BURSTJerry Moffatt has lived an elevated life at the sharp end of climbing, from frightening new trad routes to the birth of sport climbing, competition and modern training, he helped shape the climbing through one of its most transformative periods.
He was one of the first climbers ever to onsight 5.12c, 5.12d, and 5.13a, and to climb 5.14+. In competitions, he won several events and retired ranked first in the world. He was also one of the first climbers to send V12 and V13. In 1991, he opened The Foundry, Britain’s first climbing gym.
Now, looking back, he is less interested in the grades and trophies than in what climbing taught him about ambition, fear, risk and the people who shared it with him. In my recent chat with him, Moffatt reflects on the friends he lost, the changes he has witnessed and what still draws him to climbing today.
You have spent virtually your entire adult life climbing. What has climbing taught you about yourself? I think the main thing is that, at the time, everything feels like the most important thing in the world. Later in life you realise that some of those things weren’t that important. But then again, some of them you look back on and think, actually, they were pretty special. With competitions especially, they seemed a lot more important than they are to me when I reflect on them now. But doing routes, especially new routes, was a big part of it for me at the time and, reflecting on it now, they still hold my greatest memories.
Why do the new routes stay with you? If you’re pushing history and doing the first of a grade, that stays with you. It’s a stamp in history that somebody can go to in a hundred years’ time and say, “What was the hardest climb in 1983? It was that one.” Climbers can go do it, and they can touch the holds that I touched or other people touched and think, “Wow, that’s a part of history and I can still do that route. I can know exactly what that hardest climb was.”
It’s like doing a lap record around Silverstone. You get in that car and do that same lap record. You look back on the cars from the eighties and a top racing driver would think, “Bloody hell, that was slow.” The brakes were terrible, the tyres were terrible and it was all over the place. But [with climbing] you can go back and do that exact climb. That’s the nicest thing, I think.
When you were 15 or 16 and reading climbing magazines, what did you think climbing was going to give you? And what did it actually provide? When I was younger and I was at school, I read climbing magazines. I was 15 or 16, thinking about what I was going to do with my life. I read those magazines and thought, “I want to be a climber and I want to go and travel the world.”
I wanted to be a climber because it was exciting. I did travel the world. I went to some really exotic places. It was very anti-establishment. It’s not now, but I liked all those things. It was rebellious, anti-establishment, adrenaline pumping, and proper fun.
That’s what it gave me and that’s what I enjoyed. That’s what it was like when I started in 1978. It’s changed over the years, but when I look back on my career, those are the parts of it that I like.
You travelled and climbed with people who were already heroes to you. What did you learn from those climbers? I read the magazines when I was little and then you’d go there and meet these people. You were starstruck. You were with all these people you’d heard of. Often I was climbing better than them, or at least as good as them, but it still doesn’t stop you having total respect for those climbers.
One of the things that helped me in my climbing career was that, when I met all those top climbers, I milked every single ounce of wisdom, information, and gained tips on anything they had on climbing. I interviewed them. I chatted with them. I’d say, “What do you think about this? What about that? How about footwork?” You sponge off each other, talking about training and footwork and your approach to things and mental things. I felt I learned a lot climbing with those good climbers. You don’t have to do that but being inquiring has helped me a lot. I was always wanting to be with the best and try to get as much information out of them as possible to help my climbing.
Climbing has become very specialised. Do you think something has been lost in that separation between communities? It’s very different. Today you have the indoor climbing community, the bouldering community and the outdoor climbing community, it goes on.
When I started climbing, there was no separation between bouldering and routes because nobody went bouldering. There was no separation between climbing indoors or outdoors. There was no climbing indoors. There were no competitions. In England, there was only climbing outside and it was only climbing trad routes because we didn’t have any sport routes. The whole thing has become very specialised. When I started, there was nothing. There was only one thing.
I remember recently one climber saying to me down at the climbing wall when I was probably top-roping something, “When you were younger, did you do trad routes?” I thought to myself, “There was no other. There was nothing else.”
We climbed every single day for the whole year and we only did trad routes. I didn’t clip a bolt or a peg for the first two years that I went climbing. It was all nuts and runners.
You must have learned from some wise old climbers in those early years.
I don’t know. Early on we were just making it up as we went along. I didn’t climb with many old timers. I climbed with my mate Andy Pollitt, who I think was 16 when I first met up with him. We were both 16. I used to cycle to the cliff, meet him there on my bike and we just went for it and learned for ourselves.
