Nuthin’ But Sunshine

When I visited RMNP back in 2001 one of things I was looking forward to was checking out some of the harder problems that I had spent the prior year reading about. I wasn’t looking forward to it because I thought that I would be strong enough to climb any of these problems, far from it. It was mainly because I was interested in seeing just what sort of movement and hold-size was involved with these unimaginable numbers…V12…V13…V14?

In between projecting everyone else’s warm-ups (seemed like anything under V8 was relegated to warm-up status for most), I scoped out lines like Gobot (V11), Centaur (V12) and Automator (V13). I even remember the legendary Herm offering to buy any of us dinner if we could move off of the crux hold on Automator. No such luck…

Of course the crown jewel at the time when it came to the big numbers (and quality) was Dave Graham’s Nuthin’ But Sunshine (V13 or V14 as I understood it was rated at the time). I remember touching each of the holds and not being able to imagine how anyone could even weight the holds, let alone pull on them. Brian Capps happened to be there at the same time and I watched him try to do just the last couple of “easier” moves with no luck. Nowadays it unfortunately seems as though Nuthin’ has been eclipsed both in difficulty and street cred by testpieces like Freaks of the Industry (V14) and Jade (V15).

Perhaps this new video by Mike Call of Ty Landman climbing Nuthin’ But Sunshine will help to give this classic problem some more of the publicity it deserves.