Bouldering as life art
This book is the first edition of Pat Ament's biography of John Gill, which has been reissued twice after. For me, it is the most beautiful, both for the quality of paper and hardcover, and for its proximity with the subject itself, been contemporaneous of the acme of John Gill as a boulderer. This teacher of mathematics in Colorado invented really an art unknown yet : climbing short routes (of 20 yards maximum) as a speciality, with a gymnast approach typified by the 'dynos' (high dynamics moves, allowing to jump in an aerial way from one hold to very distant others. If you know John Gill was able to do when training the inverted cross at the rings, the one arm front lever at an horizontal bar and one arm pull-ups with lest, you may figure what burst into the landscape he made when applying these outstanding aptitudes to bouldering from the end of the 50'. His route of late 50' on the 'Thimble', in the Needles of South Dakota, and his notorious dynamic route of 'Red Cross Rock, the Center' in the Tetons, aside with his very bold 'Left side of the Eliminator' - the dynamic way - at Horse Tooth Reservoir near Fort Collins, stay here as feats which then were extraterrestrial for the climbing scene and are still extremely demanding routes whose repetitions may be counted on the fingers of a single hand. The number of black and white picts showing John Gill in action, the interviews of his contemporaries who could not believe what they saw actually and the inspired text of Pat Ament, a notorious boulderer himself who was really 'pissed of' when realizing Gill's outstanding performances before becoming a close friend - all that blends together to deliver a magic, the aroma of an epoch when there were gods still walking in between human beings.
