Q: When was/is climbing's greatest moment?
A: I feel I was part of the best time in the history of American climbing, the 1960s. It also was a time when the best music ever was created, at least lyrically, and in the folk or folk-rock vein. Everything in those years was a revelation, pure discovery. I was surrounded by the likes of Kor, Robbins, Pratt, and Gill. I have memories of starlight seen from rattling freight trains through desert, to or from Yosemite. I have memories of looking up and seeing Eldorado, its walls mostly virgin. I see Higgins tiptoeing on Tuolumne knobs, laughing. Everything done in subsequent decades, I think, has been to build upon those fantastical beginnings. Nothing will excel the spirits we felt at that time. 

Q: How can we improve our sport?
A: We can improve our sport by moving beyond the concept of sport and viewing climbing more as art, where everyone is valued as an individual. 

Q: What makes you cry?
A: So much is lost in time, and one has only memory to keep it alive. Sometimes I think of a certain friend, or a climb, or sunset, or the laughter I had, say, with Kamps when he and I bouldered past dark one night on Flagstaff. There are countless images such as that, and they occur sometimes unexpectedly. I have to fight back a few tears. I am chronically nostalgic. 

Q: What’s the funniest damned thing you’ve ever heard?
A: I don’t know if it would be the funniest thing I ever heard, or I could say what the funniest thing is I ever heard, but one afternoon while I was playing speed chess at the university student union, with a crowd gathered around to watch, a fellow showed up. He saw my climbing shoes, which were sitting on the table, and started talking about climbing. Suddenly he blurted, “I’ve seen Ament climb, he’s not that good.” A few people standing there were spitting out their Pepsi. 

On my honeymoon eleven years ago I visited the rim of the Black Canyon. A lady ranger was standing there, and I asked, “Do the rangers still keep a guide of the climbs?” She turned and snarled at me, “Don’t even think about going down there and climbing. It would be too dangerous.” If she only knew the half of it. 

Q: Do you wake up cranky or excited?
A: I wake up sore. My body remains under a great deal of physical duress. I haven’t been exactly on top of my game health wise, and every morning is a rough business, getting the blood flowing and pain out of my legs and back. I’m excited, though, always that I haven’t gone away in the middle of the night. 

Q: Describe the perfect bivouac?
A: I’ve had a lot of great bivouacs, but one I won’t forget was on the Diamond in August 1964. Bob Boucher and I both could lie down, though end-to-end, on a ledge about a foot and a half wide. It was grassy, and thus soft. Lying on our backs, we could gaze at the stars above the wall. At our left elbows was a vertical drop of about 1500 feet. I was so happy to be there, at the impressionable age of seventeen. When the sun came up its warmth and brilliant light spilled instantly into the high air and onto the Diamond’s sheer, gorgeous yellow granite before anywhere else. We felt blessed, in a higher place than the whole rest of the world. 

Q: Describe the worst bivouac?
A: I took Rodger Raubach up the Diagonal, on Longs Peak. It was the 1000-foot route’s fourth ascent. Raubach talked a big climb but didn’t actually do too much climbing. One day I called his bluff and invited him go with me. To my surprise he agreed, but he was slow. The wall was wet and cold, so it took more time than when I did the route before with Larry Dalke. Raubach and I made it to Broadway at dark. We couldn’t cross the snow slope on Broadway. Dumbly, we had no light or ice gear and so sat right there on a small ledge. We had one sweater and a lightweight windbreaker. For food, we had two cherry lifesavers. We wrapped ourselves up in the rope the best we could, to shield us from the wind. It blew all night. It was frigid, and we suffered mightily. We expended all the energy we had in our bodies. It was difficult to get down the next morning, as exhausted and cold as we were. What a view of the gorgeous Diamond, though, rising directly overhead. Later, in the town of Lyons, Rodger had to leave his camera for gas.