In the summer of 1984, I was climbing only sporadically and focused mainly on my upcoming final year of coaching distance runners at Fairview High School in Boulder. For a few years, I had been curious about the first pitch of an aid climb called Diamond Lil that was established in 1976 by Michael Covington, Doug Scott, and Dennis Henneck.

I grew up in the post-war neighborhoods below Chautauqua in Boulder, at the foot of the magnificent Flatirons. By the time I was eight, my playmates and I were leaving home to explore Woods Quarry and other secret places below the Fourth and Fifth Flatirons.

I turned thirteen in the spring of seventh grade and on that very day I climbed in Eldorado Canyon for the first time. An older climber I knew, Gary Spitzer, had just done two Eldorado test pieces in the same day – the Bulge and the Bastille Crack.

I don’t remember how I first met Gary Spitzer, but I started climbing with him when I was fourteen. Gary was 29 and an English professor at C.U. He rode a Ducati-500 motorcycle wearing aviator sunglasses, and he was one of the better climbers in the Boulder area, solid B-team

By the end of the summer of 1966, I had succeeded on two big alpine climbs in Rocky Mountain Park – the Jackson-Johnson route on Hallett’s Peak and the Hypotenuse on Longs. Being that I was only fifteen, this garnered some attention in the climbing community, which I no doubt enjoyed. I had surpassed my first mentor Gary, and all my other climbing friends, but my hunger to get better and climb harder was only growing.

In the fall of 1966, I was climbing intensively with Pat Ament, and that mentorship culminated with an epic adventure in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. In those days this was a remote, wild, and seldom-visited place. Kor had discovered the 1700-foot walls and done some high-level climbs there, but few other climbers dared to go there.