How the Guy Who Invented V-Grades Won Back His Bouldering Mojo

Bouldering legend John “Verm” Sherman describes the narrative arc of the average climbing film as follows: Hero picks outlandish project, can’t quite do it, comes back, finally succeeds and everybody’s happy.

While he would have taken the happy ending for his Midnight Lightning project, the finale that he wound up with holds lessons for climbers and athletes of all backgrounds. Send or not, Sherman, along with filmmaker Dawn Kish, set out to make a climbing film that broke more conventions than the Verm has bones.

“Rocky meets Monty Python” is what Kish, a climber herself who dated Sherman for nine years, strived for.

“The Spinal Tap of climbing films” was front of mind for Sherman, who invented the bouldering grade V-scale (yes, the “V” is for his nickname, “Verm”), and has made hundreds of first ascents (and counting).

Luckily, both Sherman and Kish have a relentless sense of humor and were willing to put everything on the line—and on camera—to make Old Man Lightning. In short, in his mid-50s, this legend of climbing had swapped bouldering for bird photography and began to pack on the pounds. So, at Kish’s encouragement, he began working with a trainer to try to once again send Midnight Lightning. The bouldering problem in the heart of Yosemite’s Camp 4 goes at V8, but is widely considered sandbagged since heavy traffic has polished the holds. Sherman first climbed the problem over 20 years ago, but wanted to use the goal of a repeat to motivate him to get his bouldering mojo back.

As the inspiration points suggest, the film is absurd, hilarious, and highly unconventional, particularly for climbing films, which often lean serious, conventional, and self-important. But the documentary quickly takes a dark turn as Verm’s injuries stack up and the goal grows further out of reach.

It’s not entirely surprising that I loved this film as a lifelong fan of Monty Python who is also obsessed with Christopher Guest mockumentaries. While the film made me laugh harder than my recent re-watch of This Is Spinal Tap, the deeper themes in Old Man Lightning of navigating the sunk cost fallacy of big goals, aging as a climber, and the pursuit of happiness give this film its soul. It’s no surprise it won best climbing film last year at both the Banff Festival, and the Mendi Film Festival in Spain.

Both Sherman and Kish traveled to Colorado for the Boulder International Film Fest, where Old Man Lightning will show on Sunday, April 12. The festival includes several other climbing films, including Girl Climber about Emily Harrington’s Golden Gate in a day ascent, as well as the first two episodes of the forthcoming Dean Potter biopic The Dark Wizard.

I caught up with Sherman the day after he roped up with Boulder local Lynn Hill, and spoke with Kish just before she planned to climb in the Flatirons. Sherman shared his thoughts on everything from “last ascents,” to Verm-halla, the bouldering paradise he finds in the film. Kish spoke about the project’s complicated history and the emotional investment of telling this story. (While Kish and Sherman are no longer romantic partners, they remain friends today).

Read on for my conversations with Sherman and Kish, as well as details on where to see the film.

Interview with bouldering legend John “Verm” Sherman

This interview has been edited lightly for concision and clarity.

Maya Silver: One of the most interesting things about this film is that you don’t send the project. Stories like this are rarely told in climbing. Why was it important to you to share your experience with Midnight Lightning?

John “Verm” Sherman: I was hoping it wouldn’t end up this way. I wanted it to be the typical hero’s journey. In retrospect, I see it as a cautionary tale of obsession. When I look back at it and I see the film over and over, it’s pretty painful—more than the pain of all the injuries I went through. I was so blindly obsessed, I didn’t see how much it was affecting those around me.

The other one is that I spent the best remaining years of my career in fabulous shape and not taking advantage of that to climb new stuff. I’d already done the Lightning. I regret all the opportunities that I missed to take advantage of that fitness, when I was going back to the operating room again. When you’re starting to age out, what you do with the remainder of your days is important. Every day should be important. My values were skewed and screwed.

Silver: For other climbers who are in a similar place as you were with Midnight Lightning—doggedly in pursuit of a long-haul project and risking everything—what advice would you offer?

Sherman: See what it’s doing to those around you. If everybody’s happy and that’s what you want to do, stick at it. If I had done [the Lightning], I’d think it was worth all the suffering. I had all the strength, I just didn’t have the hip mobility.

Silver: Despite the injuries and these darker themes, Old Man Lightning is really funny. Do you think climbing films in general tend to be too serious?

