The math professor who invented Silicon Valley’s favorite sport
My exchange with John Gill, the father of modern bouldering
Hallways had to be invented. Before the 16th century, multi-room buildings were arrayed without corridors, such that each room simply opened to the next.
Some features of the modern world are so ubiquitous, so commonplace, that it is particularly surprising and illustrative to realize what creativity and ingenuity went into bringing them about.
If you’ve ever been to a rock climbing gym even casually in the last 30 years, you will have encountered a category of climbing called bouldering. For climbers today, bouldering is like hallways. It’s obvious and it’s always been there. It is the most common and popular form of climbing. It’s all the technique and athleticism of rock climbing, but low enough to the ground that it’s safe to fall on pads; no ropes, harnesses, or other special gear is required. It’s the sport of choice for many of my ambitious tech founder clients, and no wonder: what better, faster way to nourish your builder’s mindset than to concentrate all your creative and physical powers on solving a short, intensely challenging “boulder problem”?
And yet: 60 years ago, bouldering did not exist. The entire sport of rock climbing was barely even a sport. Some people engaged in it, but they conceptualized it as something akin to “extreme hiking.” Just as with hallways, a small number of people, in this case one person in particular, had to rethink the sport; had to notice latent possibilities and think about them afresh, by analogy to things other than hiking; then had to work out the details, developing a new form of the activity.
This came into clearer focus for me as I listened to episode 4 of the Climbing Gold podcast co-hosted by Alex Honnold (whose legendary climbing feats you may recall from the movie Free Solo) and Fitz Cahall:
“Bouldering has become the most popular, the most accessible, the most athletic, the most pervasive form of climbing today. The essence of the sport gets distilled down into a few moves typically no higher than a single story building. It’s an incredible path into the sport because there’s no technical rope skills required… If you were to walk up to one of these [bouldering] areas on a busy weekend, you’d find people working out sequences of moves until perfection, dipping their hands into buckets of chalk, lunging dynamically for holds, cheering for each other with each tiny summit reached. It all seems so intuitive when you look at it. The dynamic movement, the chalk, the ‘practice makes perfect’ mentality.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that somebody actually invented all of that [emphasis added]. And the light bulb went off, not in Yosemite, but in an Intro to Gymnastics class in the 1950s, while a young freshman was fulfilling a PE requirement.”
That young freshman was John Gill, whom Alex and Fitz proceed to interview in the episode. Now 88 years old, Gill pioneered the art of bouldering back in the 50s by reconceptualizing rock climbing as an extension of gymnastics rather than hiking. He developed his then-radical approach to climbing while getting his undergraduate and advanced degrees in math, serving as a meteorologist for the U.S. Air Force, and spending the brunt of his career as a math professor.
Intrigued by his story and the transformative influence he has had on climbing, I reached out for an interview. He replied within hours, offering to answer my questions by email. Here is our (lightly redacted and annotated) exchange, followed by some reflections on what Gill’s story crystalizes about the builder’s mindset:
Me: In the decades before bouldering became mainstream, I understand you were viewed as somewhat of an anomaly in the climbing world. How did you relate to this fact, and how did you view your own role? Did you consciously view yourself as pioneering something important and new that ought to be adopted by other climbers, or did you view it more as a personal project, or something else?
Gill: I got used to being described as a “mere boulderer” and much later in life made a T-shirt with that written on it. I was introduced to climbing as a junior in high school in 1953 by a classmate who had learned the bare essentials at Cheley Camp in Estes Park the previous summer. There were no books or magazines on the subject available to me so I learned the sport pretty much on my own, scrambling around various rocks in Georgia. Then, after graduation, a friend and I drove to Colorado in August of 1954 and I scrambled solo up the east face of Longs Peak (you can hear me describe this on Alex Honnold’s Climbing Gold podcast episode 4). Thus, I was following a path common to neophyte climbers at the time. But that Fall I enrolled in a gymnastics class at Georgia Tech and my perception of climbing began to change. I no longer imagined the sport as an outgrowth of hiking, but began seeing it as an extension of gymnastics, and where better to exercise this perception than on boulders and small outcrops.
There seemed to be a huge disparity in pure strength between climbers and gymnasts, with rock climbers doing a few pushups while gymnasts were holding inverted crosses on the still rings. In a couple of years I put on 25 pounds of muscle and began doing moves on boulders that exceeded existing levels of difficulty, and doing them smoothly, like a gymnastic routine. I sensed I was fortunate to be at a formative stage in the evolution of climbing in America, and I clearly saw into a future in which bouldering’s growth was inevitable. At the same time I imagined the ultimate form of rock climbing as “free solo exploration”, and experimented with that approach to longer climbs until reaching my limits on the Thimble in 1961. [Gill famously climbed the Thimble, a steep 30-foot granite spire in the Needles of South Dakota, from the ground up and without a rope: a feat no one would be able to repeat for another 20 years. See “Reflections” below for some insight into how and why he did it.] A friend and executive director of the American Alpine Club, Jim McCarthy, encouraged me to write an article for the AAC Journal describing my vision of bouldering.
