The Thimble - John Gill

In the spring of 1961, he did the first ascent of the daunting Thimble route. The Thimble, a 30-foot pinnacle, brought the first real fame to Gill. This sheer, extremely difficult ascent was completed without the use of a rope or any form of protection, completely solo, and risking a fall onto a parking lot guard-railing.

On an earlier visit to the Needles, in 1960, Gill had climbed the Thimble via another route(5.8?) that followed a faint groove on the left side of the actual overhanging wall. He later spotted a possible line of ascent up the steeper face to the right and scrambled up halfway up the groove route to look over at the holds on the bulging wall. It became apparent what sorts of moves he would be responsible for if he were willing to commit himself to the climb. He felt that it was time he do something more committin, with more of an element of risk, than the usual difficult but relatively safe boulder routes he enjoyed. The route of which he was thinking was not a suicide mission. There was a possible escape halfway up where he could, if necessary, move left to the easier groove of the original route.

With an image of this unclimbed, overhanging wall of the Thimble in his mind, he returned to Glasgow Air Force Base and started to devise ways, around the gym, in which to train for some of the moves that he anticipated doing on the Thimble. He squeezed nuts and bolts sticking out of the gym walls to prepare for the nubbins that he would have to squeeze high up on the Thimble. He could do seven regular one-arm pull-ups, three finger-tip one-arm pull-ups, and of course his one-finger/one-arm pull-up, and he continued to train at these.

The Thimble remained on his mind during the winter, and he returned to it on leaves from the base. His approach was to climb up and down the bottom half of the route until he had that much wired. Once or twice, he jumped from a respectable high point. He had developed skill at leaping down from high places, as related by Richard Goldstone in regard to a different climb:

"Gill jumped off from about twenty feet up and landed like a cat in the midst of jagged talus boulders."

At last Gill worked himself "into such a fevered pitch" on the Thimble route that he committed himself to the top portion of it and, as he admitted, "very fortunately made it."

Gill stated later in an interview, "You not only get psyched up but almost become hypnotized or mesmerized to the point where your mind goes blank, and you climb by well-cultivated instincts. You do it." John can't recall if a young airman named Higgins accompanied him on that culminating trip to the Needles. Higgins had certainly served as a spot for Gill at an earlier time on the Thimble.

At the top, knowing it was over, and in a world by himself, Gill felt "a peculiar absence of feeling." Little was said by him about the route, before or after. He did not brag.

In his day, Kurt was one of the best knob climbers' alive.

Also, apparently there is a route right of Gill's famous line, that is a bit steeper and harder. I am unaware if it's been bouldered. Anyone know?

. . . or sticky rubber

. . . short climb rather than a boulder problem

My most demanding effort was the 1961 rope-unrehearsed, free-solo FA of a particular line on the thirty foot high Thimble Overhang in the Needles. At the time I was a junior USAF officer stationed at Glasgow AFB in northeastern Montana. I made a number of trips down to the Black Hills from Glasgow, roaring along the highway in my 1957 Studebaker Power Hawk (which tended to overheat). On a couple of these excursions I was accompanied by a young airman from the base who was interested in learning to climb.

On several of these trips I ended my climbing day by bouldering on the lower part of my projected Thimble route - getting it wired - before I finally commited myself to the complete ascent. I had visualized this particular line while earlier climbing (essentially soloing) an easier route(5.9?) to the left of it, accompanied by Bill Woodruff. The obviously more severe route to the right became, in essence, a personal challenge to determine to what lengths I was willing to go as an exploratory solo climber. In retrospect it seems an insane aspiration and I am very lucky I didn't get wiped out in the process . However - and somewhat ironically - this ascent proved to be a turning point in the general recognition among the climbing community of my paradigm of bouldering - what has been called modern bouldering . Some see this as the first modern hi-ball problem, but to me it was a climb. ("When your feet are ten feet off the ground, you're climbing!" - Jim McCarthy, 1964, Tetons). At the time there was a wooden guardrail beneath the overhanging face, so that jumping off the upper half was no option. Even had it been, it would be thirty years before bouldering crashpads would appear.

When I am asked about its difficulty, I usually say that it seemed to be the hardest free-solo first ascent I've ever done. However, I found I had previously done boulder problems with moves on them quite a bit harder than those I encountered on the Thimble. I'm told it goes at a consensus V4 or 5.12a, maybe the first climb at that level, but with the nature of the Needles' granite, it might seem a bit easier or a bit harder to different climbers at different times, and making a short traversing step to the left would certainly make it easier. In the recent film, Friction Addiction (2003), a very talented young boulderer takes a long fall from the upper part of the problem. Pat Ament, in his climbing history book Wizards of Rock , says "This was likely the hardest short free climb in the world, at the time". During the 1970s the late Kevin Bein worked out a top-rope route between my route and the right edge of the overhang which was somewhat more demanding.


Here is Pete Williamson in the mid 1960s at the start of my route on the Thimble . I understand that the 2nd ascent (in the style of the 1st) was done about 1987. It's not known precisely how many such ascents have been made - John Sherman made one in 1991, and in 1993 the Japanese climbers Kusano Toshi and Tsuge Motomu recorded a solo ascent on video that displays an elegance and grace I certainly never felt!

But the Thimble is off the beaten track for contemporary boulderers, modest by current difficulty standards, and a little risky to boot, so you don't hear or see much about it these days. In addition, it's been climbed a number of times on top rope, which makes it a somewhat less attractive target for a serious modern climber/boulderer.

That was it for me. I found my personal risk limits - and I didn't want to approach them again. After the Thimble I came to realize that the personal appeal of solitary climbing was, specifically, the continuity of motion and disinvolvment with equipment . So, from then on I usually avoided demanding lines and focused on scrambles and easy ascents when I got pretty far off the deck.

what Gill taught me was the power and significance of the inner world.