Sherman: We wanted to make the Spinal Tap of climbing films for exactly the reasons you were saying. Climbing films are so generic these days. Goodness … on season 6 of Tommy on the Dawn Wall, Tommy comes one move closer. For god’s sake, how many times do we have to watch this? Every other film was like that, too. Hero picks outlandish project, can’t quite do it, comes back, finally succeeds and everybody’s happy. Life doesn’t often pan out that way.

Silver: What’s the latest with the condors? Are you still photographing them and are they still your favorite bird?

Sherman: They’re still an important bird to me, but I live in Kentucky now, a long ways away from the condors. I haven’t been able to visit them for over a year. We have a lot of turkeys where I live.

The condors are different because they’re all tagged. You know who is who. You get to follow their lives and get to know their personalities. There are times when even if I couldn’t see the tag on a condor, I knew which individual that was, how it was behaving, and how others were behaving around it—being submissive or trying to challenge it.

Getting into that project where I was trying to photograph every bird made me appreciate every animal out there—whether it’s a condor or an ant—as an individual with its own story, its own challenges in life. Each one of them goes through something a bit different. You don’t get to do that if you’re looking at a flock of ravens or something. It’s hard to tell one from another. When I had that experience of seeing the individual birds—getting to know them—it sunk home that every living creature is special.

Silver: Are you still prioritizing fitness and health in the same way you were in the film?

Sherman: No! I’m prioritizing beer and Scotch. I put a bit of weight on, but I still climb. I’m still pretty strong. I even got to go out with Lynn Hill yesterday and did a 5.11c without falling. Pretty good for a 66 year old coming from sea level up to Boulder.

But I feel that having too low body fat is not conducive to strong connective tissue. It’s either because I try harder climbs or my connective tissue isn’t as healthy or both that I seem to get injured a lot. If I’m a little heavier, I seem to do better. Right now, I have other health issues that have nothing to do with the orthopaedic surgeon.

Silver: Tell us more about Verm-halla. What details can you share? Are you still putting up FAs there?

Sherman: I don’t want people to know anything about it. I want people to find their own Verm-halla—some place where they can climb the way they want to.

I think of it as not putting up first ascents, but putting up last ascents. Someone else will find it sometime and have the same thrill when they get on these things. They’ll go up thinking they’re first. That way, climbs can have multiple first ascents, and more than one person gets the thrill of going into the unknown, not knowing how hard it is, not knowing if they’re good enough, and going through all that, which I’ve always found to be a huge part of the experience.

Silver: Is there anything else you want to share about this film or with climbers?

Sherman: Wear a helmet. Check your knot.

Silver: What about for boulderers?

Sherman: Wear a helmet. Learn how to freaking spot. Don’t just stand there waving your hands around. I saw someone standing five feet away so they wouldn’t get hit by the climber. That’s not a spot! Learn how to put the pads out correctly. I’ve spent way too much time on the injured reserved list. And I’m a careful climber, I just happen to push it a lot. But you land 1,000 times on a pad, you’re going to hit the corner and blow your ankle out. Try to make it 10,000 times.

Interview with Dawn Kish, the filmmaker of Old Man Lightning

This interview has been edited lightly for concision and clarity.

Maya Silver: What came first: the Midnight Lightning climbing project or the film project?

Dawn Kish: I had been working with Ryan [Whited], the trainer, for other injuries and to be stronger as an athlete. I had been going to him for nine or 10 years. If I had an injury, he would help me. Then Verm and I started hanging out and after three years, I was like, “You need to start getting back in shape. Let’s talk to Ryan about that.”

That big tummy was getting in the way of a lot of things! My hot climber man was out of shape. When we met, he was still doing FAs [first ascents]. We climbed El Cap together—we were going to do the Nose, but it was stuffed up, so we ended up doing Lurking Fear. We traveled the country, looking for boulders.

Verm kept saying “no, no, no” for three years. Finally, they had a beer one day and Ryan was like, “If you start training with me, I can get you up Midnight Lightning.” He didn’t think much of it.

Then one day, after three years of me trying to get him to see Ryan, Verm was like, “I’m going to see Ryan. I’m going to get back in shape if he can get me up Midnight Lightning and I want you to film it.”

It’s a good thing and a bad thing that Ryan told him this.

Silver: How did you and John meet?

Kish: We met in Arizona. He had developed a crag called Tam-o—sport, trad, and bouldering. It was going to be a state park for climbers only, but it never got developed because they never got the road in. Verm took me there. We started climbing together in 2009. He had a van with leopard skin curtains, so I was sold. We’re still friends today.