We didn’t have any older people. It was only when I was about 17 or 18, when I came down to the Peak District from Wales, that there were some older climbers and I learned a bit more from them. They put me in my place a bit more.
You’ve lived through an extraordinary transformation in climbing. What were the big changes? For me, when I started, it was trad climbing with wires and nuts. Then the next significant thing was sport routes and clipping bolts. That became acceptable in England, to place bolts next to a wire placement. Before that, you would never put a bolt next to a wire placement. If you could get natural gear, you’d never put a bolt in.
That changed in the middle to late eighties. Then people started bolting routes and not bothering putting any gear in at all. So that was the first big change: trad climbing to clipping bolts and sport routes.
Then it was redpointing. We never used to redpoint. We used to yo-yo everything.
Finally, around the time we started putting bolts in, people started abseiling down and practicing all the moves before they attempted to redpoint it. When I started, that was a serious no-no. It would be considered cheating.
So you’ve gone from trad climbing to redpointing, to clipping bolts, to working routes. That was the change. Then the next change was climbing competitions, and the next big change after that was indoor climbing.
What about the positive side of professionalization, particularly training? That revolutionized climbing. I think it was 1988 or 1989 when I put my woody in the cellar, and that really kicked off everything. Within two years, loads of people had wooden cellar boards. Mine was the first one in the UK. I think it was 1988 or 1989.
You must look at modern climbing and think about how much professional help is now available. Nutritionists, coaches, strength programmes, sports psychologists. Do you see that as progress?
You enjoy things when you improve. You’ve got to improve. You want to improve. At the end of the day to think, “God, I climbed bloody brilliantly there. I’m really, really pleased with myself.” You want to get better. If somebody like a nutritionist or a sports trainer is going to get you there quicker, you’d be crazy not to do it if you’re that kind of person.
Also, Some people are quite happy just to go climbing and say, “That was a great day climbing. Had a great chat with my mate.” They’re not really that bothered about the performance at the end of the day. Both are fantastic.
Sometimes I wish I was more mellow. I’m very much the kind of person whose pleasure comes from improving and feeling like I’ve really done well in whatever sport I do.
But if it’s going to get you to that position better, then I would definitely get a trainer.
They weren’t available to us, so for me personally I had to educate myself. I had to become a personal trainer. I read loads of books on training.
There was no internet, so you had to get books and read about stuff. I read books on diet and got information from different climbers about what they were doing. I had to educate myself and I made a decision that I had to be the best trainer in the world and I had to train myself because nobody was going to do it for me.
But it’s much better if you can find somebody who’s a good trainer. It’s just easier, isn’t it?
Do you look at modern climbers and think, if I’d had all those tools, I could have climbed harder? Obviously I’d have climbed harder, but I’m not really that bothered. I’m very happy in hindsight with my era. I don’t look back and think, “God, I wish I’d started climbing when I was eight years old and my dad was taking me to loads of competitions.”
When I started I just got into it with my mates, and we had a laugh. For me personally, I liked that. It was a laugh. It was being outside in nature and going to beautiful places. It wasn’t really results-driven that much. Not like a lot of the young climbers now.
Today, the famous ones you hear about, go to the competitions and they’ve been going to climbing walls indoors and doing competitions since they started climbing. Obviously none of them started trad climbing and then later thought, “Oh, let’s have a go at a competition. What’s this indoor climbing? Well, I’ve never done that before.”
It’s not going to happen. They all start indoors today.
What did success actually feel like? Did you achieve what you wanted? It far exceeded by miles what I thought. I never thought I could do anything when I started. I just went climbing with my mates. Then I wanted to be the best climber in the school. Then I wanted to be the best climber for my age in Wales. Then I’m thinking, “I want to be the best climber for my age in Britain.” At about 16, Andy and I probably were. So you have these little goals and they build up and build up. But never did I think I’d achieve the worldwide success that I did when I started.
I feel like I reached all my goals.
When you reached the absolute global peak, was there a sense of pressure or disbelief? And do you think today’s climbers experience the same thing? There’s pressure, really, but it’s just what you want to do. It’s not really a pressure. I think pressure is a weird thing. For example, people People often say, “Pressure. He’s got pressure on this golf shot.” You want bloody pressure. People always talk about pressure as being a negative thing. Pressure is one of the most positive things.
Jerry presented an example.
How many gold medals or world records are broken at the Olympics? When there’s maximum pressure, there’s no more pressure than that. That’s when you’re going to achieve something really good because that pressure is going to make you pull like a bastard. It’s going to make you rip that thing to pieces. You want that drive and you want that pressure. It can work against you, but it can also work really, really well. It can be a very positive thing.
