Ever walk by the old problems and boulders and look at the lines?
Yeah, I still look at the boulders quite a bit. I’m also looking at the wildlife and different things now. It can be difficult sometimes, but I moved on from bouldering so many years ago. Now I would just as soon look at something else. But now and then I happen upon an old problem and think, "How the heck did I do that?" 

You established what is known as the "Big Three" boulder problems on Colorado’s Front Range. They are: Slapshot on Dinosaur Mountain in the Flatirons, Trice on Flagstaff Mountain, and Meathook at Fort Collin’s Horsetooth Reservoir, all three of which are un-graded and remain un-repeated. They could be the world’s first V12 and V13 boulder problems. Tell me about these problems.

Well, Slapshot was a pretty significant problem for me. I specifically hiked up Dinosaur Mountain to work on Slapshot a number of times for about a year in 1976-77. I remember that the holds are very marginal; if you glued a quarter on the rock it would be a good hold! I remember John Sherman pulled off a loose flake at the start and glued it back on. I sometimes wonder if it was put on upside down because the hold is about twice the size as I remember it being! The beat is; pulling up, and lunging all at the same time for a little seam near the top. The takeoff point is critical, so that you don’t lunge out instead of up. I took a few rocky downhill rides from missing that move.
  
Meathook too was an interesting challenge. My good friend and climbing partner Jim Michael and I would go up to Horsetooth Reservoir. He would go to up to the Talent Scout Wall. I wouldn’t really care for it because I had done it back in high school. So, I’d wait for him down at Meathook trying and trying to do the first moves but I never really took it too seriously. Then, one day I finally pulled of the ground! The rest went on autopilot, and it became a legendary problem, one that’s much more technical than Slapshot.
  
Trice I've heard called several things over the years. Chris Jones started calling it Another Holloway Route or AHR, and someone else started calling it another "Hell" route. I just called it Trice. When we first took notice to that line we were bouldering up there, his name was… he had a friend called the big D — David something — he had the strongest fingers and I remember him putting his hands on the beginning undercling holds of the problem, and I remember saying, "Now pull up", thinking no one could ever lift off these hold. But he did! I got inspired and started working on the thing from that start. I remember you start under the bulge on an undercling, made a big move to a three-finger pocket with the right hand, bring the left up to a small hold and jump for the lip. There are no footholds. Again I had an open-handed technique down, and you can’t crimp on the pocket, so it suited me well.
  
Do you recall any problems being as hard as the Big Three at that time?
Oh yeah, some in the same difficulty for sure. I put up some horrendous problems in the Flatirons, some stuff in Vedauwoo that I couldn’t even get to anymore. There were some variations in Morrison. We bouldered some in Rocky Mountain National Park, as well. I’d like to know how hard that stuff would be nowadays, but alas, it is all lost to history. There was a place called Split Rocks halfway to Estes Park -- we used to climb there, but is all closed now. It has some hard stuff. I climbed a lot in Guanella and Ute Pass around 1975.

Would you like to see a second ascent of the Big three?
It would be neat to see if they can be done. It would be interesting to see how hard these things are. Apparently, pretty hard in that nobody can repeat them. I guess it is kinda nice in one sense to have unrepeated problems in these times and I’ve often wondered how my problems can have ratings if no one can repeat them? It would be neat to see the first repeat though. I used to love getting second ascents.