot. This guy was trying so hard his eyeballs nearly popped out. I did manage to climb more tall things too, where the consequence of failure was a bit more than 18 inches. I was beginning to get the feel for the very steep things they were doing, and tried a few myself, which earned me the approval of the Mattress People. This one was called That Hi-Pro-Glow, but after cratering several times before succeeding, I did not feel like much of a pro. Despite the fatigue and hands that looked like I had been carrying around a belt sander by the wrong end, I really started to feel connected to the Mattress People and their home. It was as if I had truly discovered a New Religion. I took one last shot of the West Mountain and waved goodbye to Hueco Tanks. I left the Mattress People with many thanks and a promise to return. Perhaps after doing about 10,000 crunches to get ﬁt for all this steep foolishness. I’ll start tomorrow... Matt Burns

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Nuno Monteiro on ‘Alf in a Blender’ Hueco Tanks Pic by Matt Burns

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Bernd Zangerl at Avers - Pic by Beat Kammerlander

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Chicken & Egg Story In the 1960’s and 70’s John Gill created the B grade system of grading boulder problems. This has since been superseded by more extensive numerical systems, but what is interesting is that he used the difference between bouldering and traditional climbing as his stepping-off point. “B1 would correspond to a move or short sequence at the leading edge of traditional climbing. At the time this was about 5.10. B2 would describe a move or short sequence that was, by consensus, harder than what was found in traditional routes ie. a bouldering class move. And B3 would be awarded to a problem that was, at least for a short time, an eliminate – having only one ascent, though tried by experts. Naturally, B3’s downgraded as time passed. As traditional climbs became harder, the whole system would shift accordingly.” This was an admirable attempt to maintain a running consensus and is seductive to those of us who prefer a little ‘width’ in our grades (or something that is kinder to age and physical withering!), but it seems modern boulderers prefer an unending ﬁxed system where there will always be something to ‘upgrade’, rather than always problems to ‘downgrade’ as in the B system. The problem with the open-ended system is where will it naturally end? V15, V20...?

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The problem here, as oft-quoted on the forums when a new ‘hardest problem’ appears from the ether, is that extended boulder problems simply become routes and the grades collide with one another headon leaving only confusion. When does a boulder problem become a route? And how are routes limited (merely by rope-length – who’s to say we won’t have 200 metre silk ropes in future?) This is the classic ‘chicken and egg’ paradox for climbers. Only time will tell what will become fashionable. Just as in the hundred metres sprint, we can expect world records in bouldering (highest grades) to become narrower and narrower, with only ‘hundredths of seconds’ between grades. Of course, there will be natural limits that may one day be broken by drugs, technology (Genetic Modiﬁcation?) or even evolution (boulderer born with prehensile tail accused as cheat!).

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The Magicianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hat

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Of course, levels of climbing ability change through the various generations and it is important to us that there is always at least the illusion of change. Each boulderer is born a child of their own time, working with the current limits and exploring the boundaries as they ďŹ nd them... this is just where the new happens, where technique and time combine to produce what to the bemused audience seems indistinguishable from magic. No-one really vanishes in the wooden box, no-one really disappears into thin air, it is all skill and machinery which makes magic. It just takes hard work to break down boundaries and collectively that is what bouldering has done to climbing, constantly raising the bar, or at least putting on a good show. It is human nature not to accept limits and so we should not be surprised, though we often gasp with delight and inspired disbelief, when someone pulls a bouldering rabbit out of the hat...

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Klem Loskot bouldering Pic by Andi Hechenberger

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Bouldering in South Africa Pic Zangerl Collection

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Hampi - D Pic by Glo

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Hampi - David Balcells on the Rishimuck plateau Pic by Gloria Viadiu

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Dominic Kehoe on Rouseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wall, Carrock Fell, England Pic John Watson

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Angela Riba on the Iron Man Traverse (V4). Buttermilks Pic by Vincenc Guinart

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Joerg Zeidelhack bouldering in the Quantum Field, Castle Hill, New Zealand Pic by Mark Watson

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King Tut (V3). Buttermilks. Pic by Vicenc Guinart, Balcells Collection

