During the past four years, I’ve been operating a VW Golf TDI sporting a fuel efficiency of 45mpg; I run it on bio. I also practice rain catchment to water plants with rainwater from my house. I support a local organic coop. So yeah, I have chipped some pockets in the past (forgive me, father, for I have sinned), but I also made decisions throughout the rest of my lifestyle that are responsible when viewed from a larger perspective. It’s really easy to look at someone from one angle when forming an opinion about his character.

Most people don’t put much thought into how we live, on or off the rock…
Certainly. Not just other people, but it starts with yourself. I used to be really judgmental of people, especially fat people, but now I’m more the type of person who says there’s a lot of cultural factors and advertising, and health factors, condition, genetics, behavioral things that went into that person getting that way that I don’t even understand. Maybe they’re not happy being fat

Do you have an 8a.nu scorecard?
No, I don’t. I’m probably coming across as an old guy, and this is what’s interesting, from what I’ve heard people say about me online, that I just want to promote myself and exploit the sport for my own means. But have you ever seen an 8a card with my name on it? To me, the advent of 8a is brilliant, because the whole business model is set up so that you have all these people competing indirectly, which is the phenomenon we’re tending towards. People want that, and they’ll do all this work to build your site up because they want to promote themselves, but you get to sell the advertising and you make the money; the climbers don’t make anything off of it.

It’s a competition form, and I don’t believe in indirect competition. It’s primarily used for people that aren’t accomplished competition climbers. The Euros will bop in and out of it, but if you look at the World Cup ranking, it doesn’t correspond to the membership of 8a. I don’t even mean the performance of the people on 8a; I just mean the membership. It’s almost a different demographic — it’s the demographic of the indirect competitors. In order to compete, you have to compete directly. That’s competition. Another thing I don’t like is that it just turns the route into something for your ranking. It disinclines people from doing good routes or boulder problems if they are stiff for the grade, and promotes grade chasing where areas are soft.

Which is just gonna lead into the vortex.
I’m gonna sound like an old guy, but we didn’t have the Internet when we started climbing, and now it commodifies performance.