#192 Matt Samet — 39 Years Of Climbing, The Great Debate, and The Lesser Known History Of Our Sport

Intro

0:00

I mean, like, if I went out climbing and I didn't get enough climbing in, I would come home at night and squeeze a little rubber dog, you know, donut. Like, I'm like, I have to get my forearms pumped. Like, there was no gym to go to to finish out. There was no tension board to go to to do some four by fours on. You know, maybe if you're lucky you had a hangboard and it looked like something made out of play-doh and shaped by a preschooler. I mean, one of Metoles' first hangboards had bungee cords that came with it to help take weight off. And then they had to recall it because people kept getting snapped in the groin by the bungee cords. So that was where we were at in the 1980s was getting hit in the junk by bungees. Welcome to the Test Peace podcast. This podcast is about all things high-level climbing. How to go from good to great. I'm your host, Joshua Horsley. I've been climbing for over 30 years. We recently updated our Patreon, and now you get exclusive content from the guests that you love. You get your episodes before everyone else, and they're ad-free. Try it out now at patreon.com/slash test piece with a free seven-day trial. Okay, let's start the show. Matt Samet, welcome to Test Peace Podcast, man. How's it going? I'm good, good. Yep. Thank you for having me on. Excited to be here. Matt, I can tell you're coming from Boulder because the picture in the background is of the flat irons. Did you did you paint that? Are you also an amazing painter? Uh, you know, I wish I could say that I was a skilled artist. I have zero artistic talent. Actually, my friend Steve Dikoff painted that. Um, it's an oil painting of Seal Rock, which is where he and I did a lot of climbing. Um, Steve died in 2008 of cancer, but he um yeah, really good oil painting. Did lots of oil paintings of the Flat Irons, El Dorado. A lot of them are hanging in the gyms around here. Yeah, but very uh fondly remembered friend. Oh, geez, I really started us off on an exciting note. Um that's a great way to start. No, uh, well, it's a beautiful painting. Um sorry here about your friend, but at least he now lives on in artwork and on artwork and podcasts too, which doesn't make sense because we're audio only. So uh Matt, you've been climbing a long time. That's supposed to be a compliment, not make you feel old, because I also have been climbing a long time. Matt, you have a whole list of accomplishments. I know you've climbed tons of hard sport, bold stuff, bouldered hard, but you know what really spoke to me, Matt, is when you said that you climbed V10 on the TB2 at age 53. I just I just want you to know that what that's what really resonated with me. That was that was the one thing like, oh well, thank you. I appreciate that. You know, I I almost did a classic. I I did enough of them that I feel like I could say I've done V10 on the TB2. And then I was really close on a classic last year, and uh I I just never I need to get back after and seal the deal. So I I I I will say that I have done it, but I you know how it is until you have that kind of classic and you get your little your little badge in the app. I don't know. Matt, I'm gonna hold you to that. Uh you got it's gotta be a classic, dude. You gotta you have to come back after you do it and say, I did the classic. And I made a claim a while ago that I was the oldest person to do a certain grade on the TB2. Actually, my buddy Max Zolotuken recently surpassed that, or he did the same grade at an even older age. But I feel like this is like an unofficial record, man. You gotta have like there should be a badge for that on that too. Yeah, it's co-sponsored by the ARP. Yeah, maybe so. I'm sure there's I'm sure there's other climbers out there who've done that or are harder on the TV too, but I don't know how many of us there are. Well, they don't have platforms to tell everyone like like I do. So uh I'm gonna claim it and then they can come yell at me and they can do it by coming on the podcast because I'd love to talk to them. Uh

