In February 2006, I was shooting video in Hueco Tanks with Dave Graham, Brian Camp, Jamie Emerson, and Angie Payne. We were living at the Hueco Rock Ranch. People talk about who's doing what and gossip about who's stronger than whom all the time there. (It gets a bit annoying.) Among these conversations, I heard of a climber from Wyoming who was really close on some classic, benchmark problems in the park: Shaken Not Stirred (aka Right Martini, hard V12) and Slashface (Fred Nicole's V14, East Mountain testpiece). I met up with the climber, a humble, soft-spoken fellow who was staying 30 feet from me in his Toyota truck. He invited me to shoot the next day. He said he was falling off the last move of Right Martini, a problem not too many people have success on because of its sustained nature and ridiculous endurance demands. The next day, I watched him coast through it his first go, then repeat different sections for the camera for close to an hour he had a dip of tobacco in his mouth the entire time and a smile on his face. 

Granted, this was not his first day on the problem, but I could see that he was not just another simpleton boulderer. He had beautiful technique and a certain set of skills that the average dime-tugging, pebble wrestler usually lacks: His head was in the right place, he was efficient and controlled, and, shockingly, he was polite. (Truth be told, the guy's a sweetheart.) Days later, he repeated Slashface in perfect style. 

BJ Tilden is Climbing.com's OFF THE WALL 2 "Player" for January. He's a 26-year-old sport climber and boulderer from Lander, Wyoming, who pays the bills working construction, which he says is "good for the wallet, but bad for climbing." He's done 5.14b first ascents in Lander (Organic and Monkey Gone to Heaven), repeated boulder problems up to V14, and he's a plastic competitor, as well.