America's Purest Climber, Henry Barber, speaks on the morass called progress. Interview by Duane Raleigh (part 2)

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STYLE AND ETHICS?
HB: Ethics are accepted standards, like those between a sport climber and a trad climber who agree to leave each other's climbs alone. In some cases, ethics are driven by the state, as in Dresden, Germany, where they actually have laws that govern climbing.

When you break the local ethics, you break the accepted way of doing things.

Style is your interpretation of climbing, and doesn't affect anyone else. My interpretation is I don't use cams. They are great. I've used them on mixed routes, but I don't use them on rock. To me, they are not unethical, they just aren't my style. I also believe that when you go to Rome, you do as the Romans do. So, when I went to Dresden, I climbed in their style to maximize the experience. I didn't use chalk and climbed barefoot. What's the point in going to a climbing area and treating it just like your home crag?

IS ANY ONE STYLE BETTER THAN ANOTHER?
HB: I love to solo. It's my style. Eighty percent of my solos were on-sight. I'm not saying my style is any better anyone else's. It's not about competition. Anything I do stylistically is for me. I don't use a harness. I still climb with a swami and no leg loops, and I've never failed on a climb because I didn't have the right stuff. The gear that I have suits my style of climbing. I don't have to carry a lot of stuff, and I'm always self-reliant. I don't want people emulating me-certainly not soloing. It's important that you use your own style and own heart and soul and own path, and when you go to areas that have questionable ethics, you improve on the style. You can change the way people view their style.

In 1973 and 1974, we were all yo-yoing the hell out of routes in the Gunks. We did them clean, but we yo-yoed them. Then we started pulling the rope. In 1975, when I went to Australia, I decided that if I fell or lowered, I'd pull the rope. I changed my style from there on out. What I did wasn't ethically better, it was stylistically better.

Climbers today invent all of these terms for how they climb. Like redpoint, pinkpoint ... Why do you have to describe how clean you are? Either you took a bath or you didn't. It's ridiculous. People have all these terms to keep themselves honest, but they have to look inside to really be honest. The cleanest way to climb is to go from the bottom of the crag to the top without pre-inspecting.

WHICH CLIMBING AREA HAS THE STRICTEST ETHICS?
HB: Germany-Dresden for sure. And gritstone in Britain. Absolutely fantastic. Rost Kante in the Bielatal in the Elbsandstein, near Dresden, was put up in 1927. I've tried it four times and failed! It's 5.11, overhanging friction on a wall about 100 degrees. Your first ring is 45 feet up. It's horrendous. I'm in awe of the thing. We should have more routes like this in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world. Other pure routes that come to mind are Dave Breashears' Perilous Journey, near Boulder, and Allen Austen's Wall of Horrors at Almscliff, in Yorkshire, England.

WHICH CLIMB REMAINS ON YOUR TICK LIST?
HB: The Bachar-Yerian is another one of four or five routes in the world that I want to do. It's one of the most brilliant routes. The people who criticize it for not having enough bolts should be grateful Bachar put in any bolts at all.

HAS BACHAR GOTTEN A FAIR SHAKE IN HISTORY?
HB: He was a difficult character, as was I. He didn't foster a lot of allies, and that was unfortunate because he was being pure in his style and ethics. A lot of sport climbers today can't even relate to Bachar because they can't comprehend what he did. They can't even lead a 5.8 trad route.

HOW DO U.S. ETHICS COMPARE TO THOSE WORLDWIDE?
HB: Better than most, but not better than Britain. The absolute worst is France. Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany are also terrible. For them, it's purely athletic. It's a trend. They can't shift their paradigms. It's one behind the other like lemmings. It has nothing to do with adventure. It confounds me because they do these outrageous BASE jumps and ski descents and parapentes, then take all of the danger out of climbing. Granted, limestone lends itself to bolting, but they've taken the ethic and applied it to granite. For instance, in Chamonix you have beautiful granite cracks that are bolted. An environment like this diminishes the accomplishments of speed ascents and enchainements because you aren't carrying the gear necessary to climb the routes in their natural states.

IS HEADPOINTING LEGIT?
HB: Sometimes it's a party trick. Those gritstone routes are f-king dangerous: They are marginal and the landings suck. People who are getting these things wired really need to soul-search. Toproping so you can eventually solo is pretty weird.

WHAT ABOUT GLUING AND CHIPPING?
HB: If you want to put a hold on, go find some cement overpass.

ARE EL CAP FREE ASCENTS REALLY FREE IF THEY USE CHIPPED HOLDS, LIKE THE ONES ON THE JARDINE TRAVERSE ON THE NOSE?
HB: I'm sad the holds were chipped in the first place. You can't taint Lynn Hill's ascent because the holds were chipped, just like you can't blame people who are free-climbing pin scars. Then she went back and did it in a day! People who are moaning about it should go free-climb the Great Roof and Changing Corners, then go and try to eliminate the Jardine Traverse.

WHY AREN'T CLIMBERS LINING UP TO FREE THE NOSE?
HB: Because guys are afraid to fail on [Hill's] route.

DID ONE CLIMBER INFLUENCE YOUR STYLE OR ETHICS?
HB: Many climbers have influenced me, including Jim Erickson, John Stannard, Steve Wunsch, Roger Briggs, and a plethora of historic international climbers from the 1950s and 1960s.

ARE RUNOUT CLIMBS THE RESULT OF EGO OVER ETHICS?
HB: Sometimes it's ego over ethics, like when a 5.12 climber establishes unprotected 5.6-to-5.8 climbs. But, if a 5.12 climber is regularly establishing runout routes in the 5.10+ to 5.11 range, it's probably just a really gifted climber using his style and head strength to avoid over-bolting.

