Bouldering with Verm

On Friday, I had the pleasure of going out bouldering with John Sherman. If you're a boulderer and don't know who John Sherman is......well that's just sad. He created our grade scale after all! Come on!

Due a particular scathing blog post about roped cleaning and rehearsal, I decided to show him that even the new schoolers have balls, even if they are, in his opinion, smaller than his. Germ Free Adolescence is an absolutely CLASSIC boulder problem. As good as they come. Verm made the first ascent, ground up with no pads (of course) in 1980. So, I decided to try to flash the problem in similar style...

It was an honor to go bouldering with Verm, even if he doesn't spot you.

Spending the day talking with Verm gave me a renewed appreciation of our sport's past. Verm, along with John Gill, and Yvon Chouinard and others are living legends of our sport. We would NOT be where we are today if Gill had not applied the dynamic nature of gymnastics to rock, if Chouinard had not led the way in the clean climbing revolution, and if Sherman had not developed the grade scale we use to this day. If I were still wearing that ugly sun hat I wore in Bishop, it would be off to them.