The Great Debate

4:04

perfect. Matt, when we were chatting last, you started talking about the great debate. And for me, that just got my interest because I had heard of this, but I was a bit young when that happened. And I just wanted to start off the podcast by diving into that because it really piqued my interest. And you are one of the few people I've talked to who knows a little bit about it. So, what is the great debate, Matt? Well, I'm old, but I'm not so old that I actually attended. So I will put in that caveat. I would have been 15 when the great debate happened, which was in 1986. So at the 84th gathering of the American Alpine Club, which was in Denver that year, you know, kind of the annual meeting of club members and a gathering, they they held um a panel discussion in front of an audience. And uh, you know, I'm rereading the article. Sounds like an audience of about 400, so a pretty robust audience. Um, and the title of this discussion was The Great Debate, or is 514 worth it? So, you know, consider then that the year was 1986. So at that point, sport climbing in America was only three years old. Like Alan Watts had placed the first bolts at Smith Rock on repel and Watts Tots, I think, in 1983. And, you know, that year 86 was also the first year that 514, a first 514 was done in America, which is to bolt to not to be, also called the sunshine wall, also at Smith Rock, bolted by Alan Watts. You know, so repel bolting was new, and it was also controversial, and it was ruffling some feathers. So the great debate was an attempt to bring people together to discuss this new advent and climbing, this new direction, and I guess really to look at the pros and cons. You know, so my reference for it was an article in the 1987 American Alpine Journal by Michael Kennedy and and John Steiger, you know, really well reported. They were there. Um, you know, but just looking briefly, like the members of the panel were big names. So John Backer, Henry Barber, Christian Griffith, Lynn Hill, Ron Kalk, Rob Robinson, Todd Skinner, Randy Vogel, and Alan Watts. So you had, you know, some of your quote-unquote staunch traditionalists, you know, Backer, Lynn Hill had come from the Stonemaster background as well. And then you had, you know, the some of the quote-unquote new school climbers like who had begun experimenting with rap bolting. So that would be like Todd Skinner, Alan Watts, and Christian Griffith. And, you know, what happened there was that Jim McCarthy, who was then the president of the club, basically put questions to the panel members and they discussed them. And these questions, you know, were kind of what you'd think they would be. It was like, is rap bolting worth it? Is rap bolting taking away terrain from future generations because we need to leave some of these things to be sent ground up? What do we, how do we feel about chipping? Uh, how do we feel about hang dogging? How do we feel about rehearsal and red pointing? Like, you know, it sounds almost quaint now to talk about these things as if people were debating them because almost all these things, other than chipping, are now universally accepted tools, and there's a whole industry built around them, right? I mean, imagine that you went to the rock climbing gym today and someone was hanging on a route and you started thinking about whether they were violating the ethics of the sport or not. Like you wouldn't. It's it feels insane. But you know, 40 years ago, these were questions that the climbers had. Yeah, I find this topic really, really interesting for two reasons. Uh I think that there's always this interesting connection between the adventure of climbing wild, big, multi-pitch stuff, or even like Everest and the things that we do often now, which is like board climbing, and like how are we connected there? And then I also think it's interesting because these uh big ethical debates continue to crop up where like uh burden of dreams is a really famous hard boulder problem, and people are setting replicas, like they 3D scan it, and then it's like, well, what does that mean? Like, can you flash a boulder uh on rock if you've tried the 3D scan? And you know, I can imagine in 20 years people being like, Yeah, we scan every boulder before we go and try it, because why would we fly all the way around the world to try a boulder and if we haven't gotten to see if we could do it at the gym? And you know, it's so I feel like it's always interesting the the how ethics evolve, but it's also just fun and mind-blowing to think about like not repel bolting? Like, how did wait, does that mean that Alan Watts did he do Watts Tots ground up bolting, or is was that the first one that he rappel bolted? I forgot which. No, that was the first repel bolt. I think in California, maybe at the pinnacles, there had been maybe sort of a proto-sport route there where they maybe rat bolted it or sort of drilled a bolt ladder and then freed it like an 11A. But no, Watts, you know, he he had climbed at Smith Rock for years and he'd climbed out all the cracks, which of course being cracks, had been done ground up, you know, on-site first ascents, or he'd freed some of the cracks, um, you know, the harder ones or thin cracks, or maybe they go on pin scars. But at Smith, you know, it's welded tough. And he realized there's these faces, they have all these same holes that I'm finding in these cracks and dihedrals, but there's no protection. And it was a very conscious decision to repel Bolt. Um, I believe he was drilling by hand at first. I don't know that you know, mechanized uh rotary hammer drills were a thing at that point. I think the first power drilled route at Smith was churning in the wake, which was a little later in the 80s. You know, like the first power drill out of Smith duh, someone brought that out there and used it. But a little worried that they might have used that power drill a little too aggressively on churning in the wake. Yeah, there's some pockets there that don't belong. But anyways, yeah. They didn't just stop with the bolts. It's true. It's true. I guess that was another part of the experimentation of that era. But yeah, I Watts made a very conscious decision to repel Bolt. And you know, at that point, Smith was a total backwater. Like, you know, it's in the middle of Oregon, it's out by Redmond and Bend. And, you know, there's he he's he's spoken about this a lot. He's written the guidebook, you know, but he'd be out there in the park basically like alone, hand drilling these things on repel, just thinking, who knows if this is going to go anywhere. But this this makes sense in in my evolution as a climber. Um, so yeah, that that had all started. And you know, the Europeans, I mean, a big part of the great debate, you know, if you look at the article, and I actually looked at another article, I think from that era, written by Bob Duran about kind of all some of the original sport routes around Boulder, like bolted by him and Christian Griffith and Dan Michael, like which were also some of the early hard sport routes in America. Um, I mean, it was controversial. You know, repel bolting was controversial and it wasn't accepted. Hangdogging also would ruffle some feathers, you know, like um hangdog days, Jeff Smoot's book really goes deeply into that, like traveling with Todd Skinner and being part of the Yosemite scene and seeing how the Yosemite locals reacted to Skinner hangdogging on the renegade. And yeah, uh all these things just weren't they weren't accepted, they weren't taken for granted. And if you did these things, there were only a handful of roots done in this style, and most of the roots of that time were still trad climbs. So these roots stood out as well, you know, like a shiny line of bolts up a blank face was an anomaly to to the eye, you know, visually. You made me think uh this uh chat. I I did a podcast with Greg Lowe. I'll know you you must have bumped into Greg at some point, and he talked about how they had a friend in their group who rehearsed midnight lightning on a rope, and then no one would talk to him anymore. He was ostracized, which is hilarious to think. Uh so I think one of the the like the thread that I see in some of these debates, and you can think of ground-up bolting versus rappel bolting, you can think of sport climbing with bolts versus finding natural protection that may sometimes be extremely dangerous, is that there is and and hang dogging falls in this category too, is like there's this sense of adventure in climbing like that. Climbing comes from a like you go up and um we'll see if you make it or not. And it can be really dangerous. And sport climbing, I mean, gosh, I I think about when I first started sport climbing at Smith Rock, still felt quite dangerous to me. Uh, very run out, very exciting uh bolting there, anyways. But it almost seems like there's this move away from adventure with those styles. Like, you know, it it focuses on difficulty and uh ability. You know, 514 is not going to be accomplished. You cannot, or I I have a hard time imagining hand bolting ground up 514. Like that seems like it would probably not happen, but 514 is something that a lot of us aspire to. And it's because it's a more like athletic pursuit instead of just like a, I don't know, like a adventure battle with nature. And so it's like an interesting kind of kind of pivotal uh moment there. Yeah, it is. I mean, I think that's a really good insight. One of the questions at the great debate, actually, that Jim McCarthy posed to the panel was is it easier to red point a 514 sport climb or to on-site a 12 plus traditional climb? I don't know that they reached a conclusion, but you know, people had strong opinions. And yeah, you're right. And and that was, I think, a huge touch point of that discussion was, you know, this idea that rock's a limited resource. And if we repel both these things, yeah, are we taking away from future generations? And, you know, Watts and Skinner both being, I think, pretty pragmatic about it, were sort of like, no, because, like you said, how do you ground up hand drill a 514, especially an overhanging one? I mean, you would just end up aiding the thing, hanging on hooks, putting in gear, you know, drilling bat hooks, drilling the ladder, at which point you might as well rat bolt it and do a better job. I mean, I think the only consensus that emerged from the great debate, interestingly enough, was you know, that we shouldn't chip. You know, they brought up Bukes, which was one of the, you know, called the laboratory, you know, one of the first French sport areas, and it had inspired a lot of um American climbers who went over there and then came back. You know, but at Bukes, they basically like chipped all the first seven C's. And someone was like, well, these should have been the first eight A's and eight B's, but they used up that real estate. And then the first eight A's and eight B's were chipped too. And someone was like, well, someday there's going to be 14 plus and 515 and 516, which were on the cusp of, and now you've taken the future 515s and made them, you know, 8B, 13D. But like that thing Les Bon Bleu just got done, and it's all natural. Mark Leministro bolted it in 1991 and Erwan LeGrand did it, you know, at 15B. So that interestingly enough, like all these predictions from 40 years ago have actually borne out. But that was the one thing that there was a consensus about, I think, in the great debate was we shouldn't chip. I mean, whether that's borne out or not, you know, it's a display of the thing. There was a lot of chipping after that. Yeah, there was still that. Yeah. I don't it's it's easy to say one thing and do another. Didn't we talk about how there was that wall in Smith that literally was bolted? Like as in, sorry, yes, it was bolted, but it was drilled and plastic holds were bolted onto this. So this was an outdoor wall in Smith Rock that had plastic holds bolted onto it. And we were laughing about, but I think you made the comment that someone had like made it into a magazine for a send of like you know a 513 on those plastic holds. Do I remember that right? Yeah, you're absolutely correct. I mean, I I went to Smith in 1990 and it was at the top of one of the gullies, I think maybe the top of cocaine gully. There's a big chassis roof, and they'd put on like two or three routes that were strictly bolt-ons to have something steep to train on. And yeah, I think I remember Jim Carn on-site one of those routes and literally made it into the mag. I think the mag into climbing, you know, into hot flashes. And I think the magazine had no idea that it was a essentially a gym route. But they're like, yeah, Jim Carn on-site's it had some completely offensive name that I can't remember. But uh yeah, of course, because it was the 80s and 90s, but yeah, Jim Carn on sites 13A, you know, which was still big news back then. But yeah, literally, literally made it to the mag. Gosh, yeah, how times have changed. And and it's funny because you think back then how they would look at a blank piece of rock, and I think that I can see why they would argue for chipping, they'd say, hey, look, this is a great 513 with a blank eight-foot panel. Like, let's make this a great 513. But they had no concept that people would boulder V17, you know, in not that long a time. And so it's interesting because like inside of me, I have a really hard time thinking that people could pull off like V20 or something. Like, I just, I don't know, I've been climbing a long time. I've seen some very strong people. And to be able to have the foresight that things are gonna change. There's gonna be new techniques, new technology, stickier rubber. I don't know. I don't know what will be, but uh, you have to have that recognition that you don't want to take away from the future because you don't know what the future holds. Yeah, I think that's a good point. Also, you know, all the people at the Great Debate, they had seen a lot of very rapid change too within their own climbing careers, right? I mean, by the time 1987 hit, some of them had been climbing since the early 70s, you know, like Henry Barber and and Lynn Hill and Backer, you know, and they'd seen standards go from basically 511 with some outlying 12s, maybe, you know, like a 13 minus top rope here to like multiple people climbing 513. So I think that helped them with that lens too. You know, they had the insight that, yeah, change happens quicker than than you think, and standards will will rise. So yeah, it is interesting to see, yeah, 40 years ago their predictions are really borne out. God, it's also just hilarious to think about grades back then. I remember hearing about someone climb 14A, and they had a whole career based. I think Nick Sagar came into our gym and taught a whole pro clinic to us. I'm, you know, nine years old. And when I heard he had climbed 14A, I thought, well, it's gotta be one of the best climbers in the world, you know. Times have changed. I'm sure I mean he was a good climber, probably still a good climber. Um we've seen a lot of change since then. What do you think are are some of the the big changes that you've seen in your career that have led