WHAT WAS AMERICAN'S BEST STATEMENT OF STYLE?
HB: Pete Cleveland's ascent of his route on the Superpin [Needles of South Dakota] has not been bettered. He led that in 1967, and the route has never been repeated on lead. Every year that passes without an ascent makes his climb that much more impressive. What he did was so inconceivable. It was a statement to the world. When I climbed my route on Superpin, in 1977, I actually thought I was doing Pete's route. It wasn't until I climbed past the mangled pin and got higher that I realized I wasn't.

WHY DIDN'T YOU GO BACK AND REPEAT HIS ROUTE?
HB: I didn't have the cojones to do his route. And I was a good climber then-nothing in the world stopped me.

HAVE CLIMBING ETHICS IMPROVED SINCE THEN?
HB: I think style and ethics have both degenerated since Cleveland's climb. In the late-1970s and early-1980s, I got really disillusioned with sport climbing-by its lack of style and the lemming, or sheep, mentality. It's homogenization, like McDonalds or Wal-Mart. Climbing is about using your guts and experience. I always thought that climbing was about individualism; sport climbing was about following a trend.

ARE THERE ANY SPORT CLIMBERS YOU RESPECT?
HB: What Alex Huber and Tommy Caldwell are doing on El Cap is amazing. These two have transferred their talents to trad climbing, taking it to a whole new level. Dean Potter is also doing a fantastic job, though he's not really a sport climber. He's slacklining and speed climbing and soloing and going to Patagonia and applying all of that in the mountains. He is redefining how you look at it. When you take things like the Tombstone [outside Moab, Utah] and run-out a 200-foot pitch, that's fantastic! It gives people pause, causes them to look at their climbing differently. We need more examples like this in climbing.

HAS ANYTHING GOOD COME FROM SPORT CLIMBING?
HB: I love the athleticism, I love the camaraderie, but at the same time that is what's holding sport climbers back. But, I wish gym and sport climbers could see the real beauty of someone's commitment to a lifestyle of climbing with real risks and hardships. Jim Donini will hate this interview because he'll say people should quit whining and just go climbing. Look at Donini-he's 60 and doing alpine routes and hard rock routes and sport climbing. He's the one still getting it done and the guy we should all admire. Our society has a sense of entitlement. Climbers believe that because they climb 5.12 or 5.13, they are better than someone who climbs 5.10, and they aren't happy climbing a lesser number. Instead of focusing on the style of their climbing, they are doing whatever they need to do to climb at that highest grade. There's a certain amount of ego, greed, fear, dysfunction and incompetence. These are all traits of man. It's in business, it's in sport. I see society as going downhill. The last thing to go downhill should be climbing. Climbing should be about adventure.

CAN SPORT CLIMBS AND TRAD ROUTES COEXIST?
HB: The Red River Gorge and New River Gorge have excellent trad and sport routes that coexist.

ARE STYLE AND ETHICS REALLY IMPORTANT, AND DO THEY MEAN ANYTHING OUTSIDE THE WORLD OF CLIMBING?
HB: Style and ethics contribute everything! The climbing community needs to step back and ask itself what style and ethics contribute to the aura of individualism and beauty of climbing. Climbing in a pure style should be a metaphor for life. What you learn in climbing can embolden you for what you face everyday in life.

WHAT TROUBLES YOU MOST ABOUT THE CHANGES IN CLIMBING ETHICS?
HB: People don't appreciate history. They think they're doing great stuff, but people were doing really hard things 50 or 100 years ago. If people don't have a sense of history, then they won't know how to develop an area or establish a route.

A RECENT TREND IS TO RETRO-BOLT EXISTING ROUTES, ADDING BOLTS TO MAKE ROUTES SAFE FOR EVERYONE. SHOULD RETRO-BOLTS BE CHOPPED?
HB: I don't approve of retro-bolting. Routes should remain in the original style they were done. I don't believe in chopping, though, unless the community can come together and agree to remove bolts. Indiscriminate chopping leads to hold chipping and bolting wars, and the rock and future generations are the ones that suffer.

SHOULD THE BOLTS THAT WERE ADDED TO YOUR ROUTE ON THE SUPERPIN IN THE NEEDLES BE CHOPPED?
HB: Yes-I consider my route on Superpin to be erased since the bolts were added.

WHAT IS THE GREATEST THREAT TO CLIMBING NOW?
HB: I'm worried about the gym climber coming outside, but, conversely, a lot of gym climbers are into bouldering, and that's pretty pure. Nationalism will play a huge role in the future of climbing. Foreign climbers have a big influence when they are climbing harder than Americans, and I'm afraid America will emulate them, especially in the mountains, where they leave trash, bolts and don't respect the indigenous people.

WHERE WILL CLIMBING BE 25 YEARS FROM NOW?
HB: You'll see more and more sport routes creep into trad areas. It's greed. We see it with people putting in routes as quickly as they can. The guys causing the problems at the climbing areas aren't the elite. It's a long, slow journey down. You'll see more rescues as people go out less prepared. Access will be threatened because park people and land owners won't want to manage a bunch of selfish climbers.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED MOST FROM CLIMBING?
HB: The most rewarding experiences in life come from doing more with less. Limiting the tools you use and relying on your mind allow you to move faster and climb more often on a wider range of media. Being less versatile and utilizing more stuff limits the amount of experiences you can have in both life and climbing.

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