42, climbing philosophy, and guidebooks with Kimbrough Moore

Kimbrough Moore is a Renaissance man. He’s a Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University, guidebook author, extremely strong climber, and overall amazing human being. Most people know him as one of the authors of the new Yosemite Bouldering Guidebook, but I (ironically) met Kimbrough at the local gym, Great Western Power Company. Vikas and I got to know him better through his recent project of writing Golden State Bouldering, a new bouldering guide to the San Francisco Bay Area.

A “selfie” of Kimbrough cruising up some coastal beauties

Rather than the typical Q&A format, Kimbrough asked if he could do a live interview via video conference, so we set an appointment and had quite the conversation. I had a few questions and ideas surrounding the topics of climbing philosophy, guidebook-writing, and training, but our conversation meandered everywhere. I attempted to condense our chat into a more Q&A format below. The bold and italicized text is content I found particularly interesting and the content in brackets are thoughts that ran through my head during the conversation. Enjoy!

Vikas and I have discussed in the past how much we regret not starting to climb earlier. The two of us agree that, like many other late starters in the sport, we will never be able to compete with top tier athletes like Drew Ruana or Alex Megos. Is there a point to our struggles? What would you say to those of us who are trying to climb as hard as possible despite the reality that we will never be the best?

One of the fundamental questions in Golden State Bouldering is: what is the meaning of climbing? The meaning climbing, I think, is just one example of the larger ‘age old question’ of what is the meaning of life? It's the kind of question that is great for late night pondering, but also for humor. That's why in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the answer is 42. It's so funny, because really, when you think about it, there is no answer to the meaning of life that actually feels satisfying. The question itself is defective. What could I say that would satisfy you? In actuality, what people often mean when they say meaning, they often mean what is their purpose in life.

So then, is there a purpose to life? If you're religious, then God is probably the source of purpose and there may be a whole book that God wrote about your purpose. Or maybe you're not religious and you think that we evolved through randomness combined with evolution, in which case life has no purpose at all. But those questions, I think, are just beating around the bush.

I think the better way of answering it is not so much what is the meaning of life, but is what meaning does a certain task add in our lives. So take your life, and look for the sources of meaning within it. I think that once you start thinking of it that way (in what ways is climbing meaningful for me), then it becomes pretty clear how climbing plays a central role in our sense of identity, our sense of community, our development of skills and expertise.

As for me, I'll never be the best climber in the world. There was a time when I wanted that when I was young, and I got pretty good, but I was also never the best. The drive and will to push my own abilities has always been something that's drawn me to climbing and one of the things I loved doing. But, as I get older, I know what it takes to push my body to the limits and that's a lot of work. I often just don't want to put that much work into maximizing my abilities, so climbing has shifted from meaning a pursuit of excellence to providing for and helping the community grow.

Climbing used to be a very isolationist activity. You would climb outside, in nature, with no audience, group, or video cameras. With the rise of gyms, competition climbing, and social media, it seems like we’re changing the culture from self validation to external validation. How do you feel about this transition? Do you still climb mostly for yourself or have you changed your mentality?

So I'm generally skeptical of narratives that posit some kind of ‘golden age’ where things were better in the past. I think sometimes there are better times in the past. But often it says more about us and our own sense of the past than it is an accurate picture of how things used to be. Regardless, egos were notoriously big in climbing even in the 1970s - people used to get in fist-fights (like the bolt wars in Joshua Tree). Also consider the 1990s route development and Rifle - very ego driven and focused on sandbagging. So I'm not sure there ever was a time and climbing was really just a solitary thing. I think that we're social creatures, human beings are and generally everything we do is profoundly imbued with social context.

For me, though, I generally embrace change. I love beta videos. In the past, I'd have to climb it myself or track down someone who's already climbed and give them a call. Today, I can just Google the climb and look up someone’s so called beta. It's so much easier. Smarter. Not harder.

Climbing technology is improving - better shoes, sports supplements, beta videos, etc. Do you feel these advancements detract from the ‘raw’ aspect of just pulling really hard by yourself in nature? How do we draw the line between what is allowed and what isn’t in a sport that’s supposed to be so pure?

Believe it or not, back in the day in Fontainebleau they didn't use chalk because chalk was considered to be ugly and performance enhancing. Instead they used pof [for more information, take a look at this link], a tree sap that makes the rock kind of tacky. You’d put that on your hands and feet when climbing. The advantage is that it doesn't leave big white marks all over the rocks, but it can slowly degrade the rock over time as it forms. So pof was something that we would in the US consider to be horrible for the rock, but considered in Font to be the best form.