Silver: How long have you been climbing and what kind of climbing do you do?

Kish: I’ve been climbing since 2000 and I just love climbing. I’ve climbed all over the world. I started out bouldering, then sport climbing, then trad climbing, then aid climbing, except for ice climbing—too cold.

Silver: Your film completely broke the mold of climbing films in so many ways. Did you do that intentionally?

Kish: Yes! All those films seem so repetitive. Just putting another face on the screen, but it’s the same thing over and over again. I can’t do that as an artist. Verm is the same way. He’s more hilarious than me, but we’re both hilarious together. We wanted so badly to just make sure we were not repeating anything and having fun with this, even though it was really hard.

We wanted to make a movie that not only climbers would love. I just screened it in Sedona, and we’re talking no climbers, just old retirees—they loved it! They came up to me and said, “Oh my god, this is the best movie I’ve seen in a long time!” We wanted to break that mold. Cedar Wright is probably the only one who is doing a kickass job about making things funny, but also insightful. We wanted a climbing comedy comeback with a conservation twist.

Silver: Verm’s co-stars in your film are condors, an endangered species that he likes to photograph and that inspire him. How did these birds of prey come to play such a prominent role in the story?

Kish: I was an adventure photographer for Nat Geo for 10 years and I would always try to do some kind of adventure story with a conservation twist. I was the one working with the condors first, and when we started dating, Verm asked me what I was working on. I told him I was working on a story about the condors. “Aren’t they dead?” he asked. But yeah, he fell in love with this whole project.

Silver: Where did you draw artistic inspiration from for Old Man Lightning?

Kish: We first called it “Rocky meets Monty Python.” The animations are very Monty Python-ish. In the first Rocky, he doesn’t make it. He doesn’t make it until Rocky II. But I’m not saying we’re making Old Man Lightning II …

Silver: As John’s former romantic partner, you were very emotionally invested in this film. Was this the most challenging film from an emotional stakes perspective that you’ve ever made?

Kish: Absolutely. Just watching him get hurt all the time was just heartbreaking. I was trying to be light about it—I was taking care of my mom at the same time. So I was like, “Are you kidding me? My boyfriend, and my mom, and I have to pay the bills?”

And it wasn’t like we were making a movie for someone and they gave us a bunch of money. We were just making the movie and doing the financial part. Now we have a couple of sponsors, like the American Alpine Club. We were actually asking people to support us—climbers or anybody. The fire chief of Yosemite gave us some money!

It was quite a challenge trying to not put myself in the film. That wasn’t the plan. But my editor said they had to put me in. I was like, “No you don’t!” And he was like, “Yes, you do and it will be a better movie. Just trust me.”

Silver: After you and John parted ways, did you intend to keep the film project going?

Kish: I was armchair directing. We kept in touch with each other. I told him to keep doing the iPhone journals. I started the iPhone journals at the very beginning because he was so much better just ranting into the phone then me saying, “Can you talk about this or that?”

One day, he called me and said, “I just broke my ankle.” I was like, “Did you take pictures?”

And we were just asking our friends who were filmmakers to meet Verm in Yosemite and I’d give them a shot list. But at the very end of the movie, I needed to finish it and go out there to Verm-halla by myself.

Silver: How did you carry forward the film logistically after Verm dropped the Midnight Lightning project?

Kish: One day, he tells me about Verm-halla and he just lit up: “You will not believe this place! This is going to be so great!”

“Wait, are you going to go back to the Lightning?” I asked him.

“Yeah, I’ll probably go back …” he said.

“Verm, let’s call this. Let’s end this.” I said

“What do you mean?”

“I think you’re done. Now that you’ve found Verm-halla, this is the end.”

I told him: “I’m going to write it up and send it to you and you let me know what you think. He was so depressed and I felt bad for him as a friend. I wrote the whole ending and he calls me out and goes, “I’m in.”

I told him, “You can always go back and it will be Old Man Lightning II. It will be The Dawn Wall over and over again.”

I said, “This is your happy place. If you’re happy doing this, then why are we doing this other thing called Midnight Lightning that’s depressing you?” I didn’t want him to suffer anymore.

Old Man Lightning is screening at the Boulder International Film Festival on Sunday April 12 at 4pm. You can find ticket information here. It will also show at the 5 Point Film Festival in Carbondale, Colorado, which takes place April 21-28. Kish anticipates that the film will be available for streaming sometime this fall. 

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