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Bouldering at Albarracin, Spain Pic by Sandra Spence

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Matt Burns on ‘Slim Pickens’, Hueco Tanks Pic by Nuno Monteiro

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The mighty Bowderstone, Lake District, England

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Bob Ewen on ‘Science Friction’, Apremont, Fontainebleau Pic by Tim Morozzo

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Bernd Zangerl on Slashface, Hueco Tanks Pic by Sandra Studer

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FUTURISTIC

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o Tanks

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Futuristic

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It is strange how boulderers claim that a cutting-edge problem is ‘futuristic’. What they mean, despite the fact that the problem has paradoxically occurred in the present, is that the climbing represents a clairvoyant vision of standards in the future – it is a kind of faith in an endless progression towards some truly futuristic climbing impossibility… and this particular climb by this boulderer has somehow time-warped into the present, such is the jaw-dropping improbability it could be climbed. It is as if we had been given an example of a God at play, or some higher alien bouldering intelligence is visiting for the day, but despite the evidence we still ﬁnd it indistinguishable from magic. Will this always be the case, or will boulderers hit a glass ceiling of possibility and will grades simply accordion into a raucous symphony of meaninglessness?

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Bernd Zangerl in South Africa Pic Zangerl Collection

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Parenthèse – Something New I’ve been trying the same problem for three years now and the closer I get to doing it, the more success seems to elude me. Is it the promise of a new level of difficulty, is it the incredible line? As usual, I can not explain what it is that gets hold of me and gives me the irresistible urge to climb that problem. Is today yesterday or tomorrow? The sense of time evaporates; I’m totally absorbed in the challenge posed by this boulder. This morning, here I am again at the bottom, each move indelibly burned into my consciousness by my desire. “I should have done this thing at least 10 times by now!” I’m in a dream now and as soon as I start moving I feel the strength coursing through me, filling me with a gentle warmth. There is no doubt any more, just happiness when I look at the line and joy at trying to reach that magic state you only achieve when you are finally ready to do a problem, where everything feels easy. As soon as I do the opening moves it all feels easy and I enter another dimension. I have the strange sensation of watching myself attempt the problem. Like a wisp of smoke, weight no longer exists and I float like a butterfly, beyond the reach of gravity.

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The moment I’m up I begin to feel regret at reaching the end of this particular story because I know that success has erased the doubts that made me feel so alive during my attempts. A number, a signature and, for me, the picture is already fading. It is up to others now to come along and try it and to decide if it is going to be a new masterpiece in our gallery of classics or if it is to be consigned to oblivion. Whatever happens, nothing can take away the experience I have been through and now leaves me feeling a little empty. So what’s new then? Just that little alarm bell that rings insistently inside me, reminding me that maybe today is the day when I will do that new problem, that it is time to go climbing. Happy in the end that I have turned my dreams into reality and that the story can now continue. Maybe the story will never end? The rock still has not given up all its secrets. I still feel the same hunger as in the early days, the same surge of excitement when I set off bouldering – what a beautiful madness! Jacky Godoffe

Jacky Godoffe on What’s Up at Fontainebleau Pic Godoffe collection

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The True Nature of Difﬁculty Many older climbers tend to view bouldering more as a personal challenge, a path of accomplishment - of enlightenment even - than as a formal competitive sport with international rankings. They are concerned with personal progress and skills and perhaps use the V-scale as a convenient (though inconsistent) measure, and experience bouldering as a life-style, not merely an athletic competition. The meaning of bouldering is a function of commitment, and can never be adequately articulated. But intensity, total involvement, and challenge premised on difﬁculty are usually parts of the personal equation, as is some degree of exploration.