The Evolution Of Climbing

18:54

to some of the, I don't want to say it's a great debate, but you know, gyms coming along. I mean, there were gyms back then, but boy, has gyms and that approach to climbing really changed our culture. Uh bouldering is now a thing where I'm not saying that people didn't boulder before, but no one talked about it, you know, uh back in the at least in the 90s when I started climbing. Uh and now we have board climbing and we have you know competitions that there's a lot of people who climb who never even go outdoors, which is a fascinating thing over sport. Yeah, do you have any any big pivotal moments that you've noticed? Because you have maybe you weren't at the great debate, but uh you were old enough to remember it. Yeah, if I if I'd asked my parents to drive me up there, I guess they could have attended. Um yeah, I think gyms is the big one. I mean, gyms and training tools and training knowledge. I mean, training knowledge, you know, like when Udo Newman and Dale Goddard wrote Performance Rock Climbing, that was what, the early 90s? That was sort of the first book about it. And it opened a lot of people's eyes. And I think a lot of the stuff in there is still pretty, pretty foundational. But before then, there just wasn't. I mean, like, if I went out climbing and I didn't get enough climbing in, I would come home at night and squeeze a little rubber dog, you know, donut. Like, I'm like, I have to get my forearms pumped. Like, there was no gym to go to to finish out, there was no tension board to go to to do some four by fours on. You know, maybe if you're lucky you had a hangboard and it looked like something made out of play-doh and shaped by a preschooler. I mean, the first hangboard I had had like bungee cords. One of Metoles' first hangboards had bungee cords that came with it to help take weight off. And then they had to recall it because people kept getting snapped in the groin by the bungee cords. So that was where we were at in the 1980s was getting hit in the junk by bungees. But yeah, I think having high-quality gyms, I think access has improved so much with gyms being part of that, because wherever you are in the country, there's usually a gym within, you know, a relatively reasonable driving distance. But also just having more places to go rock climbing. There just weren't that many places back then to go climb hard. I mean, there were just there were a decent amount of 512s, hardly any 513s. 514s, you could probably name them all in the 80s and early 90s and count them on one or two hands. So there just weren't that many things if you wanted to push yourself to go push yourself on, andor you might try them, and if they didn't suit you, right, you're you're kind of kind of out of luck. Whereas now, if you go somewhere like the red and you get bounded on Route A, you have Route B right next to it. I mean, it's I think that's the big change. I mean, when I first started sport climbing, um, I grew up in in New Mexico, we were actually lucky because New Mexico had some of the earliest sport climbing in the country because there were two French climbers living there, Jean de la Taillade and Bertrand Grimont. And they had brought that style over with them. So Coche de Mesa, which is a welded tough area like Smith, was one of the first places I climbed. And then Socorro, which is um I think and a site, a volcanic rock, kind of like a poor man's waco, had a lot of short and actually very overhanging sport routes, and then the enchanted tower, which is very overhanging, welded, tough jug hauling. So we'd seen that early on. But yeah, for road trips for sport climbing at that point in the U.S., the new to a degree. I think the red was not a thing. And you had Shelf Road, Penitente, Cave Rock, which you mentioned earlier, Donner. I mean, they're just there was nothing, you know. So you would just sort of run out of roots. I remember going to Rifle early on was uh another big draw. I mean, Smith Rock was a huge one for me, but we were pretty psyched having Cave Rock and Jailhouse near where I grew up. And yeah, as I mentioned, I don't know if that may have been before we clicked record, but Cave Rock is no longer with us. It is uh unclimbable or the the bolts are gone. As you have climbed over the years and we've had new things enter into the world, like knee pads are you know ubiquitous now. You know, we're seeing like fans. Um, I know you've climbed some bold climbs as well, and trad climbs. How have you changed your ethic? Like, how have you changed your stance where you know you see something that's like a bold trad climb, and then someone like might say, hey, what if we like put a bolt into this blank section? You know what I mean? Like, like, yes, this is a trad climb and someone has done it before, but now there's a lot of people on it. And should we maybe save their ankles? Like uh, there was some uh woman who died, I want to say she died on was it snake dyke? You remember this happened like a year ago? There's a woman who took a really bad fall. We're like, why don't we have any bolts there? It's like, well, we did it without bolts, um, or very few. And like, yeah, how's your ethics uh evolved as you've both been around and climbing and even getting older sometimes gives you a different perspective on things? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think the woman on stake dike lived, but she took a huge fall and was very hurt. Um, and it opened a debate. Yeah, I guess it's five seven, should have more than two bolts per pitch. I think that if there's community consensus to make a route safer, I think it should be made safer. I think there needs to be consensus. I think if the first ascent party could be reached and give their blessing, they should. I mean, I'm 54. I've seen and lost so many people, right, to accidents. Um, or yeah, I mean, you you see how how death affects the climbing community, and and you see that there's no coming back from it. And, you know, I I think it is important, it's important to maintain mental test pieces that are mind control routes that people want to do. And I think there's routes that you know make sense that way. I mean, there's like here in Boulder, a good example is this route Perilous Journey, which is out on Mickey Mouse Wall, which is south of El Dorado. 511X done ground up on site, basically like kind of a gridstone route. Like you trail a rope, you do all the 511. I think it's up to maybe 11D, like kind of weird, slabby. And then eventually you get up and maybe you get a piece in, and then you kind of wander up this slab. And that was, you know, done that way. Was it Dave Brashears who did it? You know, in the 70s, has had very few repeats, and they've all been forced to do it that way. And to me, yeah, like you don't bolt Perilous Journey because you wouldn't be able to like add a bolt or two and make it make sense, it would have to be like a 10-bolt sport route. So you're basically saying, this thing, we're completely changing the character of it to make it accessible to people, but you know, it's also an obscure wall, like people aren't up there that much, it's closed a lot of the year. Like, what's the point? You know. Um, but then if you take something like I was climbing yesterday at this area of the dungeon, which is in Staunton State Park in the South Platte, and my friend Dave Montgomery put up a lot of the roots originally. He was just out there by himself, mini tracking, cleaning, learned the roots really well. And a lot of the first few routes that went in were mixed. And because he was familiar with the terrain and the gear, he did them, and I don't think he even thought they were that heady. But then some of us went in to try to repeat his roots and like we're like, like, fuck, man, this is this is horrendous. Like coming from the ground, like trying to find that Metolia Zero TCU in a weird little slot and trying to on-site 11, 11 plus terrain on that gear, and and he pretty quickly like went back and added more bolts. So I think cases like that where a route is, you know, maybe wasn't done ground up on site anyway, or can be improved with a few more bolts, I think it should happen. I mean, it makes more terrain accessible and it avoids accidents. God, yeah. I always find this stuff really interesting because I can argue it both ways where I could say, like, you want preserve, like if someone did it a certain way, it's clearly possible. And in some ways, you're just taking away what the first ascensionist did by changing the route. Like you, it's almost like chipping it. Like someone did it, did it in a style, and then you decide to change it. Um, it's I mean, chipping is maybe a harsher word for uh or if you just add bolts, but then I could also argue, well, you could put bolts on that Wild 511, and people could go and climb it without those bolts. You know, they could just they could have their own experience. And you know, I just I find it really interesting because I do like the mental side of adventure, but I also don't want to get hurt and I want to be able to climb something if it looks cool. And I just I don't think we've come to a consensus uh uh about that. Like, should we make everything accessible or should we preserve the character because we want to have that danger and risk and and uh you know it's like someone puts up a big boulder uh and you could top rope it, but would anyone say that you had done it? Like I don't think people would, you know, say, oh, I top roped ambrosia. It's like, well, you didn't do ambrosia, you top roped, you know, a 13D or whatever the case may be. Um and so yeah, I I I don't know, it seems to me like it's unsettled. Um I don't know how you go about it where you talked about getting consensus from the community or asking first the blessing from the first ascensionist, and that's another interesting topic where it's like, does the first ascensionist have any sway? Like, why why why do they get to say it? Um, or well, they're the one who opened it, so who cares what the community says? So I don't know. But because when you're dealing with like literally drilling holes in the rock to put bolts and it changes the way it looks, and it's a it's maybe it's a new a new great debate. Yeah, actually that would be a good one to have. Yeah, I'm sure you get you'd get passionate opinions on both sides. 2026, Denver, uh who would be on our panel? Um, yeah. Kevin Jorgensen, yeah, because he did ambrosia without bolts. Yeah, then but then you need someone who's bolting like really short sport routes on the on the other side of the well, Matt, you said that the last great debate, it was put on by the AAC, the American Alpine Club, which you are now a part of, correct? Did you recently join them? I did, yeah. I've been a member forever, but I joined them as an employee. I had freelance for them on and off through the years, helping with the um the AAJ, the American Alpine Journal. But yeah, I'm the managing editor there now and have been since September.

