Pat Ament: Climbing Quote of the Week

Pat Ament, now living in Fruita, Colorado, grew up in Boulder and began climbing on the surrounding cliffs in the late 1950s as a young lad. In the 1960s Pat became a pioneering free climber and a superb boulderer under the tutelage of the legendary John Gill. In the sixties, he was fortunate to be part of a climbing community, including many of America’s greatest climbers like Layton Kor, who established most of the great classic climbs in the Boulder area and made nearby Eldorado Canyon one of the crucibles of American free climbing. Some of Pat’s free ascents, including Supremacy Crack, Northwest Corner of The Bastille, and Athlete’s Feat, were among the hardest free climbs in the United States.

This quote comes from Ament’s 1996 book Stories of a Young Climber, an autobiography that chronicles his climbing days and life from childhood until the mid-1990s. Pat wrote me a couple years ago that this was not one of his favorite pieces of writing, that he felt some of his other writings were much stronger, but I’ve always enjoyed this book. Partly I suppose since when I began climbing in the mid-sixties, Ament already enjoyed legendary status in Colorado. The book offers an honest confession of his life and times, of the good and the bad, along with lots of anecdotes that capture the rocking good times of Boulder climbing and reads like a Jack Kerouac novel.

The quote is about climbing in Eldorado Canyon in the early sixties with the now-mythical climber Layton Kor, one of America’s greatest rock climbers and the pioneer of countless first ascents.

Layton and I did many routes together, including Exhibit A and Canary Pass in Eldorado—names he more or less pulled out of the air. Layton stared ominously into my face up close. His physical presence, with so much energy, was an invasion of my sense of individuality as well as safety. Yet the air in Eldorado felt like it belonged to us alone. Here we found a feeling of use in the world, to place a cold piton, unafraid. Each new climb was a mischievous plot, the smirking unseriousness of Kor tied into moments where he was desperately serious. Much of life chose to turn away from the thoughts, terrors, and beauty of experience. In climbing, one turned toward experience. The steep, sharp configurations of sandstone in Eldorado, their brightness, their many colors, and the variations of light, were more than the everyday, desultory life. Sometimes the sky looked ominously like rain, and drops fell, but then there was a glorious clearing that brought fresh reds, pinks, yellow, green, and blue.

Buy Pat Ament’s books:
Stories of a Young Climber: An Autobiography An entertaining autobiography about the climber, writer, filmmaker, and freight train jumper that reads like a Kerouac novel.
John Gill: Master of Rock A biography of the father of American bouldering.
Royal Robbins: Spirit of the Age Another compelling biography about one of America’s greatest rock climbers.
A History of Free Climbing in America A fascinating year by year look at the development of American climbing.
High Endeavors Another compelling autobiographical work about the life of a climber.

Photo above: Pat Ament bouldering on Flagstaff Mountain near Boulder in 1978.
Photo © Stewart M. Green