Your relationship with fear has obviously changed. What does fear mean to you now? Massively. It’s huge. Fear is a young man’s thing. I’ve been in quite a few situations in my life when I’ve been fighting for my life, just completely fighting for my life, knowing that if I fell, I would die.
I did a lot of routes without ropes and I was very lucky to survive it. When you’re in that situation, when you’re fighting for your life and it’s all gone wrong, obviously that doesn’t happen very often because you wouldn’t survive it. It might only happen once or twice a year maximum.
I had those terrifying moments and then maybe I didn’t climb again without a rope for a year. I’d say, “I’ll never do it again. This is too much.”
Most of the time when people say, “What are your most dangerous things?” I’d say the most dangerous climbs I’ve done, nothing happens. If something had happened, I wouldn’t be there.
I’ve had some big, 60-foot ground falls. I’ve been very lucky. A lot of my friends died, and I realise that now. I look back on it and think, “What the hell was I doing?”
I would never want to push it and say, “This is the ultimate. You’ve got to go soloing.”
If you look back on it like I do now, I think, “What was I doing to my parents and my brothers, risking my life for these things?”
It’s irresponsible and probably not very clever but at the time, it becomes so important. When I was 19 or 20, my ambition was not to do the hardest route. It was to do the most dangerous climb in the world. I wanted to do the most dangerous climbs. That was my ambition. I wanted to do the most dangerous climbs more than the hardest form of the hardest routes. That lasted for a short time, and then I felt like I did them with Master’s Wall (E7 6b) and different routes. Then I realised how dangerous it was.
My best mate died just three days after.
Who was that? A guy called Neil Molnar (1962-1983).
A lot of them went. You don’t look back and, you know, it’s just life, isn’t it? That’s what you do. That’s the game, and you’ve just got to take it on the chin.
Has losing those people changed how you think about climbing now? A lot of it is luck as well, isn’t it?
If I think about the house I lived in in Germany, Wolfgang Güllich (1960–1992) and Kurt Albert (1954–2010), you know, Wolfgang died in a car crash. Kurt died in a stupid thing [a laps of judgement on a Via Ferrata in the Frankenjura]. There was another girl in the house, Ingrid Reitenspieß, she died as well.
All sorts of bad-luck things.
And how has all that changed your relationship with fear as you’ve got older? I’ve had so many accidents just recently. I broke my neck. I broke my ribs last year.
I’m like, now I don’t dare ride a pushbike.
I’m just like a right wimp now. I don’t want to feel pain and I don’t want to go back to the hospital.
But that’s the reality of doing dangerous things. I’ve broken so many bones and spent so much time in hospital and have felt so much pain, I just don’t want it in my life anymore. I want to grow old gracefully.
When you watch the best climbers today, what still makes you stop and think, “Wow”? The climbers of today just blow me away. I love watching them climb, the top climbers. I love everything about it, even if it’s artificial.
The strength, the movement, the flexibility, the precision with their feet, the way they read holds, the finger power, the endurance, the way they hang in. I love watching it.
I go to Innsbruck probably four times a year to the indoor climbing wall there. You always get a lot of the best climbers there and you get to watch them. I could sit and watch it all day.
I love it when they’re on really hard stuff and you’re thinking, “He’s off there,” and they’ll just climb another bloody eight or ten metres, pumped out of their brains, and they just keep going. The way they recuperate. I find it really exciting how strong they are and how everything’s evolved.
The memory of the moves, the reading of the moves, the way they climb. There’s no wastage of energy. They’re just straight into the moves. You’ll see somebody on-sight something and it looks like they’ve been working it for a week. There’s no hesitation going into the moves. They’re into it, totally. The speed of it too.
I do love watching it. I don’t watch the climbing competitions on television very much, but if I ever get a chance to see people climbing live, I’d watch that. Same outdoors.
When you watch them, are you actually seeing the same fundamentals that you were working on, only taken to another level? Nearly all the same, but they’re a lot better at it.
We were working on our footwork. We were working on the accuracy of placement. We were working on working out moves quickly. We were working on not hesitating going into moves. We were working on finding places to shake out.
All the same things exactly as they are now, but they’re just at another level. They’re so much better at it. I think In 20 years’ time, people will be working on the same things.
What about the mental side? Modern climbers talk a lot about mindfulness, visualization and sports psychology. Were you doing that too? We were doing that.
