John Duran was a Southwest Legend with First Ascents on Three Continents

Every January, we share a tribute to members of our community who we lost last year. Some were legends, others were pillars of their community, all were climbers. Read the full tribute to Climbers We Lost in 2025 here.

John Duran, 63, April 19

On Thanksgiving Day in 2004, Durango climber Rush Linhart was fasting, so he decided to skip his usual festivities and go bouldering. He was working a project on the Legacy of the Kid Boulder at Durango’s Sailing Hawks and didn’t expect to run into anyone on the holiday. “I brought one orange with me and decided this was going to be my Thanksgiving feast,” Linhart told Climbing.

But then he ran into John Duran. “It was this beautiful gift,” Linhart said. “I was climbing Legacy of the Kid with The Legacy. I was finally climbing at his level, thanks to his motivation. I shared my orange with him, but somehow, it felt like a gift from him to me to be able to have that moment with him. ‘This orange is all I have. And here ya go, Bud. Half of it is yours. You changed my life.’ I didn’t say that to him, but that’s what was in my heart when I gave him half my orange.”

Six years earlier, Duran and Linhart climbed together for the first time. It was raining, so Linhart figured it was off. But Duran, never one to call off climbing plans, took Linhart to his first ascent, The Sacred Traverse (5.13a/V7), an overhanging mega-classic on Sailing Hawks’ Euro Boulder. “When I first saw The Sacred Traverse, it wasn’t even in my field of vision,” Linhart recalled. “I walked past that rock [Euro Boulder] many times, but only as a 5.11 climber. And then John Duran showed me The Sacred Traverse, and it was like, ‘Oh my God, what am I seeing?’”

As soon as Linhart saw it, he knew he had to send it. Linhart kicked off a massive training plan that resulted in a lifestyle sea change Two and a half years later, Linhart sent it.

“He was so passionate. He was a freak of nature, he really was,” Linhart said. “I was ten years younger than John. He was this older character to me. I’d be hanging out, and John would come up to a boulder. We called him ‘The Ninja’ because he would always just silently appear wearing all black and huge glacier glasses. He would chant, and then he’d get on the rock and climb like lightning. Out of all the climbers I’ve been around—and I’ve been around a lot of good climbers—he really was one of the best. He was ahead of his time.”

In the nineties, Duran followed up The Sacred Traverse with the first ascent of Golden Arms (5.13c), a problem that traverses all the way around the Euro Boulder. “You can only go one way,” Linhart said. “It took me four or five years to do Golden Arms, and I could only do it once every time. John would do Golden Arms three and a half times around without coming off. There was no way I could ever do that.”

Over his lifetime, Duran established thousands of boulder problems, but The Sacred Traverse and Golden Arms at Sailing Hawks were always his favorites.

John Duran was born in Alamosa, Colorado, on July 17, 1961. His family was from the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in Ignacio, Colorado. He grew up attending schools in Ignacio and later studied to be a teacher. He taught elementary school in Shiprock on the Navajo Reservation, and later wrote about it in Climbing:

“I learned to really take people and help them work together as a team. I was the salesman. I had to convince [other teachers] they were capable. They didn’t have the confidence. In climbing, you have to have the confidence to do it. Climbing goes into your community and life, and you can use it—not just for yourself.”

His good friend James Williamson, who climbed with Duran for over 35 years, remembers Duran best as an environmentalist, uniquely connected to the land. “John was multifaceted due to his Native heritage,” Williamson told Climbing. ‘He knew so much about the history of the Southwest that most people will never know about.”

Williamson remembered one time in particular, when Duran, [Durango guidebook author] Tim Kuss, and he were driving across a drainage ditch in the Socorro, New Mexico area. Duran pulled over and recounted a story about a Native American massacre that had happened at that very spot. “U.S. Troops attacked a Tribe that was out there—women, children, and elderly. Tim and I just sat there with our jaws hanging slack, listening,” Williamson said.

A few hundred feet out of the drainage, Duran slowed down, and there was a plaque that commemorated only the few fallen white soldiers.

“John was one of a kind, completely prolific,” Williamson continued. “If he wasn’t putting up routes in the Southwest, he was putting up routes in Spain in the early 1990s, and then eventually in China.”

Williamson said Duran and he were great partners because Duran could redpoint 5.14 easily, while Williamson was good at bolting. Plus, they both liked to hang around on portaledges and listen to hardcore rap.

In the mid-1980s, Duran took on the Todd Skinner classic Fainting Imam (5.12 b/c) in the Cochiti Mesa area, eventually becoming the first person to free solo it. At the time, it was considered 5.13 but was later downgraded. This put Duran right in the mix of elite climbers, along with John Bachar, Scott Franklin, and Russ Clune, who had free soloed the highest grades of the decade.

It was while living and teaching in Beijing that Duran met his third wife, Rita. She was with him when he discovered the granite wall that he later went on to develop. In a 2022 Climbing article, Duran wrote about the new area: “Climbing is a real picnic time here, a family time—it’s a total hoot.”

John Duran succumbed to illness on April 19, 2025, in Durango, Colorado. He is survived by his wife, Rita, his brothers, Rudy Jr. and Michael, and his nephews, Dakota and Jesse.

“You could write a book on John Duran, and you’d barely scrape the surface,” James Williamson said. “Back then, nobody was filming him or putting him on social media. It was just him and the woods. He’ll always be a legend.”

Read the full tribute to Climbers We Lost in 2025 here.

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