As an aside, I used to “boulder” on the campus of the U of Texas [where Gill noticed I am currently a faculty member] in 1958-59 where my dad was getting his PhD…. Also, during 1958-59, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Father of Flow, was a member of the small U of Chicago mountaineering club that drove to Devils Lake to climb. Flow during a bouldering “performance” was very important to me at the time, although this aspect of my vision failed to take root.
Me: You introduced things (chalk, dynamics, an early grading system) that were controversial or novel at the time. Did the controversy or pushback affect you? If so, how, and how did you deal with it?
Gill: Chalk was by far the most controversial. I bouldered with [Patagonia founder] Yvon Chouinard in the Tetons during the late 1950s – he coined the expression for bouldering, “Instant Suffering “ - and he chose not to use it, but he wasn’t particularly upset by its use. Others were more disturbed by it and must have let their strongest feelings out when I was not around. I don’t recall anyone confronting me about its use. So, I didn’t have to deal with it.
Me: Do you see yourself equally as a “mathematician” and a “climber”? Does one feel more fundamental than the other? Is the former your job and the latter your hobby, or how do you conceptualize it? How has this evolved across different stages of your life?
Gill: I was an only child and we moved about every two years or so. In high school I grew to over six feet, but weighed only 145 lbs. and was no athlete. Glee club and ROTC. This bothered me, but when I began climbing in 1953 I saw a path I could follow and build my personality and, hopefully, my physique. I didn’t see myself as a mathematician until leaving the Service and enrolling in grad school. I became a mathematician when I did original research and got my PhD in 1971. Thereafter, I was a math professor who had the avocation of climbing.
Me: Do you mention being an only child and moving every couple of years because these factors made it harder to build a stable personality / set of friends and interests, which you then saw a path to doing through climbing? Or am I misunderstanding the relevance of these early influences? Also: was there anything or anyone in particular that shaped your view of physical strength / fitness / “being an athlete” as positive traits to strive for? Was this a general cultural norm at the time, and/or did it partly have to do with romantic/dating goals, and/or were there particular athletes you admired, etc?
Gill: I think moving every couple of years made me more introverted and singular in my activities, so climbing seemed very attractive and had an exploratory element that appealed. The one person I really admired after learning about the sport was the Armenian gymnast Albert Azaryan. His performances on the still rings were inspiring. As for climbers, none come to mind, although I respected a number, including Royal Robbins. I was a year younger than my classmates and was envious of their physiques and burgeoning maturity. I needed a more muscular body, but wasn’t sure how to accomplish that. At first I thought climbing would do the trick, but when I saw how gymnastics developed the musculature I was entranced. At that time being tall was not an impediment. John Becker, the American champion, was six feet. These days one must be shorter for moves that are more difficult than before.
Me: How would you describe your dominant motivations for climbing, for doing your academic work, and for any other activities that have occupied significant portions of your life? What needs did each activity fulfill for you? Are there any needs you feel haven’t gotten fully met in your life, or not until later on?
Gill: Where is the overlap between mathematics and climbing? Exploration. I never enjoyed repeating something someone else had done first. I trudged through grad school, working on problems at the end of the chapter, but I didn’t come alive until I began exploring the unknown. As for bouldering, it gave a purpose to my life: advocating its acceptance as a legitimate sport. As a novice climber I was obsessed with what I saw as an ultimate form of the sport, Free Solo Exploration; and after finding my limits along that path I reduced the risk factor considerably, but continued the practice until a revelatory moment in the early 2000s that convinced me to retire from the sport.
Me: Anything you’d be willing to share about the specific nature of the “revelatory moment”? Did this have to do with your reflections in the “Climbing Gold” podcast episode about the injuries and spinal damage you accrued due to bouldering?
Gill: After 1987 I only did modest bouldering and moderate free solos. Exploratory rambles. There were several granite formations in Hardscrabble Canyon, not far from Pueblo, that I climbed over and over again for the pure exercise and flow. One was a pinnacle that stood high above the highway through the canyon and caught your eye when you drove. I had free soloed a highly exposed but modest route up its face years before, then occasionally returned. This time when I reached a very exposed point on the nearly vertical face where one has to balance over to a refrigerator sized detached block, leaving all handholds for a moment, as I gently shifted weight onto my left foot – in the calm and quiet of the day – the block began to shift. This was a paralyzing moment, but I quickly decided to continue the move, reaching up for a handhold in the process. I stood and pulled off the block – which remained attached to the wall – glancing down the 900 feet to the canyon road. I was in my mid 60s and had free solo explored perhaps 50 miles of rock over the years – and I interpreted this as a message, fatal if ignored.
Me: I know you’ve often described climbing as a spiritual, aesthetic, almost “metaphysical” experience. To what extent did your aspirations for the future (whether short- or long-term) play a part in how you approached and experienced climbing, vs to what extent was it really a present-focused, meditative activity?