Same thing with sticky rubber. I don't know how much you've climbed without sticky rubber, but if you’ve climbed in a pair of Converses or something, it sucks. It's not as much fun when your feet don’t stick. But there was a time when sticky rubber was considered to be advanced technology and almost an unfair advantage.

[Kimbrough went on to list multiple other forms of ‘technological cheating’]

Also consider the introduction of chalk which was a big deal as well.

And crash pads were considered to be bad form for a while.

Climbing in gyms used to be controversial too.

Moreover, there's no clear boundary between acceptable and unacceptable technique. People use drop knees and some don’t. Why allow that strange position? Why not climb with no drop knees and no back steps? [I find this more common among ‘hardcore’ climbers like “no drop kneeing or backstepping when board climbing” or “no matching on the Moonboard”]

Honestly, the whole idea about natural is nonsense - the whole thing's artificial. There's nothing natural about climbing a rock.

I generally think that there’s no clear boundary between what anybody thinks is acceptable and what other people think is not acceptable. You really see it with knee bars. They used to be really frowned upon in most areas of the US and people though it was an unfair advantage to have a knee pad when knee barring. Now, all the top climbers using knee pads.

I'm all about it. Make it easier for me.

Same thing with sports supplements. The one caveat is that I don't eat meat. I drink protein shakes and consume protein powder for performance reasons though. Nothing else seems drastically different from that. Even the difference between my pea protein and human growth hormone or steroids is just a matter of degrees. There's no categorical difference between them and no obvious line to me.

I can see the need in competitions to put limitations on what people can do, but I don’t see it as a moral decision. The goal is to keep it competitive and to keep everybody more or less than the same on the same field. As long as everyone knows and are made aware of what the expectations are, it’s fine in my book.

With the looming prospect of global warming and annual California fires, we’re witnessing the deterioration of our planet and (for climbers) our ‘arena’. Ecologists say there will be a time in the not so far future where outdoor climbing may not be a healthy option. How do you feel about a world where outdoor climbing is no longer viable? Would you still climb if it was exclusively indoors?

I love climbing in the gym and I really felt during the pandemic how much I missed climbing in the gym. A world without gyms is not as good as a world with gyms.

But, climbing outside is really where my heart and soul is. So climbing without the outdoor aspect of it? I don't know. Climbing in a sense is all I've ever known; if I go back in my mind palace, there's climbing as far back as I can remember. Trying to imagine my life without climbing would be challenging because it would eliminate so many things that I take for granted. So I can't speculate on what I would do if I couldn't climb outside.

But I will plug an interesting and topical element I’ve discovered when writing my new guidebook, Golden State Bouldering. I grew up in Northern California - in gold country, in the Sierra foothills, and I've been climbing here my whole life. Since moving to the Bay, I’ve spent so much time driving to Yosemite, driving to Tahoe, driving to Jailhouse and it isn’t controversial to say the best rock in the world is there. But, through my new guidebook, I’ve tried to shine a little love on the local boulders. By making local climbing, more accessible, more developed, and more appealing, I’m hoping to make outdoor climbing not as harmful on the environment. That way people can still live their lives as climbers without having to drive three and a half hours to Yosemite every weekend.

You’ve written books for Black Mountain, Yosemite, the Bay Area - all world-class crags. Which area stands out to you as the best and why?

When you say “best” who knows what the criteria is. But, for me, the best is Black Mountain. I love that place. Maybe it's more about the time I was in my life, the moments I had there, and the people I was with than just the rocks themselves.

That being said, the rocks are pretty good. They’re awesome. I just love it. If I could have if I could have one mountain in my backyard, it would be Black Mountain for sure. No doubt about it. But that's not a criticism of Yosemite Valley, which is also amazing in its own way. But my heart's in Black Mountain, and I think it always will be.

Onto everyone’s favorite subject: grades and stars! In all seriousness, these are both highly subjective and awfully difficult to gauge (especially on outdoor climbs). How do you grade and rate problems? What factors do you consider? Do you climb the problems yourself or outsource them to others?

I'm on record. My criticisms of climbing grades are well documented. Have you read my article? Dude grades?

