UKH

Gravity eventually made Jimmy pay the price.

A really decent guy.

youtube.com/watch?v=j6dV63TyfVo&

"I may not be able to pull on the smallest holds, but those i can pull on, I can pull on all day."

I really like these older videos! Much more my era and I'm sharing them with my 20 year old son who's always heard me go on about the good old days!

I've posted this before. I remember driving down the Pass one day around that time, and the moment the Cromlech came into view you could see this enormous white circle on Left Wall. Jim had been climbing Left Wall (roped) and had taken a huge fall off the crux and swung in hard and his chalk bag had exploded against the wall. It didn't rain for ages and Jim's chalk remained for all to see. Shortly after that he started soloing it...  

'Pity about youth, wasted on the young'.

Cool story! I recall visiting Ron in Eyam with my dad in the 80's and he (Ron), was trying to do 1000 pull-ups in a day. Later that day we headed home to Wales and popped in to visit Jimmy. On hearing of Ron's pull-up goal Jimmy immediately started on the same attempt - sets of 20 in between brews/conversation!

We left the house and i was chuckling at the thought of two guys 70 miles apart both intent on this crazy endeavour.

1 000 pull ups in a day would be a snack for Steve Haston in those days.

When I lead the Boldest, Jim lead it straight after.  In the Padarn that night he was complaining about all the chalk my second was using. ( this was in 1977, Jim and I still climbed chalkless ).

Looks like he soon realised the benefits

He started using it fairly early on but a few of us kept ribbing him about it. I jokingly told him one night in Tyn Lon that he didn't climb hard enough to use it and he said:

'You'm right' and chucked his chalk bag in the fire! Didn't take that long before he started again but in between he did some quite hard routes without. Must have been around the time you mention.