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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Jan 17, 2012 - 08:52am PT
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"come all ye young geezers ..."
okay, okay. the big question is how-hard-how-old? reading between ST lines, i'd say donini is probably the leader here. he was put together with a lot of wire, and that's important. i climbed with bob kamps, another well-wired one, shortly before he passed on and he led a l'il old 10b at williamson--"wanted to take it easy" that day, he said.
i'm far from my 70s, and when i do a 5.10, i usually pay for it with a week of soreness and nearly pulled tendons. ya gotta watch it. that snap-crackle-pop won't be rice crispies.
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Vulcan
Sport climber
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Jan 17, 2012 - 11:02am PT
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"Brute" seems a little harsh.
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Curt
Boulder climber
Gilbert, AZ
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Jan 17, 2012 - 11:44am PT
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Hey klk, it's prime bouldering season here right now!!!
Curt
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jan 17, 2012 - 02:43pm PT
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I can't hold that straddle-lever for anything like ten seconds. Five seconds is about the best I can manage, and I do have a way of speeding up the count as I near total hydraulic failure.
Those Ghost pants just bit the dust; fabric literally disintegrated---hopefully not a metaphor for the body they were covering...
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Jan 18, 2012 - 02:09am PT
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There are lots of people who climb very well
at relative old age, people we don't hear of much,
and others could do it if they wanted but have
done enough in their lives, climbingwise at least,
to be satisfied. Others, well, it only takes a
small injury to end the hard stuff, a badly torn
tendon, a shoulder... It's all relative. I have
adhesive capsulitis in both shoulders. I wish you
could see what that feels like and see if doing 5.6
isn't more like 5.11. Rich, how hard was that route
I did in the Gunks? 5.8? I had to climb the faces
between the horizontal ledges, because I couldn't
pull down from an extended-arm reach... I remember
Fritz Wiessner climbed Nutcracker in 1967 with Royal,
Rearick, Roper, Chouinard, and me, and I think we
were celebrating his... 60th or 65th birthday... and
he was in big clunker mountain boots and had an easy
time even of that mantel at the top....
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PBockenthien
Boulder climber
Lakewood, CO
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Jan 25, 2012 - 11:55am PT
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I find the straddle is actually a lot more practical. Just as one rarely ever finds the need for a direct overhead pullup, feet straight out isn't required.
Granted John used to do one-finger, one arm semi-front-lever pullups
@Patrick - thanks for sharing those stories about JG, RB and others. I was just a kid starting out and always wanted to know about the Colorado bouldering/climbing scene.
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pk_davidson
Trad climber
Albuquerque, NM
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Jan 25, 2012 - 04:32pm PT
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bump for JG
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Jan 26, 2012 - 05:12am PT
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All those tough guys in the East, Goldstone, Jim McCarthy,
Kevin Bein, Dick Williams... leaned how to do solid front
levers. I didn't even know what such a thing was until Rich
showed me his in Colorado in '65. They all seemed to know
how to do one-arm pullups as well, a hard core (corp) of
climbers.
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BooshBoosh
climber
El Portal, CA
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Jan 26, 2012 - 12:29pm PT
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JGill is an American hero
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jan 26, 2012 - 11:10pm PT
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All those tough guys in the East, Goldstone, Jim McCarthy,
Kevin Bein, Dick Williams... leaned how to do solid front
levers. I didn't even know what such a thing was until Rich
showed me his in Colorado in '65. They all seemed to know
how to do one-arm pullups as well, a hard core (corp) of
climbers.
This is what happens when the winters are long, ice climbing hasn't really happened, and climbing gyms hadn't been invented yet. We were lucky in a way; the West Side Y in NYC had gymnastic equipment and a high rope-climbing rope out and available to anyone. Nowadays liability concerns would probably make it a real hassle to use that kind of stuff.
We each had our circus strongman specialties. Kevin was the only one who was really solid at iron crosses. He did L-crosses too and could pull into them straight-armed. McCarthy was the king of weird hand-balancing tricks, especially repetition tiger bends (presses from forearm stand to handstand and back down). Williams was the duke of high-angle handbalancing, doing precarious handstands on top of all manner of exposed summits. I was the rope specialist, doing sequential one-arm pullups up the rope. We all did front levers, handstand presses, muscleups, and a bit of tumbling.
Every now and then we went climbing, but mostly we were too tired out from exercising to do anything else. Periodically, we'd take our muscles out to Yosemite and get totally shut down on 5.10 offwidth (but not before we pried those effin slippery slots open and inch or two, dammit). The natives were kind and dragged us up many things we wouldn't have managed otherwise.
In spite of our obvious incompetence, we convinced many people that being a circus strongman would be good for their climbing, and so what Warren Harding called the Camp 4 Olympic Training Village was born, providing generations of climbers with exciting new opportunities to rip tendons off their insertion points.
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go-B
climber
Habakkuk 3:19 Sozo
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Jan 26, 2012 - 11:16pm PT
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I wish I could have done one of those in High School!
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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I think this guy wins the front-lever contest.
The still is at 2:20 in the following video: http://vimeo.com/36429174.
We'll have to wait and see what he can do at 70.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Feb 10, 2012 - 12:05am PT
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Very impressive master ice climber! Question: does ice climbing or mixed climbing with those tools require more muscular strength than rock climbing? Seems like it's more fingertip, light weight stuff on the rock. But I've been out of the game for years. Are female ice climbers more muscular than typical female rock climbers?
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Nov 11, 2013 - 08:12pm PT
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Surprised to see this pop up again. Here's what the old guy does these days: Old Man
;>)
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Brunosafari
Boulder climber
OR
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Nov 11, 2013 - 08:34pm PT
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That looks like a fantastic quality apparatus, JGill, my favorite configuration too since grade 5. The magnificent rare footage of bouldering speaks for itself. You have been a lifelong inspiration. Thank you from myself and Everybody. I will look into getting a set of bars and anybody else with a brain should do the same. -Bruce Adams
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Malbrouck
climber
Houston, TX
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Nov 11, 2013 - 09:38pm PT
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That was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. I'm 41 and I can't do what you're doing. I'm not sure I could have done it when I was 31.
You have inspired me beyond words. It's time to get serious.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Nov 11, 2013 - 09:59pm PT
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John-
OK, you've re-inspired me to get back on my (much needed) weight loss program!
Rodger
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Nov 12, 2013 - 12:15am PT
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Cool stuff John! Way to hang in there (as the saying goes).
Did you just buy one of those ladder thingies for your back yard? It doesn't look like the usual playground milieu...
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Blakey
Trad climber
Sierra Vista
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Nov 12, 2013 - 03:56am PT
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John,
Thanks for posting up that footage - I'd only ever seen photos of
you climbing, in which you always looked very 'static'.
Equally interesting is how you managed to do those problems in such crappy footwear - now I know ;-)
More seriously, even over here (the UK) you were an inspirational if not mythical figure in the 70s and 80s. No less so now!
Chapeau!
Steve
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