The American Climbing Journal

29:24

Like I tell you, I just joined this morning. I'm sorry I was not already a member, but one of the reasons that I joined is because part of the membership includes the new American climbing journal, the A ACJ. I feel like I've only seen the acronym, so am I saying that right? Can you tell me about that? Yeah, yeah, you nailed it. Um, you know, the ACJ was actually one of the reasons I was hired, which I didn't know till I'd been hired because I kind of kept the idea hush-hush. But um, you know, the idea had been to add a third journal to the portfolio. So there's the AAJ, um, which has been around, it's been around 97 years. Um, and then there's accidents in North American climbing, uh, used to be accidents in North America, which has been around since, I believe, the 50s, post-war. It's been around for a while. So the idea was to add a third journal that's focused solely on rock climbing. I think one thing that had been happening is that the AAJ was starting to include more and more rock climbing. Like, for example, last year I helped I edited um Babsy Zangrel's piece about you know making the first flash of L Cap via free rider. So that, you know, very obviously like L Cap's big, but it's it's not the Himalayas, right? It's you know, they're in the valley, it's a known entity. You know, and what she did was, you know, very much a performance rock climbing feat. And and so I think Dougold, who's the editor of the AAJ, and and Shane Johnson, who's the VP of media, um, and and and a few other folks at the club were sort of like you know, the board too as well. And the executive director Ben were like, what if we created a journal just for rock climbing? So that's what the American Climbing Journal is. Um, you know, I would say that for those familiar with the AAJ, the ACJ is modeled after it to a degree, but the focus is just on free climbing. So it's sport climbing, traditional, multi-pitch free bouldering, and then even a little bit of boarding in there as well. Um, so a little bit, a little bit of everything. Yeah. Uh tell us about some of the people that you had in this first issue. And yeah, the one of the ones that piqued my interest was Noah Wheeler, who uh wrote a segment about board climbing, if I'm not mistaken, or board culture, maybe would be the better term for it. Yeah, yeah. Noah's piece is in the feature. Well, so the book opens up with we have about 85 pages worth of features, which is a lot because it's we're not a magazine. We don't have ads in there. So it's 85 pages of pure text and photos. Um yeah, but Noah's one of the feature writers, and he wrote about, I mean, obviously, top border, incredibly talented, but is also destroying on the rock as well. And the two things clearly complement each other, but a lot of the strength he's cultivated has been on the boards. Um, and he wrote about how, I mean, I'm looking at it now, you know, that's the subtitle is how a training subcommunity revolutionized rock climbing. You know, we worked on that subtitle together. And it was sort of like I like that. Yeah, part oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, part of the argument was um, you know, obviously boards have made a lot of people stronger. Noah included all of us who board included. At the same time, board culture has become its own entity per se, and you can now develop yourself as an impressive climber and um accrue cultural cachet, which was sort of no as wording, through being a good boarder. Like you can be like Sean RHM, right, out in Iowa without a ton of rock nearby, and and just be a beast and put up these things on the board and and you know, become legendary for it. So that's pretty cool. So that's one feature. You know, I'm looking from top to bottom. We have Seb Berth, um, you know, fourth ascent of the Donwall, uh, one that I worked on with Sean Bailey about duality of man, you know, 515D, Katie Lamb about doing the dark side, becoming the first woman to do V16, quote unquote, twice because of the box therapy discussion over the grade, and you know, the fallout that she dealt with from that, which I think really sort of drove her to retreat a bit and try to find a way to, I guess, reconnect with climbing without you know internet fur. Um, you know, Connor Hurston and and Nat Bailey wrote about Drifter's Escape, the proposed 15 amp and squamish, super cool. Um Sasha DeJulian wrote about you know her big effort on platinum wall, being stuck on that ledge in that storm for days with some hard pitches left, but the bulk of the route behind her and having to decide do I go up or down. Um, Adam Andra, first E11 Flash with Lexicon. I mean, completely badass, really psyched that Andra wrote for us. We'll have a hardcover version signed by Andra. There'll be 300 of them with more info forthcoming about how to get those. But he, uh, you know, busy dude in demand, delivered an amazing feature. Um, then there's a photo gallery, a lot of great stuff there too. Then we have two crag profiles, and then we have more sort of short reports in the American rock and world rock sections, which are a little more modeled after the AJ, uh, first person, you know, but we tried to find roots and things of interest. So things that stand out, like the first V15 in New Mexico, or Alex Huber doing a 14C at age 55 after brain surgery, or an interview with Tim Emmett, you know, about Areveeah. Um, yeah, I mean, there's just a ton of content. There's 224 pages. I won't continue because I'll just start listing the whole book. But um yeah, it really cool. And it was really cool to see how enthusiastically people responded um to writing for the journal and writing about their climbs. I felt like there was a hunger for it. And, you know, our original goal was just to hit 176 pages, but we got to 224, and I probably could have put in more if I hadn't come up against my deadline.

