Which of the Big Three is the hardest?
Slapshot.
  
Ever get scared bouldering without a pad?
One night, I was on a 25-foot highball on east face of Square Rock on Dinosaur Mountain — I got stuck high on that one day and held there for about an hour, waiting for a hiker to help me, but no one came by. It was either jump or top out, I topped out. I never got back on it, it felt so difficult but I guess I was up there a long time. Christian Griffith has since bolted the three lines on that face, but they were all done pre-rope and pre-pads. Scary. I’d pop a few crystals now and again and take big falls; it was part of the game. We never spotted either. It would just drive me crazy having someone with there hands behind my back. You hang on a lot tighter if there is no one to catch you! But we didn’t fall all that much — we would jump off a lot of the harder things — but we were in control most of time.
  
Did you ever train for hard bouldering?
We were serious about the climbing but never let it get in the way of a good time. But we worked out by traversing on flagstone buildings, or if it was raining we’d go exercise at the gym. I was never really prepared mentally or physically. I’d just get psyched at the boulders and do stuff. I just got so excited about being outside and the good weather and good friends, sometimes I’d just have a good climbing day. I sometimes wonder if there were climbing gyms around when we were climbing if we would have just tore ourselves up, we had so much enthusiasm. We would have been in there seven days a week trying to crimp the tiniest of things. I could never wrap a crimp smaller than a quarter inch though — I would just open hand everything small. Just have fun and be psyched. If you are giving up having fun for the difficult aspect of the sport, you’re going to regret it when you’re my age. When you're plugged into it, it is hard to realize 

John Bachar and John Gill have said that you were the most elegant climber they ever saw. What do you think of that?
Wow, they don't give up compliments lightly! I remember someone saying once that I had good technique — I didn’t think that at all. But from the Johns it is a big compliment, and I really appreciate that from them.
  
Egos can play a role in difficult climbing. Did you ever find yourself driven to establish things others couldn’t do.
I think everybody who starts off in a sport wants to be the best and I wanted that as a young climber, too. Later on, I never cared about it. Some people thought we were egotistical or "stuck up," but we were mostly misunderstood. We were just quiet and shy and very serious about what we did. In hindsight, I might have zipped up somebody’s project without saying much to them, but it was on my circuit and I was a quiet guy. I tried to be friendly with everybody.
  
What do you think of the current grading system in bouldering?
When I started climbing, even in routes there was nothing harder than 5.10 — if it was harder than that it was still 5.10. Then came John Gill’s B-scale of 1,2, and 3. B1- was the top of the 5.10. B2- was quite a bit harder. And B3 was basically non-existen,t because if it could be climbed it wasn’t B3 anymore. I got tired of the numbers, and the stars, and the letters, and the asterisks. They didn’t mean much to me back then so I just adopted an easy, medium, and hard  attitude. John Gill also developed the individual system called E-system. It was: that if a problem had been climbed once it was E-1, if by 6 people it was E-6 if it was climbed by too many people it wasn’t considered hard anymore. The trouble with that was in the really obscure areas are many E-1s, but they might not be that hard. I’m a little familiar with the V-system and I don’t know what it is up to now. Who really knows? I’m tall, and you're shor,t so we have to climb differently anyway. Sometimes a problem is B3 in the summer and B1 in the winter. Make up a scale that works for you, if you need one. Rating s have gotten a little out of hand  —they are setting the standards for the public’s eye and that isn’t what it was all about.