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And what is the true nature of difficulty? Can there really be a uniform code describing it? Does it exist in some abstract, objective way? If so, can you distinguish where genetics ends and difficulty begins? As the pool of bouldering athletes grows those at the far right end of the bell curve are more genetically appropriate for the sport, and what was once perceived as very difficult simply doesn’t seem all that hard for them. Climbers now warm up on 5.10 – the top grade in the late 1950s. Furthermore, apart from genetics there is a phenomenon seen frequently in educational circles: the power of expectations. Each act of climbing is an individual act, unrelated to someone else’s performance. There is no single “climb”. When you truly understand this, you free yourself from the strong currents of mainstream practice and philosophy and appreciate the simple, unexploited experience of controlled movement on rock. Nevertheless, bouldering – in its current guise - is exciting and enormously energizing, and it compels us to be the best we can be - regardless of numbers or letters or what others are capable of. It’s personal and deeply rewarding… John Gill

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John Gill, Pueblo Colorado, Fatted Calf dyno mid 1970â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pic: Gill Collection

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Space Baba, Hampi Pic David Balcells Collection

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Discovery I have a problem with newly discovered bouldering venues, wherever they might be. It is a fundamental dichotomy of emotions, a win/lose dynamic, one for the karma mechanic to ponder. The doubts kick in after completing a new problem that I deem to be hard, or good, and thus worthy of attention. The mental turmoil is born of insecurity, compounded by my childish desire for recognition and approval and yet modiﬁed by my inherent selﬁshness. Inevitably, the ego comes stabbing through, and I accord my ‘discovery’ more importance than it actually merits. It is me that requires the attention, not the boulder problem. Sometimes I am so arrogant and deluded that I use my bouldering as a metaphor for all that is pure and real and true in life, when in fact it is merely the act of doing small things in big places.

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Tim Carruthers

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C’était demain The name of my ﬁrst major new problem was C’était demain (Once Upon Tomorrow) - a name that, for me, sums up perfectly what bouldering is all about: a continuum stretching between a past created by others, which helps shape your identity, and a future that you help to construct for the next generation. If it is romantic nonsense to view the rock as a living thing, then how can we explain the incredible importance it assumes in our lives?

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Time and time again, we are seized by that sudden irresistible compulsion: we see a boulder and we are left with no choice other than to go and climb it. Maybe it is a remnant of our childhood; that impulse to attempt the forbidden, to climb onto the sofa or the wardrobe even though you know you will end up getting a hiding. The rock helps us to overcome boundaries; our personal limits, sometimes absolute limits, but also the boundaries of language and culture, and even the boundaries of time. Over more than a century of climbing here in Fontainebleau, generations of climbers have created problems that have existed outside time. I am always amazed when I climb a classic problem, first done so long ago. It is a wonderful way to travel back in time. You can imagine yourself in the role of the pioneers, who set down the rules of the games we all know so well. Sitting starts, scary highball problems, traverses, classic problems…. For me, climbing has always been a unique force for uniting people around a shared passion. Pacifist, free and ultimately human, in our profit-hungry world. Jacky Godoffe

Bouldering on Echo Rock, Polldoo, Ireland Pic Dave Flanagan Collection

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Ireland

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Modern Bouldering With the advent of indoor training walls and a growing popularity across the globe, the late 80’s and the 1990’s saw another leap in standards and a plethora of new bouldering venues across the planet. Climbers became aware of names such as ‘Cresciano’, ‘Hueco Tanks’, ‘Bishop’ and bouldering decided to see how far it could go in the realms of the possible. In England, the outré but talented Jerry Moffatt climbed Superman (Font 8a+) at Cressbrook in 1988 (a limestone venue which gave its name to overhung training boards), the hardest moves in a British scene then obsessed with sport climbing and physical training. It seemed the eighth grade would go the same way as the seventh grade… Jerry Moffatt crossed the water in 1993 and Yosemite’s Camp 4 suddenly had a new testpiece: Dominator (V12/13), the same year saw Jacky Godoffe levitate higher with Fatman (Font 8b) at Cuvier Rempart. Mal Smith climbed Leviathan at Kyloe-In (Font 8b+) in 1994, in 1997 we had Klem Loskot’s Berchtesgaden Nanuk (Font 8b+) and Werner Thon’s Frankenjura Zerberus (Font 8b+), Fred Nicole kept raising the bar as well (Slashface, Font 8b+, Hueco Tanks, USA 1998). Other boulderers were beginning to reach these levels and the ‘impossible’ grades kept falling…inevitably the ﬁrst Font 8c was climbed in 2000 as Fred Nicole linked the clean desperation of Dreamtime at Cresciano, Switzerland. Sport climbing and bouldering grades moved closer together with ‘extended’ boulder problems such as The Wheel of Life by Dai Koyamada, in the Grampian mountains of Australia…an awesome achievement and given V16, but raising the old chicken and egg question as to where a boulder problem ends and a route begins! Now we live in a world of condensing possibilities and repeats of such hard problems are relatively commonplace, though the arguments are louder and more extended, and the boulderers simply want to boulder more and more...will it ever end?