Support From Patreon

35:15

Quick break while I tell you about today's sponsor. Thank you to all the patrons who helped make this show possible. Join them so you can get episodes early before anyone else. And those episodes are ad-free. As a patron, you also get to submit questions for upcoming guests. The answers to those questions are only available to patrons. Follow the link in the show notes to join now. You also get access to a private Discord where you'll find me and other people who want to go from good to great. Okay, back to the pod. I really am looking forward to reading the one with Andra flashing E11. I brought it up on good temps, uh, and I don't want to say that they diminished that, but they just didn't seem as impressed as I was, I guess because he is so incredibly strong that they thought it wasn't that wild. But to me, the danger and the risk and flashing it, and then seeing that alongside a feature of Noah uh about board culture and Katie on on V16. Yeah, first female semi-bow, V16. It it makes me wonder how do you guys choose these uh cents? Like what makes something significant? Because there is a lot of hard climbing that happens each year, and clearly you can't uh write a story about each and every one of them. But you know, a lot of those things that you just talked about, I think when we look back five years, we'll be like, yeah, KD doing V16, big deal. Um, first E11 flash, big deal. But yeah, when you think about what story to select for something like this, what kind of has to be these check marks that you go, man, this is significant, this is going to stand the test of time of something that was kind of a seminal moment? That's an excellent question. You know, we had a lot of meetings and internal discussion early on about that very topic, like what belongs in the AAJ and then what belongs in the ACJ and why? You know, why is it going in? Like, is is someone just climbing hard and doing a bunch of repeats? Is that worth an article? Ultimately, we decided no. Um, you know, so like someone, someone being on one, right, and having an amazing season wouldn't necessarily be an article. It's impressive. Um, it's not an article. I think what we tried to do was capture the zeitgeist of 2025, right? So these are annual publications, and you are trying to sort of capture the flavor of a calendar year. And part of that, I think, is yeah, looking at all the high notes of the year, looking at the trends in the sport, looking at who was doing what. But ultimately we decided those would be factors in the decision, as well as just firsts. Yeah, firsts of importance. Like you said, the first E11 flash, the first V16 by a woman, you know, the first 515D put up by an American in America, um, you know, the women's first in Yosemite. And then for the shorter reports, tried to have a blend of that, you know, things of note regionally and globally. Also tried to offer some reader service in there, too. Like, hey, this might be a problem you've never heard about in an area you've never heard about. Maybe this is somewhere you want to go check out. So some of that, too, which in a way kind of calls back to the early days of the magazines when they used to have big destination features, or uh literally, I don't know if if you pick up climbing from the 80s under Michael Kennedy, there's a section called Base Camp. And that was all fueled by regional reporters, so like, or or by state, and it was a list of first ascent. So before Mountain Project and back when guidebooks were, if you're lucky, you found one that was bound. A lot of them were just Xerox to Kinkos and sold out of the out of the back of the climbing shop if you knew the secret password. Um yeah, but kind of going back to that, you know, regional reporting of notes, or trying to collect it. But like you said, we didn't collect it all. There's stuff that I wish we could have had that we didn't, you know. I we're asking people to to donate their their their time and images because we're a nonprofit and our journals have never paid. So that's you know, was somewhat of a stumbling block. But yeah, I think it was just trying to capture the the feeling of 2025 and what were the historical high notes. So also being a journal of record. It was a big year, dude. It was a big year. And all those things that you called out. I I they were big news. Uh, and I like that you also pointed out what a year it was for uh women's sport climbing. I want to say that we did that on Good Tempts too, where it was just the leap and ability in women's sport climbing was just incredible. I I don't know what it was, maybe there was more of those women uh competitors going outside, but I remember reading a tick list of Laura's I can't remember where she was, like someplace in France, and it was just like 14C on site, 14C on site, 14 D second try, 15A, like just I just remember looking at and I think Will Englin made the comment like this would be someone's lifetime achievement uh 10 years ago, like uh of any gender. Uh and yeah, just cool to see that. And I I always like thinking about what is significant about these ascents because you gotta think that someone's gonna have a podcast in 20 years and talk about you know, it's like Alan Watts Rap Bolting to Bolt or Not To Be, which was I remember looking at that when I was a kid, probably in like '93 or '94, just thinking, that's 514. Or Chain Reaction had this big draw, it was on the cover of the guidebook. And I don't really know, but it always held this mystique. And I thought it was because it was like a roof. It was like a short roof. Uh well, when I say roof, it was like a little segment. And so when you guys make these choices to highlight these things, it influences people who pick it up, see a picture when they're 15, and then spend their whole life training to then go and fly to that destination and do that climb. You know, uh they you read that story, someone's gonna read that and be like, I want to do Lexicon, the E11 that Adam on for Flash, and it will stay with them and change their life, really. Yeah, I think that's a really nice way to put it. I mean, these you want these roots and these ascents that are documented to be touchstones. I mean, speaking of Smith, like one thing that brought the Smith story full circle was a story we had from Kyle Higbee who freed basically the last standing arette on Monkey Face that had been bolted by Watts, uh, Ron Calc, and Wolfgang Goolich in the late 80s for a you know, Wild World of Sports show. Like the goal for them was to bolt the route and then do it in a few days for the cameras, but they ended up bolting this thing that was like way, way hard, 514, and had sat there for years until Kyle came along and did it. I think all the moves had been freed, but it's committing. You have to skip a clip. And he did it this year. And yeah, we have a cool two-page story about that, you know. So here's someone, you know, guy in his early 20s coming along, yeah, 40 years after this thing was bolted and doing it, you know, really sort of bringing the sport climbing story full circle. Gosh, how wild is it that people still like if you've ever been to Smith Rock and done the hike out to Monkey Face, you like see this pillar when you are hiking there and it stands out and it looks wild. And it's so cool that there's still these features that are right there, waiting for people to make their mark. And I have like this visceral memory of seeing just do it as a little kid and just being blown away. Like, and and I just love those moments in climbing where you stand in awe underneath something and and you just it almost seems like too big for you, too, too hard, too, you know, something to aspire to. And so I I love that you guys highlight these firsts. Not that there is anything wrong with going and doing just do it, because that is still incredible. But I like that what qualifies as significant for you guys is is something that's unlocked, that that's new. Yeah, I think that's a good way of looking at it. It's unlocked, it's new, maybe it was a long-standing project, and it helps advance the sport. So we used to have a lot of climbing magazines, and I guess we still do, but uh they they do not occupy as big of a part of our media as they used to. Now we have Instagram, YouTube podcasts. Um, what do you think about climbing media today and how do you think the ACJ fits into it? And and maybe you can start by telling me you know your history in the climbing industry as you know, part of the one who made that climbing media. Yeah, I mean, I I started writing for climbing magazine in the mid 90s, I think. Um started out small and eventually moved up to a desk editor and kind of bounced in and out of that role from 2002 until got 2023. To work there, rock and ice, alpinist. Um, yeah, I've kind of been at all the pubs, either as a writer or contributing editor, or a desk editor, or freelance editor, and have certainly been full-time employed by climbing under under various owners as well. I mean, you know, one thing that that seems to have happened in America was and everywhere, you know, is that the magazine model was broken by the internet and then has changed, I think, regrouped and re-aggregated as a result. It seems like what's happened is you know, the the era of the glossy monthly or even weekly is uh has dwindled because of, I mean, the internet where at first there all the information was free. Now all the good stuff's paywalled, you know, you can get plenty of crap for free, but it's crap. Um and that really impacted the magazines, you know, because subscribers would go away, you have fewer and fewer subscribers, then you have less of a thing to pitch to advertisers because essentially what you're selling to advertisers is eyeballs on their ads and on their products. So then advertising started to dry up. But you know, that's just been a trend for a while. Um it's nice to see that publications have some have survived, you know, the climbing zine and gripped and then Alpinist, and then Summit has been revived. But I think all of them are. I mean, uh Grip might be monthly still, I don't know. It's Canadian, but you know, I think they've all shown that what gives you staying power these days and what people want to pick up is slower-paced, long format, niche, you know, curated content that might be quarterly or annually or something like that. Um, you know, Climbing magazine essentially exists now as a website, but they have you know robust reporting. I mean, they're still doing a lot of the things that they did back in the day in print. It's just now that it's digital, but you know, it's paywalled. But yeah, I mean, good reporting and journalism going on there. I still write for them, and and you know, they have a very talented editorial staff. But yeah, I think the big shift, right, has been away from the advertiser and subscriber supported reader model. I mean, with the ACJ, you know, the the American Alpine Club, we're a nonprofit, we're a club of passionate climbers, basically. And you know, one of the benefits of joining the club is that you get these publications. So essentially these publications are supported by our members. There's also people who donate specifically to different publications, but we don't have to rely on quote-unquote subscribers. There's a few ads in the front of the journal, but it's not like the magazine model, you know, where you need usually like at least 50% ads, or you're just not going to be profitable. Uh so that in a way has been really freeing, you know, that and having the annual format, not having to follow and chase the news cycle. Um, but yeah, I it just seems like the current state of climbing media is a lot of first-person news appearing online on Instagram, a lot of stuff on YouTube. I mean, honestly, a lot of these stories that I got in here was just because I watch a shitload of YouTube at night, like after after the kids' bedtime or dinner, I sit down and watch YouTube or I listen to podcasts like like like like yours, you know, and I hear something, and I'm like, oh, that would make an amazing story. So a lot of the leads that I got for this are through the ways that people report and or self-report their sense these days. Yeah, it's so different. Now I used to just I was a climbing magazine subscriber. It was so important to me as a kid. So important. And it was also just the way you heard about Sens happening and now people just post about it on Instagram. I mean, sometimes it's literally live. Like it was wild when Jakob Schubert did B.I.G. Um, but he did it live, like on camera. And then there's the other end of the spectrum where you have like Sean Bailey. There was rumors about him doing uh what turned out to be duality of man, but no one had seen it for you know about a year, and it it debuted in the Mellow Rock tour. And I I think the the thing I like about the changing media landscape and something that I try to do with the podcast is that something like Sean doing a groundbreaking, you know, America's first 15 D, something really hard, is that I want to hear a podcast about it. I want to see a story about it on or I'd see a whole feature-length film. I want to read an article written about it. And I just think that you know, the old model, we only had like one way to showcase something really. It was a magazine. And now, like if it's a story or a scent that is really special, I want to hear about from every angle I can get my hands or ears or eyes on, yeah? Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, that's one thing that's actually gotten a lot better. Like, say Sean Bailey did Duality 15 years ago, there would have been a dogfight between climbing over rock and ice over who got the photos and who Sean was going to write it for. And one magazine would have got it, and the other one would have run a little paragraph, and the whole thing would have been kind of messed up and shortchanged, you know, whereas now he can sit on the news, he can eventually have like a you know a short Instagram caption, and then there could be an in-depth film, you know, like like like Ben Nielsen made that goes on the mellow tour and is is killer and goes deeper, or he can come on a podcast and talk about you know the nuances of the ascent, like getting it, yeah, like these fascinating details, right? Like he can only try it a couple times, he'd have to get there at night or late in the day and wait till it was out of the sun. You know, he was living in Tucson just to do this route. I mean, yeah, I think it's cool. Like you can kind of get you can get the sound bite in real time, and then you can get the deeper story later told through, you know, whatever, whatever medium, yeah, be it print or or an interview or or or video. It's cool how many avenues there are now for storytelling. Like back in the day, I mean in the 80s, a 514 could get done. The only place to read about it was climbing a rock and ice. By the time you read about it, three or four months would have gone by since the route had been done because of the magazine's print cycles and the delay there. And you know, you wouldn't have heard about it on the internet, so you'd see a photo and a magazine. I mean, it was kind of cool. It was sort of like being a kid on Christmas morning and unwrapping a box and the surprises inside. But in a way, it also probably stifled the sport somewhat because there was just less information about what was getting done. Well, at first it felt like the pendulum swung too far the other way, and you would just get like this little snippet on Instagram. It would be like groundbreaking, and then you know, you'd scroll past it and you'd never hear about it again. I think some of the athletes were kind of bummed about this wild experience that they had getting basically five seconds of your eyeballs and then it was gone. Uh and now hopefully there's more avenues, but uh it makes me wonder when we talk about the significant essence, there's the the number and the fact that it happened, but what's the thread that makes these good stories? Like that are things that stick with you. Like I remember Sharma's story about realization, like or Espontus. Um, you know, and like especially when you're younger, you get inspired by stories. And so yeah, I'm curious what you think makes a good story because it's also important for athletes who are listening who do also have to go direct to their their fans to make sure that they know how to communicate what it's really like rather than just like the numbers 9B, like, you know, great. And then you click like and who cares? Yeah, like good job. Congrats. Uh, you know, I I try to approach editing and curating these stories primarily from the perspective of the reader. I'm not there to sort of help the writers fluff their egos, not that anyone even was, because everyone who wrote for us was was psyched and coming from a place I think of of truly caring about the their ascent and humility. But yeah, I think it's just what's going to be interesting to a reader. I mean, I I have very limited time to read because I read all day and I have four kids. So when I read at night, I just want to read something interesting, you know? And so, like, for example, I get the New Yorker and I used to read it cover to cover, but now I'm just like, which stories in here are interesting? And and that's what I read. Or I just started a book of Stephen King's short stories, and they're all interesting because he's Stephen King, you know, he's he's the master, or when I click on a story online, and and I think that was the approach that I tried to take with the ACJ. What's interesting, and often, I mean, or always really, what's interesting about climbing stories is the human side of the story and the details. Like you said, a number's a number. Like the number 515B is not interesting. In fact, it's meaningless and it's mathematically insane anyway. Like, it's who cares? You know, it sounds like to a non-climber, it sounds like gibberish. But like, you know, Hamish MacArthur, when he did Megatron, the day he did it, it was like his eighth burn of the day, and he was rapid firing, and he was climbing all the way out to the lip. And I think the time he did it, he he'd just come off a burn, and he just decided, hell with it, I'm rapid firing. And I talked to him about that, and he sort of just talked about getting into this, you know, sort of nature-infused flow state where that's what made sense to do. And he was like looking out across the canyon, out across Eldo, and spacing out and hearing the wind and the birds, and when he felt right to pull on, he pulled on, even if that was only one minute after the previous time he'd pulled on. Um, I think details like that they they stick with you, right? They do. It's what makes for good storytelling. You know, it's it's the old show don't tell. So I tried to really help all the writers show, you know, like with Andra on Lexicon, he talks about, you know, the story's called instant alpinism, and he talks about his roots on the the sandstone towers in in Chechia, right? Where insane runouts, very dangerous. And, you know, the locals call it instant alpinism because every route you do is about basically as committing as a huge route in the mountains because it it takes a real shift in mindset and a real uh steady head. And he basically talked about how he had developed that side of his climbing early on, but then got into performance climbing. And he worried that if he did too much of this kind of mental climbing, he'd get weak. Um, you know, so he felt like Lexicon was a return to his roots. Um, and so he talks about that. He talks about being nervous before he tied in, like having to take a couple minutes to go off to the side and sit by himself. And uh that stuck with me. You know, it's like here's Adam Andra, you know, he's on-sided and flashed 9A, this route's 8B plus. He knows it's well within his physical wheelhouse, but the consequences of a fall and the size of the fall at the crux, which is like a 7B boulder problem, you know, it's an 80-foot fall that may not end well if you fall past a certain point. And he knows that other climbers have taken the fall, and he needs to go sit by himself for a couple minutes and just think, am I there? You know? And I thought that was cool. Like, yeah, it's these details, it's these moments, it's the emotions that that stick with you. And I I tried to help the writers find find that within all of their stories. I like that humanization element where I think we often look at people like Andra and you think of them as like a robot almost. And and also we do this math that is wrong where you think, well, he has on-sided 9A and Flash 9A plus, and AP is not that. It's you know, four grades lower. So of course he can do it, but I don't know about you, but I can fall off of anything. Like there's no guarantees out there. And you know, just that recognition that the best of the best aren't the best of the best because they're robots, they're just like you and me, and they just are able to put their best self forward again and again and again. And you know, I think Yanya has talked about that where we just like oh Yanya's competing, she's going to win. But that's not how it works. You don't go into the Olympics and just win gold. You still have to earn it every single time. And so I I just I love hearing that sigh of it because Almondra's just a climber. He's just he's a damn good climber, but he's tackling the same things we are. It's just uh, you know, I'm climbing 6B plus when it's scary, not 8B plus. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, it's being at your limit is being at your limit. It's a universal experience. And I think what universalizes that on the printed page is the details because fear is fear, and noticing, you know, crystals in the rock, whether it's 5'9 or 14b, is it's the same thing, you know. Yeah, zoning out, trying to center yourself for a scary ascent. You know, and I look at the photos too. I mean, there's these amazing photos by Peter Chodoro, I don't know if I'm saying his name right, that he sent us, you know, that he he shot that day stills. There's also obviously the video because you can watch it online. But, you know, on the hardcover, we have one of those photos, and it's kind of shocking to look at. Like you look at Andra, he looks fine, his eyes aren't bugging out of his head, but you look at the holds he's on and you look at the rope, and you don't see it clipped anything for a long, long ways, or maybe at all, and you think he's at the third V7, V8 boulder problem in a row, and he's 20 meters above his protection, and this is the first time he's been there. He hasn't rehearsed it. I mean, James Pearson had also gone ground up through that section, so it had been proven that one could, you know, given the the skill and the and the mindset. But yeah, you look at that photo, it's real, you know, it's just as real as a photo of someone way up on a Himalayan peak on the on the cover of the AHA. So I think that that viscerality is something that the journal will will convey. Good media and whatever different medium can you know be inspiring, whether it's a video or article. I do miss I or I shouldn't say I miss it, I guess I see on Instagram, but we've become a lot more video focused. There's just pictures that will just get me. And I have memories of seeing pictures of certain climbs. Like one of them is this thing, Tomet Jury, this like 8B Plus and the Verdun Gores is just miles of TUFAs. And like I just I it's still it's like top of my bucket list of climbs, and just photos. I I think I remember them even from the magazines way back then. Uh now we do videos, but photos can just have this well, they say, you know, photos worth a thousand words or something. And I don't know, it's cool to see that in print too. And I mean, of course, awesome to have alongside an article. Yeah, it's it's inspiring, man. Like gets my hand sweaty thinking about I can think of that picture you're talking about with Al Montre on that move with a rope just kind of swinging around in the air beneath him. And it's wild. It's fucking wild. Yeah, it's way out there. What he did is way out there. And I don't think it's not going to be repeated anytime soon. You know, he's uh he's a special case for yeah. Well, Matt, you're still doing it. You were climbing yesterday. Uh, you've like I said, you I know that you've climbed some wild stuff, but you're also on the boards. Uh, what is climbing like for you now that you've been doing it for a long time? Are you uh also looking to flash E11 or are you keeping it lower to the ground? Or you know, how do you

