You can show up at Everest having never really climbed before, because it's like hiking, basically. You can't show up on Meru and start up the thing unless you have years and years of experience. Climbing and spending time on the mountains is really the only way you can train.
I started very early, from five or six years old, to climb. To climb trees, to climb rocks everywhere I could. At some point, of course, I used a rope.
I grew up rock climbing.
I think climbing is less a sport and more a hobby, and as such, I think everybody's a beginning climber.
When I climb a building, I've been there already, and carefully planned how to start the climb as well as how to do it.
I love to read about the exploits of technical mountain climbers, but I've never done any vertical climbing.
Climbing is what I do.
My brother Bill, who is a year older, is a climber, and when I was in the seventh grade, he taught me how to rappel off the frozen waterfall in our backyard.
I remember when I started climbing more seriously. That was when I was six years old.
I was born into a climbing family.
I've always hated the danger part of climbing, and it's great to come down again because it's safe.
My first climb was on lead; there were pitons, no bolts.
I thought I knew how to jug, but when you only jug 30 meters to the top of a sport climb, you don't need good technique. But jugging 400 meters, that's a big deal.
Climbing is an understated culture.
People think I just walk up to a sheer cliff and climb it with no knowledge of anything, when in reality, there's tons and tons of information out there, and I'm already well tapped into it.
I actually just rock-climbed when I was away on vacation and now I'm searching out rock climbing gyms. That's my new obsession for 2013.
My mother and father met through climbing and it was totally natural that I would become a climber too.
For years I was a rock climber and nothing else. I went to school, yes, and university, yes, but in my heart I was a rock climber.
Traditional alpinism is slowly disappearing. It is becoming sport, indoors on small walls with holds where you cannot really fall.
The goal is not to solo. Of course, it is possible to move fast in alpine style also with a partner. I just need the right partner.
