American Sport Climbing’s Contentious Beginnings

It was early in the year 1987. Todd Skinner and I were in Tucson, Arizona, at a pow wow of local climbers come together to discuss the “situation” at Mount Lemmon, a nearby granite area.

The meeting was held in an outdoor shop, a central hub of the Tucson scene. Around 50 people attended, verging from bearded dirtbag to well-appointed outdoor enthusiast. The owners had cleared the floor of clothing racks to accommodate the attendees, who sat on the floor or stood around the periphery of the gathering. It smelled like your typical outdoor shop—new clothes, leather and rubber. 

On the New Wave side was Ray Ringle—a reserved guy who didn’t say much during the meeting. I think Michael Jimmerson was there. The photographer Bill Hatcher was there. Bill spent time with Todd and me in Tucson. Todd and I were an odd couple: him a cowboy from Wyoming, and me a plumber’s son from Pudsey, England. Todd was on board with sport tactics, and had arrived at his mindset through hard-won experience, having climbed most of the hardest cracks in the world including The Gunfighter (5.13b) and City Park (5.13d). 

Todd understood that the “blank” walls between the cracks were where the future of climbing lay, and that placing bolts on rappel­—what would become known as sport climbing—was the answer. But numerous influential climbers such as John Bachar, who believed  that climbs should only be done as they’d always been done, starting only from the ground and if bolts had to be placed, they were drilled on lead. At least half of the climbing community was with Bachar, vehemently opposed to the new style, and to Todd’s professional approach to climbing. Some detractors even attacked him personally, accusing him of cheating—chipping holds, lying about sends and taking steroids.

When I came to the States I was a confirmed trad climber—ground up, no rappel-placed bolts, no working out the moves on the rope (hangdogging). If you fell you lowered and pulled the rope before trying again. But over the course of 1987 my ethics flexed. By the time I got to Mount Lemmon I was starting to see the value in sport climbing. 

A few days before the meeting, I’d made the first ascent of a route Ringle had bolted on rappel on the Beaver Wall at Mount Lemmon. I called my new creation Rage to Live (5.13a). 

Things became heated at the gear shop when the Beaver Wall came up. A bearded dirtbag stood up. He exclaimed that there was no place for rap bolting on Mount Lemmon. “I intend to sort things out,” he said.

Of course, we questioned his motivation and asked him not to damage the routes. He wasn’t having any of it. I suggested that there was the possibility for the happy coexistence of sport (rap bolted) and trad. The suggestion only seemed to aggravate him more, and at that point I backed off feeling like he was some crazy ethics evangelist. 

The meeting dispersed, and Todd and I felt this wouldn’t be the end of things, and sure enough it wasn’t because within a day or so Rage to Live was chopped and defaced. 

The mid-1980s were a breakwater for climbing in both my home, the U.K., and the United States. In Britain, the traditional style was beginning to yield. Some climbers favored rappel inspection and prepping routes with fixed gear—pitons not bolts—and the odd hold was being chipped. In contrast, most climbers in the United States were holding onto a strong ground-up ethic, but condoned bolts to protect free routes, such as face climbs in Tuolumne, provided they were placed on lead. 

This was midway through Margaret Thatcher’s two terms as Prime Minister, and 3 million Brits were unemployed, roughly seven percent of the workforce. Unemployment played straight into the hands of a hard-core faction of the climbing community. We didn’t want to work; we wanted to climb, and claiming unemployment was the way forward: Sign on every two weeks as unemployed, get a paycheck for about $70, about $170 in today’s money, from the government and go climbing! 

All was well in my world until August 1986, when a bombshell dropped: Alan Rouse, whose house I was living in at the time, died on K2, one of five climbers to succumb to a severe storm. The property where we lived was to be sold, and I was forced to relocate. Al had been like a much-loved older brother to me. I was heartbroken, but being kicked out of the house was the nudge I needed to cast off the Sheffield comfort blanket and visit my good friend and fellow Brit Jonny Woodward (JW) in sunny California.

Jonny carried no extra weight. He wore hand-me-downs and metal-rimmed glasses that gave him a nerdy look—he wasn’t bothered about his appearance. Exceptionally bright and ingenious, he taught me how to stack hexes for protection, since cams hadn’t yet been invented. His reason for being in the United States was Maria Cranor, a Southern California crusher who Lynn Hill would later write was, “the first person I ever saw climbing really hard.” Jonny and Maria had met on a U.K./U.S.A. climbing exchange in 1982. Until then I doubt JW had had a girlfriend. He was 110 percent into climbing and very good at it—a leading light in the British climbing scene, a maverick and never boastful, not part of any clique. 

Jonny was in Ventura, doing a bit of work for Chouinard and Gramicci. For a while I stayed with JW at Maria’s place along with a mysterious character who occupied the sofa. I was told the couch surfer was developing a new type of climbing rubber. I thought nothing of it, but the guest was Charles Cole, the founder of Five Ten.

After a few days sunning myself on the beach, fraternizing with the girls in the then-fledgling Patagonia office and bouldering with JW on the Gramicci building, Jonny, Maria and I, along with Yosemite Stonemaster and confirmed traditionalist Darrell Hensel, headed for Hueco. 

Hueco Tanks, Texas

From the outset I realized that Hueco was special: a unique igneous rock (syenite porphyry) complex near El Paso, Texas, with pockets (called huecos in Spanish), extensive bouldering, traditional climbing, and bolted routes, and next to no climbers. Few climbers meant less politics and, in contrast to most established areas in the States, the somewhat harmonious coexistence of traditionally bolted climbs and ones bolted on rappel. 

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