Matt's Relation To Climbing Over The Years

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yeah, what's your relation to climbing now that you've been doing it for for decades? Well, I did the math the other day because someone's like, oh, you must have been climbing like 20 years. I was like, uh now it's 39 years. So I've been climbing for 39 years, which is a really long time, and I certainly never thought I'd be climbing that long or be as old as I am now, but that's just what happens um when you when you manage to stay alive, which I'm grateful for. Um, I mean, climbing for me these days, you know, I have a full-time job. I have four children from ages 14 down to 18 months, which is um a lot. 18 months? You've got 18 months old? Oh, geez. A toddler and I'm 54. It's kind of in the thick of it still. Oh, dude. You were okay. Congrats. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it's it's a lot. My wife is is amazing, you know, looking after the kids. She she she loves it. So I I work to try to put food on the table and she she keeps them all busy and and happy. Um, yeah, it's not like a trad wife thing. That's the one I'm starting to sound like, Jesus. It's just where we ended up. There's been times where she's been earning, and I've been the the the childcare guy. Um but yeah, with four kids and a full-time job, I certainly am in the gym two to three days a week. That's just the reality of how much time I have. And and also on boards, I have a a grasshopper wall in my garage with the moon board 2024 set. Um, haven't used it much this year because I had hand surgery about six months ago. Um, so slowly getting back to the boards, but that's really nice. And then I have a gym, which is great, called the campus, which is a 10-minute walk from here, which is a boards and bouldering and training gym that opened oh, about a year plus ago. I mean, literally, there's a path behind my house called the Lobo Trail that's a gravel path through the forest past the lakes. I walk my dog there. It's a 10-minute walk. I can come inside with my dog, Cody. The owners, Claire and Eric, are super nice. They have dog beds out. Like it's it's it's pretty dreamy setup. Like I you couldn't ask for a better commute to a gym. And then, you know, there's gyms locally in Boulder where I go all the time to movement in the spot, Boulder Rock Club. Um, but you know, for me, I I try to get on rock one or two days a week when I can, you know, build my schedule around the weather. Lucky that I can do that. And I mostly sport climb these days. So, like yesterday I was out at Staunton State Park climbing at this place, the dungeon, which is an overhanging kind of cave rock jailhouse style, blocky, fixed straw crag, rifle style. More bouldering have kind of gotten back into that lately, I think, as an outgrowth of boarding, just realizing that I like it. Like I grew up bouldering in New Mexico. That was actually kind of our staple activity in Albuquerque because there's a lot of granite bouldering in the foothills of the Sandias right above town. So that was, you know, for a kid who's just gotten his driver's license and you know, you get out of school and maybe two or three friends can go out, but you don't have time to get out cragging. Uh, we did a lot of bouldering. So I guess have crash pads. What were you uh what were you using then? No, there was nothing. Uh what we were doing then was destroying our knees. Yeah. There was, I don't think we even had towels, you know, and and the sandia's is like hard-packed kind of granite soil cactus. No, there was a lot of like landing, a lot of rolling into cactuses, cactus spines in the butt, laughing at your friend with a prickly pair of cactus in his butt. Uh it's it was it was a junk show. Uh no, crash pads didn't come along. So if you went to do a highball, it was sort of like a big thing. Like we'd spot each other, but it wasn't like now where you drag out 10, 20 pads, and you're like, I'd probably take that fall. It was like, oh shit, I better not fall. Um yeah, I still love it. I still am trying to push myself. Um, like I said, I had had hand surgery for an infected pinky and tendon six months ago, which has been a setback, but yeah, don't I don't recommend it at all, but slowly healing from that. So you've done, I don't know, uh I don't know if I should say all the disciplines in climbing, all the disciplines that were talked about in the ACJ uh stories, very uh lots of rock climbing. What do you feel like is the consistent part that keeps you interested over the years? Like is it the aesthetics of the climb, whether it's a giant wall or a or a small boulder? Is it like movement? Is it just like the physicality uh in, you know, and always trying to like get better and stronger? Like what do you feel like has always made you come back year after year after year? I think the two big things for me are first ascents. I really love it. I love finding new areas, um, you know, tend to not like crowded cliffs. So if you're putting up routes and you get there first, it's just not going to be as busy. So that's one outgrowth of that. Like having grown up in New Mexico where there's just not that many people and certainly not that many climbers, kind of got used to empty crags. And you know, here in the front range of Colorado, an empty crag is is a rarity. And I mean, I was at a crag yesterday on a Wednesday, and there were people on every route. Like since since COVID, no one uh everyone's got a flexible schedule, so things are busier ever. But I think first ascents are a big motivator. I love the problem solving with first ascents, figuring out where a line goes, working out the sequences on something that's never been climbed before. I think that that's kind of a sacred experience that you know more climbers might endeavor to have. I mean, it's interesting enough to be strong and watch beta videos and come along and flash or do something quickly, but there's not much mystery there, right? If you're like, I've flashed 20 V10s, I just watched this beta videos from this from 10 different angles, and you go up to the problem and you do it in five minutes. Is that experience gonna stay with you other than you know being, I guess, interesting on a physical level? Probably not. But if no one's ever unlocked something before, or if it's a rarely done climb, and you've got to put in all this time and days and days and days to decipher sequences, I think that that's pretty cool. Um, I think the other thing that motivates me is you know, there's a podcast interview somewhere with Scott Franklin, and he put into words what I sort of sought for years to conceptualize. And he just said he really liked pushing himself because there's a question mark. Like when you're pumped out of your gourd or when you're powered down, and you can see the Hold and it's within reach and you decide to go for it, there's a question mark. Will I stick it or will I not? And I really like that. Uh, I still like that feeling now as as much as ever, you know. So I do try to find routes were bolder problems where, yeah, that question mark is there until it isn't. You know, it's it's fine to go do things that you can do quickly, but after 39 years of climbing, does another 13A tick change my life that I do in a couple tries or flash or on-site? Not necessarily, but does a route that's taken me months to do enrich me more? Yeah, I I think it does. So those are the things that uh still still drive me. I love those moments in climbing where it's it's not even the the question, I guess the that idea that question mark of whether or not you're going to make that move. Like that's interesting. I think what I love is when I commit, and there's still gonna be a question if I make it or not, but it's that decision to go for it. Like it, you you I like you still don't know what the outcome is, and maybe it that's like the the way I'm interpreting it is like you don't know if you're gonna make it or not, but you commit and you give it your all, and then you get to find out what happens. And just those moments, it's almost those flow states where you're just in it and trying your hardest, and then whatever happens, happens. And you don't usually feel bad if also if you tap into that that side of you, like I have some times I didn't send, but I gave it