Naked Silt Climber Shows Too Much Crack

Here’s an embar-ass-ing climbing story out of Silt, Colorado. A new sculpture recently installed at the roundabout in the middle of the burg was the butt of a lot of jokes this past week. The sculpture features, among other things, the bare backside of a naked sexless climber.

The Silt sculpture has raised the dander of a few locals, including plumber Forrest Jacob, who told reporter Heidi Rice with the Glenwood Springs Post Independent that he didn’t like it. “It's not just me, there's a lot of people,” says Jacob. “And it’s not the sculpture, it’s the one part, the naked man climbing the wall.” The other body part that really bothered him was the “crack” splitting the climber’s buttocks. He continued his rant, “Everyone thinks it's not appropriate for that to be showing.”

Obviously this guy isn’t a climber, but, being a plumber, he obviously knows a lot about cracks. Most climbers I know love cracks—hand cracks, finger cracks, wise-cracks—and they like looking at them!

In rebuttal, sculptor Blaine Peters from Rifle, Colorado, doesn’t understand the big deal about his climber. He told Heidi Jacobs, “What's funny about the whole thing is that the form has no ears, no mouth, no hands and no feet and no one's complained. It's not a man or a woman. It's a human in the rawest form climbing a rock. What's amusing to me is that they don't see it for what it is. They only see what they want to see.” He also said the Silt town council approved a model of the sculpture with the crack.

Last Monday some local wag or maybe a Puritan, hung a piece of cloth that resembled the backside of a pair of cut-up boxer shorts over the offending crack, prompting locals to stop and stare. By afternoon the shorts were gone. Silt Mayor Dave Moore got the last word, “There will be a possible investigation as to who put them there. It's vandalism. It's defacing public property. There are laws attached to this.” Indeed, there are laws. Let’s just hope they catch the scoundrel and keep Silt’s newest crack bare, unfettered, and ready for jamming!

Photograph above: Silt’s naked climber doesn’t really show much crack. Photograph courtesy Glenwood Springs Post Independent