Jim Holloway

Who is Jim Holloway?

Jim Holloway, an American, was one of the first of a new generation of boulderers for whom the sport was a lifestyle rather than a recreation. He began bouldering in the early 1970s in Boulder, Colorado, and in 1973 established his first notable route, Just Right. In 1975 he put up Trice – at today's grade of V11 or V12, exceptionally difficult for the 1970s.

John Sherman's V-System didn't come into existence for another fifteen years. In an effort to rate his routes Jim devised a personal variant on the old Gill B-System. For Holloway, difficulty fell into three categories: JHE, JHM, and JHH.

Holloway was one of the first boulderers to devote more than a few hours to creating a particular route. In the mid-1970s he began visiting Horsetooth Reservoir in Fort Collins, Colorado, where John Gill and his friend Rich Borgman had established a Dakota sandstone bouldering area. Gill's problems there, having been fashioned in a matter of minutes or hours, were far easier than the standards Jim was setting, clearly demonstrating the change in bouldering philosophy that was taking place. As an example, Holloway worked on creating a line directly up Gill's Left Eliminator, which had been done from the side. Calling his project Meathook, he worked the problem for twenty days, during 1974 and 1975, before finally getting up. A challenging undercling on the fingertips was a key obstacle, and Jim used an artificial contrivance in his home – a simulator – to train for the move. Fifteen years later Wolfgang Güllich would use his campus boards in a similar way to train for Action Directe. Meathook was perhaps V12 - for Jim, JHH - whereas most of the problems at Horsetooth were in the V3 to V7 range.