(gentle music) - In society, we have all these things that don't connect the brain and body.

(gentle music) But for me, climbing is unique.

You get to bring thinking into your physical movement, and that's very satisfying.

(gentle music) Hi, I'm Jim Bowers, and I'm your neighbor.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) I originally grew up near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Hanover.

I actually started off caving with the Gettysburg Grotto back in the early 70s.

(gentle music) There wasn't really many rock climbers back then.

In fact, the entire sport was kinda new, and they were just inventing climbing in America.

And the one guy that had gone caving with me kinda got into rock climbing, and that's how I started.

And I've been climbing for 50 years now.

(gentle music) There's a few different types of climbing.

There's bouldering, and there's rope climbing.

Trad climbing is the oldest form of rope climbing, and it requires more experience and more gear than bouldering.

(upbeat music) Trad climbing is sorta what the original climbing was about.

People would go with the rope and hammer pitons in the rock, and they would attach that to the rope, so if they fell off the cliff, they wouldn't go all the way to the ground.

Trad climbing is more of an adventure.

In bouldering, you don't use a rope, and you don't usually climb any higher than you're willing to jump down.

Bouldering has become popular recently, because you don't need a lot of gear for it.

Basically, you just go out and you find rock, maybe six to 12 feet tall, (upbeat music) and you climb it.

(upbeat music) Hunter Rock is easily one of my favorite areas, because the rock is a really sticky sandstone, it's probably one of the best climbing rocks on the planet.

And actually, Pennsylvania has some of the best bouldering in the country, but people don't really know about that.

This area, Hunter Rocks, is unique in that there's a different type of climbing you can do here.

You can go up to one of these rocks and start traversing, and you can traverse all day, and it's just continuous climbing.

This is the world's longest game of hot lava.

You keep traversing and you can't touch the ground.

(upbeat music) I've been climbing here a long time.

I used to be a really bold climber.

Here at Hunter Rocks, there's a lot of tall things, so it requires a lot of actual, I wouldn't say I call it bravery, but the ability to climb up a good 15, 20-foot-high rock.

Boulders, call them highball problems, and Hunter Rock has a lot of those.

Back when I bouldered here a lot, I would climb up really tall stuff without a rope and people see that and they think, "Oh, this guy's a nut."

But I've been doing it for a long time now, and I'm still alive, so that's a good thing.

Ages ago, my friend bought some of the first plastic climbing holes for a climbing wall in his basement, and he didn't have quite enough, so I figured, well, I'll just drill some holes in rocks, and we use that.

But everyone liked those much better than the plastic one.

So I started making a business out of drilling holes in rock, and I called that business Petrogrips.

(gentle music) That actually was a lot of work, and I had to go pick up rocks, and I couldn't make specific holes.

I have a degree in geochemistry, so I was in the Geochemistry Department one day, and I had read the stuff about chemically bonded ceramic, so I'm like, "You know, "I could probably make hand holds using that."

No one likes actually climbing on plastic, it doesn't feel like rock, it's warm to the touch, it doesn't climb well.

So I first experimented with making holes that are molded out of this chemically bonded ceramic.

Then I started another business called Synrock, I used the chemically bonded ceramic to make holes with specific shapes, and it turned out really well, and I'm actually quite proud of them.

I'm 64 years old now, and I'm a lot younger than any other 64-year-old person I know, and I think that's because I like to climb.

(upbeat music) It keeps me in shape, it never bores me.

(upbeat music) It's like solving a puzzle in your mind and your body.

It's hard for me to imagine a time when I would stop climbing.

The only thing would probably do that is not being able to get out of bed.

(gentle music) (logo whooshing) There's a few different types of climbing, there's bouldering and there's also roped climbing, trad climbing is the oldest form of rope climbing.

Trad climbing requires more experience and more gear than bouldering.

Rope climbing, bouldering, bouldering.