I’m skeptical of grades. Personally, I think that grades are meh, but I'll say this:

The closer someone was to me and my size (a six foot tall guy) the more consistent grades worked for them. And the further someone got from a six foot tall guy, the less useful grades were. I've got 5 ft tall friends who have climbed V10, but there are V5’s they'll never do. Then what is grading? Who is this grade system working for?

There’s a sexism to the grading scale because it's made for a particular body type. There's this idea that grades should be consensus, but having written multiple guidebooks and been in the industry for a long time, I assure you, settling on a grade is not a complicated process:

You have someone who puts up the suggested the grade. Then you have a guidebook author who either agrees or disagrees and maybe moves it up by one or two. That's typically how the process works. This idea of consensus is more of a philosophical ideal.

So who's putting up first ascents and giving that first grade? And who's writing the books and kind of giving the second pass on the grade? In my research, out of the 1500 boulder problems in the Bay Area, only 4 have been put up by women. In a study I conducted on all the guidebooks available on REI.com, only 5% were written by women [WOW]. So whenever you’re asking who are these grades designed for and designed by, the answer is always men [Kimbrough asked me to link this article where he delves deeper into this].

This is where the “B” scale originated from Southern California came from. The B scale just embraces the idea that there is no objective difficulty and bases everything based on how many times the climb had been done. If your climb had been done once it was a B3. If it was done more than once it got dropped down to B2 or maybe B2+. [Fun fact: this is where the name ‘B1 boulder’ comes from for the iconic boulder with No Holds Bard, Slapshot, etc. in Sentinel Rock, Yosemite]

What are the qualities of a good guidebook? What do you aim to do in your guidebooks? Inspire? Pack as much climbing as possible? Make boulders well-defined/clear?

I have three main criteria:

1. Accuracy

It should avoid saying false things AND say the right true things. [I imagine these include facts like sandbagging approaches or explicitly defining a down climb for a highball boulder]

2. It should make you want to go there

I think that a good guidebook should make you want to go to crummy areas. A good guide book should be able to pull out like the beautiful parts of an area and put those on display for everybody.

[We had a couple laughs here about what his new book would do with Mortar Rock State Park in Berkeley, CA. A crag renowned for mega-sandbagged eliminates with heart-wrenching rock quality.]

3. It should excite the reader

When I open my favorite guidebooks I want to turn the page and be excited about what would be there. There would be a sense of the unknown and something unexpected or inspiring would be there.

My favorite guidebook is Fluebible, a guidebook of climbs in Basel, Switzerland. This guidebook is completely hand-drawn, with comics, and even games.

Fleubible - Kimbrough’s favorite guidebook of all time

This is something I’m trying to emulate in Golden State Bouldering, which I’m writing with Shannon Joslin. The book is full of philosophical reflections, such as - what does it mean to think that the rocks might be conscious and that they have thoughts of their own? We try to add an affinity between contemporary philosophy of mind and the view of pan psychism, which is the the idea that everything is conscious - humans, dogs, garden snails, oysters, trees, and maybe even rocks. Through this element of philosophical reflection, we aim to involve the readers even more and keep them anticipating the what’s next.

I know you trained as a kid. How was training like back then and then compared to now. Do you still train and how would you go about training if you did?

What is this distinction between training and non-training? If training is the desire to get better, then all of climbing is training since I’m always getting better.

But in all reality, if you aren’t training do something and it’ll work. Hang-board, campus, use a systems wall it doesn't matter. I assure you, you will see improvements. For example, when I hang-board, it feels like little Gremlins came into the gym when I was sleeping and made all the holes bigger just for me. It's so obvious how much it helps your climbing ability.

Once you start doing something, you can start thinking about how to maximize it. Maybe certain ways of training are better than others for you, given your interest, skill-set, body type or injuries. But the first thing to do is just to start doing something regularly, consistently and to exhaustion. And train hard: if you find yourself going to the gym and waking up the morning and you're not sore, that means that you weren't even coming close to your limits.

But at the same time, I generally think everything in life should be fun. So, if it's not fun for you, I would say either get more creative with your training, or change your mindset. Alternatively, just stop trying so hard and don't worry about getting better. Maybe you need a different goal. Try doing the most beautiful climbs or try doing all the high balls. There's all kinds of ways of climbing without physically pushing your body. I find there's enough pain in life. I don't think that rock climbing should be one of them.

Thanks for the wisdom and overall good-vibes Kimbrough!