Matt: I guess, a contributing member of society. So, you got here in 1965? And where did you grow up before that?

Jim: I grew up in west Texas and actually started climbing in 1959 in the Davis Mountains. Then I went to school in Colorado Springs and climbed quite a bit there when I was a junior and senior in high school. So, then came to Boulder I really was already well into climbing.

Matt: So, is that probably why you came here?

Jim: Skiing too. Climbing and skiing, I wanted to do both.

Matt: And how long have you had your architecture firm?

Jim: I am 60 now, and I got my architecture degree I think when I was 38, so that makes it 20-some years.

Matt: Okay, so that has always been in Boulder?

Jim: Yeah, I’ve always been here, ever since.

Matt: I know it’s hard for me to say, “Tell me about your climbing career,” because you have done so much, but around Colorado what do you think you are sort of most known for?

Jim: Well my three best climbs are first, The Crack of Fear, which was 1966 or 67, and it was kind of the next hard climb to do in the country. Kor had climbed it but ate it at the hard part. Then Robbins tried to free climb it and couldn’t. And Pat Ament was desperately trying to do it; he wanted to do it very badly. So, Chris Fredericks came out from California specifically to do The Crack of Fear. Because I was good at climbing the Grand Giraffe, the logic was that I would be his partner.

Matt: You were the man on the spot.

Jim: I was taught in somebody’s living room how to chicken wing that night, and then next day we went out and Chris basically lead the climb and did it. And actually I was thinking as we were coming down from the Crack of Fear, and I was 19 years old and pretty excited, and said I can’t want to get back to Boulder and tell everybody. And Chris, who later spent the last part of his life in a Zen monastery, said, “I don’t think that’s why we’re supposed to be doing this.”

Matt: How old were you?

Jim: 19

Matt: So, you were just a kid.

Jim: Yeah, and I was going out to the Valley a number of times and doing big walls and hard nailing. Roger Briggs and I climbed the Diamond when he was 15, and I was 19.