Gill: The aspect of climbing that could be described as meditative is the sense of flow. I mentioned Mihaly C. who devoted his career to this subject, in all its settings. As I learned gymnastics I experienced flow upon polishing a short routine on the rings or a fast climb on the rope. Also, I felt it to be an important part of climbing, although I was virtually alone in this regard. Once the Verm (John Sherman) introduced his V-grading system the numbers race began. I had been using a grade system designed to discourage number chasing, but I clearly had misunderstood human nature.
Me: Looking back on your life and career, is there anything you would do differently, if you had a do-over?
Gill: “What ifs...” have never interested me. [Touché! Probably the best response anyone could give to this question, honestly.]
Me: Your origin story includes some important early inflection points: the high school trip with your friend, the gymnastics class to fulfill your university’s PE requirement (if I understand correctly), etc. Do you think your life would have gone very differently if not for these serendipitous events, or do you think you would have found your way to bouldering or another movement-based art no matter what?
Gill: Alternate histories are fun sci fi reads. What might interest you is that, while a young USAF officer stationed at a distant air base in the early 1960s, I read Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, and became a practicing existentialist. I believe we create our own destinies when conditions allow, and we generate meaning within our lives.
[This concluded the substantive portion of our email conversation, after which I thanked him profusely and he asked for a copy of whatever I end up saying about him in my book.]
Reflections: A study in the builder’s mindset
In pioneering a new category of sport, Gill created not only his own destiny, but a new set of conditions that did not exist before. And, like the consummate builder he was, he applied this same level of fresh thinking and intentionality not just to the sport of bouldering, but to the design of his life as a whole. With every chosen pursuit, he laid down another building block in the nested hierarchy of valued pursuits that together both enabled and constituted his singular form of fully-lived life. He took up climbing, partly as a means to develop the strong physique he admired in his older classmates, and partly because it afforded him opportunities for the solitary exploration he loved. Then he discovered that he could build up his physique better and faster through gymnastics, and that he could get the combined value of both sports by integrating them. In time he realized this new form of climbing he had developed could shape the future of a young and rapidly evolving sport and community he had come to value, and that his role in advocating for its acceptance could give “purpose to [his] life.”
As testament to his builder’s knack for integrated life design, here is Gill’s recollection of why he decided to climb the Thimble (from an interview he gave at age 39 for the book Master of Rock):
“I suppose it was a psychological point in my climbing career, and I felt as though I had to really produce, really do something substantial…. I felt as though I had to do something with an element of risk in it, something difficult.”
Note how strategically Gill approached his risk calculus, welcoming greater risk at certain important inflection points in his life and prioritizing safety more highly at other times.
As to how he prepared for his historic ascent of the Thimble:
“…I looked it over very carefully, scrambled halfway up the route on the left and looked at the holds. I saw what sorts of moves I would be responsible for, if I were willing to commit myself to the climb… I went back to the base and started to devise ways, around the gym, in which to train for some of the difficult moves that I would have to do on the Thimble. I did all sorts of peculiar things that made a lot of people working out in the gym hysterical… I did squeeze-type exercises, because I noticed that there were some little nubbins up there that I would have to squeeze when the horizontal holds ran out… I trained for a period of one winter. The Thimble was on my mind during that whole time.”
This was the kind of effortful preparation and long-term planning by which Gill earned himself the flow states he so dearly valued as a climber. As he reflects elsewhere in the same interview: “Applying your intellect to problems, thinking about them, is actually an intermediate step in the development of technique in climbing. You want to reach a point where it fits together in your subconscious, and then you climb it instinctively.”
Gill equally exemplified the builder’s mindset in his math career, and in how he integrated these two major life projects. Quoting again from the Master of Rock interview:
“At the end of three years [as a university math instructor with a Master’s degree], I really felt that if I wanted to progress professionally I’d have to acquire a PhD. So I looked around and tried to find a school which was reasonably good at the doctoral level of mathematics. It didn’t have to be Yale or Harvard, but a reasonably good school that was near a very nice area with good boulders, hiking, swimming, fishing, and all the rest.”
This is what it sounds like to design one’s own success criteria from first principles, with the laws of nature and the requirements of one’s fully-lived life as the only constraints.
This is a more ambitious design process than our conventional views of “ambition” permit. It does not optimize for metrics like prestige or wealth as ends-in-themselves. But nor does it eschew “prosaic” considerations, such as the need to make a living.
By the same token, Gill did not develop his bouldering approach so he could secure a legacy and transform the sport for future generations (an ambition he did not form until much later). He developed it so he could get the kind of exercise and explore the kind of terrain that interested him.
This is exactly the sort of private, personal motivation that drove many of the creative and ingenious solutions we now take for granted. And it’s the sort that will drive whatever solutions we might build today, aided perhaps by the physical and spiritual uplift of our latest trip to the climbing gym.