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New Zealand bouldering Pic Mark Watson collection

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Bigger & Bolder At the top level, future bouldering will really be all action. Moves and sequences will be go! go! go! No stopping to recover or chalk up – the hardest problems will be far too sustained for resting on, even a flick of the wrist. If you take a stroll around Cresciano and look at the hardest problems of 2007, the first thing that occurs is that they have ‘real’ holds! Incuts, even the odd heelhooking jug. But in between there are boulders with features all the way, but nothing incut and nothing to recuperate on. Being more of a brute will only be part of the story. Today’s boulders can be cracked by being a mutant in just one of the elements – strength, fitness, body awareness tactics and bottomless determination. In the future you will need more of all the ingredients, not just the ones that come naturally to you. 144

In the ﬁeld of exploratory bouldering, there is so much work still to be done to fully realise the potential of the places we have found already. The past ﬁve years have been a blizzard of new places to boulder – too many to visit or even to have heard about. The fact is, that wherever you are on the planet, there is almost certainly good bouldering not too far away. And wherever there is bouldering, even the most popular venues have new lines to discover. Anyone who has been climbing long enough to see venues develop over more than one decade will know that it takes many waves of activity for boulders to get clean and for people to see and realise all the lines on offer. Future bouldering still holds many discoveries right under our noses.I also reckon that boulder problems will get bigger and bolder as mats get chunkier! Big bouldering is a good thing! In every area, bouldering is still so young. Dave MacLeod

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Barbara Zangerl highballing it in South Africa Pic Zangerl Collection

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The Ape and the Monolith ‘Scholar Stones’, they are called by Zen Monks, ‘Teaching Rocks’ by the Algonquian tribes of Canada… boulders or ‘blocs’ to us: inanimate lumps of geology that somehow contain everything we want to know about climbing and everything we haven’t yet experienced. We will spend more time dreaming about a boulder or boulder problem than actually climbing it. We wake in gutted consciousness sometimes, having woken to gravity, when in R.E.M. sleep we were ﬂoating blithely up the crux, breezing through it like we were on the moon, reaching into the heart of the rock and tearing out this amazing anti-gravity. Lying there in the dark you feel a kind of vertigo without height, you lie there feeling your weight and cursing it, but slightly excited about a possible sequence you hadn’t tried, that will do it…up early, coffee, get the kit together, out the door, phone a sickey, drive like a 2am joy-rider to the boulders… all just to stand there again, under the rock. In this attitude, upwards-gazing confounded, boulderers remind us of the famous scene of the ape touching the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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A Perfect State of Mind

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In sports climbing there’s usually time to think - the climber can analyze very easily what he’s doing next. In the crux sequences it’s also required of you just to let it go, ‘turn off’ your head, but as soon as you have a bigger hold the focus is no longer needed and you can relax again. Bouldering is different - if you cut off your internal dialogue then you have reached the perfect state of mind… and on very high grade boulder problems the movement patterns are extremely complex so there is no time left to think, you have to give every possible resource you have just to stay on the rock. To analyze a boulder problem: it can be compared to learning to dance, everybody can relate to that. When you start dancing everything feels difﬁcult and cumbersome, constantly thinking, but after some time and practice, yeah, you can dance, and this is the same for bouldering at the limit – every move is trained and tried to perfection and after some time everything is in your subconsciousness and you’re doing the move without thinking. When you are really at the limit, there is no time left to think, you’re climbing like in a transcendental state and suddenly you are at the top of the boulder, at the top of the world…and you have no idea how you got there… Bernd Zangerl

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Bernd Zangerl seeking perfection in South Africa

