VERM!

BY NOAH AUSTIN PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAWN KISH

It's a cool Tuesday morning

In late May, and in a warehouse building in Flagstaff, John "Verm" Sherman is suffering.

Ryan Whited, a trainer at Paragon Athletics, is guiding Sherman through a series of grueling exercises. In this one, Sherman is on his knees, supporting his own weight while working his hands back and forth between a medicine ball and a pair of push-up bars.

Sounds easy. Looks easy. Doing it a hundred times? Not so easy.

Sherman, wearing cargo shorts and a torn T-shirt with a Mickey's malt liquor logo, huffs and strains his way through each exercise, stopping periodically to crack jokes. He freely admits that the weekend, which he spent "getting drunk with important people" in Telluride, Colorado, didn't do much for his fitness regimen. And as Whited demonstrates the next task, Sherman is quick to point out, with a gap-toothed smile, that "everything looks really simple when Ryan does it."

For decades, Sherman was the one making things look simple. Readers of Arizona Highways know him for his stunning photographs of California condors, peregrine falcons and other wildlife. But he's more widely known as a legendary rock climber whose exploits in boulderinghave left a lasting mark on the sport. He's claimed more than 2,000 first ascents, authored several climbing books, won a legion of admirers and suffered more major injuries than he can remember.

Now, he's 57. He has two artificial hips, a ripped-up shoulder and, by his own admission, a bit of a gut. His photography has grown to new importance in his life. "I could happily go off into bird photography," he says, "which I get better at every day."

Climbing doesn't work that way. Not at 57. That's why Sherman is here at Paragon Athletics. Twenty-five years ago, he conquered the world's most famous bouldering challenge. This October, he plans to conquer it again. And in doing so, he hopes to bringattention not just to his own journey, but also to the struggles of the majestic birds that grace his photographs.

But that's later. Today, he trains. And for a man who's seen and done a lot, medicine balls and push-up bars are something new.

"Before, my attitude was that training was just for climbers who wanted to be as good as I was," Sherman says. As he finishes that sentence, Whited drops a 30-pound medicine ball at his feet.

There's that smile again. "Now," he adds, "I'm paying for that attitude."

Even if you aren't familiar with Sherman's climbing exploits, there's a chance you've seen a photo of him. One photo in particular, actually. It's from the mid1980s, and it shows Sherman on a high cliff face in Australia. He's wearing flip-flops. One foot is on a small ledge; the other swings in the air. One hand grips a tiny crack in the rock; with the other, Sherman takes a swig from a bottled beer. Sherman is cagey about the circumstances of the photo — “I was drinking, so the details are a little hazy” — but he allows that the point was to make fun of those who take climbing too seriously. It's representative of his image, both as an expert climber and as a relative outsider (or, as he puts it, “an insider's insider”) in the sport. One online commenter calls the photo the rock-climbing equivalent of Michael Jordan dunking from the free-throw line, adding that Sherman “is a constant '[screw] you' reminder to the people that take this sport too seriously.” Sherman won't argue with that. To him, bouldering is a lifestyle, not a competition. When he started, he says, “you ate, breathed and crapped climbing.” Born and raised in Berkeley, California, Sherman started bouldering as a teenager. “I'd take the wrong bus home from school every day, because that bus would take you by the boulders,” he says. “I'd boulder until it got dark, then go home.” Around that time, a high-school biology teacher gave him the nickname “Sherman the Vermin,” which eventually morphed into “Verm.” Sherman says he hadn't done anything to earn the nickname at the time, “but once it started following me around, I seemed to change my behavior to fit it.” He continued climbing through his time at the University of Colorado, where he majored in geology. And his career in that field gave him ample time and funding for his passion. Sherman focused on bouldering, which perhaps is best described as a subset of rock climbing. There are no ropes. No harnesses. No lengthy ascents — a typical bouldering problem, or path a climber takes, is less than 20 feet tall. It's over in a couple of minutes, or less. Sounds easy, right? Not when you consider that a boulderer is using his or her muscles for every second of that climb. If you get tired, lose your grip or have a mental lapse while bouldering, you're on the ground — ideally on a well-placed bouldering mat, something that hadn't even been invented when Sherman started. Back then, there also wasn't a very good system, at least in North America, for rating the difficulty of bouldering problems. Sherman took care of that in the 1990s with the “V” Scale (the “V” stands for Verm).

He eventually saved enough to retire from his geology career, and he planned to be a “climbing bum” and live in a van for the rest of his life. But five years ago, he met photographer Dawn Kish, another Arizona Highways contributor, and they started dating. They now split their time between a small house in Flagstaff and road trips in an RV, which Sherman has christened the Anna Nicole 2 - because “she's big, she's top-heavy and she loves me for my money.” Kish also rekindled Sherman's interest in photography. He was making photos even before he started bouldering, but during the industry's transition from film to digital, he mostly lost interest. Kish's blunt assessment of his landscape photography — “Your landscapes suck” — helped spur him to improve, and he eventually focused on wildlife photos. He's taken a particular interest in California condors, and at press time, he's one condor short of having photographed the entire reintroduced population (75 birds) in Arizona and Utah. He says photographing birds has turned him into a “kinder, gentler soul,” but he also sees it as a natural extension of what he's been doing for decades.

“There are boulders all around, at the bases of all these cliffs, and a lot of climbers don't give them a lot of thought,” he says. “It's the same with birds. And the difficulty is similar. Boulders don't want to be climbed. Birds don't want to have their photo taken. Mentally, it's so similar for me. You have to be so patient and persistent for both of them. So all those decades of bouldering have paid off for me as a bird photographer.” A few years ago, Kish was working out at Paragon Athletics and introduced Sherman to Whited, who's also a boulderer. He told Sherman he thought he could get him into shape to tackle Midnight Lightning — again — at Yosemite National Park in California.

Midnight Lightning is the world's most famous bouldering problem. When Sherman climbed it 25 years ago, he says, “you could count the people who had done it on your fingers and toes.” These days, that number is bigger, but every time someone attempts the problem, climbers camping nearby form a crowd to see what's going to happen. “You can't really call yourself an elite boulderer if you can't do this climb,” Sherman says.

Initially, Sherman blew off the idea of another attempt. There's little upside, he admits — “all I can do is embarrass myself.” But early this year, he had trouble with a climb he felt he should have been able to do. “I went back to Ryan and said, 'Hey, remember when you said you could get me to do Midnight Lightning again?”” he says. Since then, he's been training with Whited and climbing the indoor wall at Flagstaff Climbing next door. “For me, this is a fun experiment,” Whited says. “The goal is to get John stable and strong in his latter years. He's 57; he should be coming apart right now.” In October, Sherman plans to give Midnight Lightning another shot. Whited, who also has climbed the problem before, will make his own attempt. Sherman and Kish plan to turn the quest into an adventure documentary, Old Man Lightning, which they've been discussing with film executives (the important people they drank with in Telluride). The film also will encompass Sherman's photography, and he hopes it will draw attention to the plight of the condors and the dangers of lead ammunition, which nearly killed off the scavengers in the 1980s. It's a serious message. And Midnight Lightning is a serious challenge. But Sherman doesn't seem nervous. Not about himself, anyway. The legendary boulderer might be kinder and gentler, but he can't resist a dig at his trainer, who's 14 years his junior.

“The only thing I'm worried about is getting Ryan up that problem,” Sherman says. “He's getting a bit old for this.” AH To learn more about John “Verm” Sherman, visit www.vermphoto.com or find him on Instagram at @vermphoto.