my all. I committed, and then I when I found out what the question was, was I wasn't going to make it, you kind of come away just fine. You're like, yep, I went for it. Everything I had, uh, and I don't know, those are still fulfilling. So yeah, it's uh I I thought you were gonna say the the one thing I didn't uh put into those litany of things that could be interesting to you was community and people. And then you're like, I like to go out to places where no one is, uh which I thought was funny, uh, but sorry. I'm so I'm super anti-social. I know my job is a club, and it's to for yeah, I'm like, as my wife, I'm terrible. I mean, I'd barely leave the house. Well, what what would be advice or message to a young Matt who is obsessed? And then similarly, what's your advice to someone who is older and obsessed and has been doing it for a long time? Wow, to a young me. I would have lots of advice as I'm sure we'd all have to our younger selves to not uh I try not to think this. I know, exactly. Yeah, it's the kind of thing they'll just keep you up at night staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m. Uh don't get infected tendon in your pinky. All right, check, yeah. Check, yeah, get to urgent care a little quicker, check, yeah. Uh I would probably, I know it sounds like a platitude, but I would probably tell the younger me to embrace the process a lot more. I mean, when you're young, you're hungry and you're trying to, you know, I mean, a lot of us, I mean, you come from a competition background. I mean, a lot of us in our 20s and even in the 30s were like, I want to be the best, which is of course meaningless and almost impossible for other than a handful of people. So I think I would have told younger me to embrace the process a lot more, you know, because I used to have huge fits when I fell off, you know, wobblers, right? Because all I cared about was ticking something quickly or being seen as strong or being seen as dominating some root, instead of just being like, what's the most amount of fun I can have on this experience, even if I'm pushing myself? So I think that would be in my advice. My advice to someone who's who's older, honestly, would probably be exactly the same. I mean, so many bad, dark, terrible things can happen in life, and I've seen them. And if you can go out and have a day of climbing, what a gift, you know, to have your health, to be able to walk up a hill to a rock, to be able to try to climb that rock, you know, and I like anyone, I'm human, and then when I'm in a bad mood, I lose sight of that. I can still get grumpy when I fail. I got a little grumpy yesterday when I punted on this route, you know, and then after like a minute on the ground, I was fine. But yeah, I mean, awful things can happen and will to anyone who lives long enough, or your life is cut short and you don't live long enough to see the bad things happen to your loved ones. But I think that would be my advice is take everyday climbing as a gift. And, you know, even if you get out there and you're tired and you're not having the best day, find something fun to do that day, you know, find a good plan B, whatever. If you don't feel like climbing, sit on a rock. I mean, any anything. Yeah. Man, that reframing is so hard to do when you're young, psyched, and in shape. Where this would happen to me often is you get strong and you're sending. And then what you do is you like keep trying even harder, and you often get injured, and you're just like, oh, like I need to climb harder and harder and harder. Or you're coming back from being injured, and you're like, I didn't really appreciate that. I was actually in great shape. I was having a blast. I was climbing hard. And then you you could have just taken a step back. And I remember this the other day, I was out for a run, and I hate running. I don't run. Um, running is well, well, well, okay. But it was my reframing because I was, I was like, I'm tired. And I was thinking to myself, my mom uh who lives with us a good chunk of the time, and she's 77 and she likes to run. I was thinking to myself, she probably would appreciate how tired I'm getting. Like, you have to almost be in good enough shape to like get really tired, you know, and she's 77. While she's in good shape for being 77, you know, like she can get tired from just like kind of walking quickly uphill. And I was like, she would be psyched to get to be tired in the same way I am from running. So it's like a privilege to get to be exhausted, to get to be shut down on your project. You have to earn the ability to even fail at that high level. And so just having a little gratitude for that moment is easier said than done, though, I will admit. Yeah, yeah, it definitely is. I mean, I, you know, I was boarding a lot last year on the tension board too at the campus, and you know, trying to do, like I told you, trying to do like the classic V10s, the V9s, I mean, stuff that's at the upper limit for me. And I'd have days where I'd do well, and days where I'd go in there and it'd feel greasy or I'd feel heavy or whatever. And now that my finger's injured and I get on there, I'm like, oh, I look at my tick list and I pull these things up, I'm like, oh wow, shit. I was doing actually doing pretty well. Like, and I just took it for granted. I was like, oh, this is just how I am, which is completely stupid. I mean, it's all temporary, right? Like where you're at and and your health are things that can are very, very transitory. Well, that's all interesting. The only uh bummer thing to hear is that you haven't figured it out yet, even though you have been doing it for nearly 40 years and you're still learning the same lesson. So I don't know, man. I feel like this it's like we give these advice, and it's like, this is the advice that I'm giving to my current day self, actually. Uh so good luck. Um,

How To Go From Good To Great

1:13:08

I feel like I I accidentally kind of probably already asked this uh because you just had a really good answer about dealing with being younger or older, but I still am gonna give a shot with my classic question to everyone, and that's how do you go from good to great? You know, I think you go from good to great by putting the work in even when you don't feel like it. I I I thought about this because I knew you were gonna ask it, and I know other people have said that. You're just not always gonna feel like training, you're not always gonna feel like giving that fifth burn on the route. But if you do these things and push yourself, you will see benefits. I mean, like last night, I was out at the crag, you know, yesterday. I like I said, I got stomped on this route. I gave it like three or four burns, came home exhausted, but I was like, you know what? I didn't do much power training today. I can't really go in my garage because of my finger. I'm gonna lift weights. And I just made some coffee and turn on YouTube and had my dumbbells there and started lifting. And once I warmed up and did my first set, it felt great. And then when I went to bed, I felt really good and like I went to the gym this morning and and felt better for it, like a little activated. Um, yeah, I think it's I think it's consistency and it's putting the work in even when you feel like it's the last thing on earth you want to do, because those are the sessions that actually will matter. It's that idea of like relying on discipline rather than just motivation, which is like discipline is forever, motivation is fleeting, and you can't count on it, which is yeah, easy to hear, hard to put into practice. Totally. Okay, Matt, I hear your family coming home. Uh you can hear them. All right. Uh so let's let's move on to the the bonus questions that I I have for you for patrons only. And this one, I'll not say could be a little bit uh a little bit morbid. If you want to hear that QA and other extra behind-the-scenes content from this episode and others, head over to patreon.com slash test piece to sign up now. Patrons also get their episodes early and ad-free. There's hours and hours of bonus content there to help you on your own path of going from good to great. Still not sure? There's a free seven day trial for you to check it out. And to help the show grow, please share this episode with someone who would love it. Okay, see you next week.