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Silent Hunter A long time ago people went hunting to survive. Today, people are hunting to feed their soul. Some people are hunting money, some are hunting science, some are hunting women and some are hunting the time of their life. It’s something natural, it’s modern hunting - to be out in the woods, in the ocean, in the desert, or in the mountains with friends… feeling like animals and having fun, that’s my way of modern hunting… When I was young, I was a hunter… every day as much as possible…the older I got I think it was more silent the way I was hunting … silent hunting for me means being a little like an animal, a bird? You just do what you want to do, totally free, I think we are all more primitive than we always pretend to be…it’s the rock that you’re looking for, what you’re searching for… when you get to these two holds and you look to the holds that you have to go to… ﬁnd something that you really want to have, like a real hunter, and then be very cunning to get it…

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Klem Loskot

Klem Loskot boulder hunting Pic by Andi Hechenberger

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Mutations

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Maybe bouldering will vanish altogether, or mutate into something else. We only have to look at its youngest cousin ‘parkour’ (‘free-running’) to see that running and leaping between buildings in a city or run-down suburb is just as invigorating and creative as the best bouldering problems. It is all about movement and gravity, escaping our bounds, ﬁnding the child-like response to physical barriers. The comparison is not unjust as both parkour and bouldering have anarchist tendencies and refuse the misnomer of ‘sport’. They are more lifestyles. Clothing, logos and the accoutrements of freedom (the maligned ‘hoodie’) abound as statements of separation. We can suspect, due to the natural freedom and anarchism inherent in bouldering as a ‘sport’, due to its mostly natural playground of the planet’s rocks, exploration and adventure will become more important than busting grades. The boulder over the hill is always more attractive than the project with the broken hold. The future for bouldering then is rosy and we need not concern ourselves with grades at all. In fact, this is not where bouldering really gets its momentum from at all. As Pat Ament says… it is the wind in the pines, or the sunlight on the stone… pure inspiration needs to be valued more than anything else. And all you need for that is a fair-weather day and good-looking stone.

‘Earthshaker’, Reiff, Scotland

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Brick-edge Cruiser “Going anywhere this summer?” enquired the brick-edge cruiser. A question well put. The whimpering white chalk haze which might just conceivably have been going somewhere this time hit the deck again. “Dhaulagiri,” said I. “Where’s that?” asked the youth, now revolving effortlessly around a finger nail before poising, purring. Again, a good question. In Nepal, judging by the postmark on the card. At least it had been when I first met it courtesy of the Reprint Society’s rendering of Herzog’s classic, Annapurna, via my mum’s bookshelf. “Near Annapurna.” The instant look of non-recognition spoke for itself. I qualified the statement, broadened the base. “In the Himalayas.” The lad switched into a perfect crucifix from opposing finger locks. Orgasmic eyes eyed bulging muscles until the pump gave. A neat one arm pull up landed him on the balcony. He looked down with disdain. “Near Bolton is it?” he said, heading for the weights.

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Alex McIntyre

Jon Ratcliffe on ‘Ain’t no party...’ V7, Great Orme, Wales. Pic by Richie Betts

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‘The Return Home’ Pic by Fraser Harle

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Joy ‘...boulder problems proceed from the joy which exists in the hearts of those who love mountains and think of them often’ 158

H. Courtney Bryson

Pic courtesy of Mark Watson

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Credit, respect and thanks to all who helped build this book... Sandra Spence Tim Morozzo Bernd Zangerl Niall Grimes Beat Kammerlander Radec Kapec Sandra Studer Mark Watson David Balcells Pat Ament John Gill Nick Dixon Uli Loskot Klem Loskot Simon Panton Tim Carruthers Sue Tyson Dave MacLeod Bill Serniuk Jacky Godoffe John Palmer David Woodman Tom Charles Edwards Fraser Harle Alan Donald Geoff Dyer David Craig Dave Flanagan Tim Bonner (translation) Tom Charles Edwards Matt Burns Richie Betts

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Cover Shots: Front: Bernd Zangerl exploring new granite Pic by Radec Kapec Rear: Dave MacLeod on ‘Pressure’ Dumbarton Rock Pic by John Watson

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