John Sherman

John Sherman (born 1959), nicknamed Verm (short for "Vermin") is an American rock climber and a pioneer in the promotion and development of the climbing discipline of bouldering. He came to prominence as one of the developers of the important Hueco Tanks bouldering area in Texas, where he made over 400 first free ascents in the 1980s and early 1990s. Sherman was the author of the notable 1991 bouldering guidebook, Hueco Tanks Climbing and Bouldering Guide,

Sherman was a highly visible 'enigmatic' and 'colorful' character in the climbing world throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 2000, when reviewing Sherman's book, Sherman Exposed: Slightly Censored Climbing Stories, for the American Alpine Journal, climbing writer David Stevenson said: "If you’re of the opinion that Sherman is a raving lunatic, he’d probably be the last to argue with you. In fact, you’d do well to remember that he’s the one who very self-consciously gave you that impression in the first place. Don’t let the hyperbolic style fool you—this is one very smart guy", and also: "In Sherman we see the embodiment of both Royal Robbins and Warren Harding, a pair whose individual values are generally understood to be mutually exclusive. But Sherman somehow takes Harding’s semper farcimas and combines it with Robins pure, ground-up ethic. I suppose one of the tricks to reading Sherman is to know when he’s joking and when he’s serious: the answer is usually both a and b."

Personal life

Sherman grew up in Berkeley, California and earned a degree in geology at University of Colorado Boulder.

Published works