The Invention of the Sit Start Started a New Era in Wacky Bouldering Behavior

The story of Midnight Lightning, the iconic V8 in the middle of Yosemite’s Camp 4, is part of climbing legend. The origin of the sit start is not. But both were conceived by the same person—John Yablonski. While not mythologized like the genesis of the world’s best-known boulder problem, the innovation of the sit start was literally a game changer.

Game changes can be a slow, evolutionary process. Groundbreaking ideas might be easy to dismiss as weird, but this one took.

What other changes to the climbing games we play are on the horizon? It is too early to tell, but a 2017 Mellow video depicting a creative ascent of Fontainebleau’s Karma—one that feels like a skate trick and pays homage to 1990s bouldering culture—might also point toward a new bouldering game: the drop-in start.

The post The Invention of the Sit Start Started a New Era in Wacky Bouldering Behavior appeared first on Climbing.