Let me tell you about the day I met James Litz. For two years, I’d made the Lilly Boulders, a collection of 25 sandstone blocs in Tennessee’s Obed Wild and Scenic River (a national park), my personal playground. I worked there as a National Park Ranger, living in nearby Wartburg. I climbed and put up problems daily. Then one day, a gangly 125-pound high school kid from Kingsport, Tennessee, strolled into the Park Visitor Center while I was on duty and introduced himself. James’ reputation had preceded him: the local hardman Kenny Campbell had already told me Litz practically waltzed up What’s Her Face — at 5.13a, it was then the hardest route in the Obed. But this unassuming and energetic youngster wanted harder stuff, and he came to me looking for a challenge. He followed me to Lilly Boulders that day and put on a heck of a show. It was a fall day, perfect and crisp. What I witnessed completely and forever changed my idea of what was possible on stone.

Flexorcise, a powerful V7 on the Muscle Block, was our first stop on the tour. I figured the youngster would warm up and then attempt the stand-start, a nice V3. Instead, he immediately asked about the lower holds. I said, “That’s where the real problem starts.” He replied, “Well, I can do that,” kind of matter-of-factly. I later learned this was the James Litz mantra, if he says “I can do that,” you can take it to the bank.

James scrunched down low and grabbed the two small starting slopers. His feet skittered around — finding no significant edges, he just smeared them against the rock. He then threw — no, correct that, I throw; he simply reached up and grabbed an edge, did another foot smear (not the preferred Beta for other ascentionists), and powered up with his right hand, finishing around the roof on the upper part.

I had up to that day seen many an astonishing feat on rock, but what I witnessed in James was a power of a different kind. His finger strength was surely the result of an altered genetic state. I remember the godfather of American Bouldering, John Gill, once talking about a sort of levitation, developed via extreme mental and physical conditioning, that would allow a body to travel on stone against gravity and give it a slight advantage — enough to perform the otherwise impossible. I had thought this a plausible explanation for the highest levels of climbing performance until that moment. What I saw in James’ climbing that day was no levitation — just sheer, uncontrolled, and still-untapped brute strength. He finished our day at the boulders by walking my long-standing project, the Lower Turansformer Traverse (V9), a fingery monster with a mega pump factor.

For the Lilly boulders, James’ first day climbing wasn’t just any day, it was The Day. The mystery of so many difficult sections of rock had been solved by an unstoppable force. Was there anywhere in the rock climbing world where so many first ascents of problems V7 to V10 got done in a matter of hours? Now the Lilly Boulders had in recent years received newfound attention, to be sure, but it was only after James that she was really able to hold her head up and declare she had some of the hardest problems in the South. And James Litz was not done with her.

James developed an interest in climbing when he was in the 10^th grade at Baylor School, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Though small of stature, he was an all-around athlete and an accomplished cross-country runner. He first climbed during a school trip to Hueco Tanks, Texas. His father Jack said that from a young age, James was very comfortable in the outdoors and never hesitated to walk distances. James later moved with his family to Kingsport, Tennessee, and graduated from East Tennessee State (ETS) with a degree in computer science. While at ETS, James climbed daily at a local climbing gym in nearby Gray. The gym owner, Keith Nakoff, recalls that James would campus with a weight-filled backpack. Also during this period, James discovered and then began making regular trips to the Obed.