I spoke to Toby Roberts and his dad about when he won the gold medal and what he was doing beforehand. I won’t say what he did, but I was thinking, “That’s pretty much what I was doing.” It was pretty much the same.
It wouldn’t have surprised me if they weren’t doing it because I read loads on sports psychology and I did a lot of work on sports psychology. I probably do half an hour today just making notes and working on my sports psychology, trying to build up my confidence, visualizing things. Back then I’d write down loads of notes about how I wanted to perform. I worked pretty hard on it.
Were your peers doing the same thing? Not so much, no. I don’t think everybody was doing it back then and I don’t think everybody’s doing it now. But the way I look at it is, if you’ve got two climbers of equal ability and they’re both training exactly the same, and one of them is spending half an hour to an hour every day working on his psychology, how he’s going to climb, visualizing stuff, and one of them isn’t, if I’m going to put money on either of them, I’ll always put my money on the one who’s doing the extra and who’s doing the sports psychology.. That’s where my money’s going to go every single time.
You’ve talked about discipline being important throughout your career. Was that something you consciously developed? I did the extras consistently. But I did the other stuff as well. I just didn’t do it when I was competing or trying to do a hard route. I’d do that in downtime. A disciplined life gives you more not less.
What concerns you when you look at climbing culture now? The only thing I don’t like is people who are doing YouTube channels promoting themselves, bigging themselves up when they haven’t really done that much. That kind of thing. Not just in climbing. It happens all over the place.
I think, “Why has this guy got a platform to mouth off about this when he’s not really done very much?”
You get all those people who just want to be famous. When I started climbing, I really admired people like Doug Scott, who crawled down the Eiger. He didn’t want an OBE. He did it, because it was there.
When I started, people wanted to take photos of me. Before I was sponsored, I was like, “No, I don’t want any photos because it makes it look like I’m doing it just to get famous, and that’s not what I’m doing at all.”
It all changed with sponsorship.
So I’m not too keen on the real self-promoters. I like people who just keep it quiet and do their own thing. It’s not a bad thing. That’s just a personal thing for me because I didn’t grow up in this era.
But you’ve also said that climbing is generally in a good place. How do you reconcile those two things? Generally, it’s in a good place. In life you’re always going to get the exceptions.
But I really enjoy the videos people put out.
I really like watching training videos, people just mucking around on a splat board or something like that, or camping and just mucking around together. That reminds me of when I was younger and what we’d be doing probably 80 percent of the year. You’d think, “Where are we going to go and train today? Are we going to go there? Are we going to go to Cressbrook?”
We would meet up, put the radio on, muck around and go climbing. I like that because it reminds me of my life and what I did with climbing. So I enjoy watching those things.
I think climbing’s in a pretty good place, really. I really do. If you go to the cliffs in Britain, you don’t get litter. People respect it.
There is a funky side and things like that, but you don’t hear people screaming and shouting and swearing and stuff.
Let’s talk about something that didn’t exist when you were at your peak: social media. What has changed? There’s one other thing I’d like to add. There were no mobile phones. The worst thing has been mobile phones.
If you can imagine that there were no mobile phones, you couldn’t even phone. There was nothing. When I started climbing, there were only two channels on television. There was BBC One and ITV, and that was it.
It’s funny, isn’t it? So much info and noise out there now.
What do you think the absence of all that technology gave you? When I was young, I went twice to America. I think the second time I was 20, and I spent quite a lot of time in Yosemite. One morning the police rangers came to my tent and said, “Are you Jerry Moffatt?”
I said, “Yes.”
They said, “You need to phone home. You’ve not spoken to your parents for two months.”
The police then said, “You’ve got to phone home.”
It was classic. They were doing a search for their son in America.
So if you were a professional climber today, would you reject all the self-promotion? I’d hate doing it. But if you’re going to be a professional climber now, you have to do all the media. You have to do the YouTube channels. You have to do all that stuff.
As much as I’d like to think, “Oh God, in my day it would never be self-promoting like that,” in reality I think I’d be doing the YouTube channels and self-promoting and stuff like that because you have to for your sponsors.
You want to make money and it’s a short career. It’s better than getting a proper job!
I always say to the professional climbers, “Enjoy it now because it’s a great time of your life and it just doesn’t get any better. It’s the best job in the world.”
Does that make the media burden part of being a modern professional climber? It is a little bit, but it’s not that bad, is it? All you do is stick a video camera up every so often and do some sort of training thing.
It’s all part of the job. You’re paid to do something. A sponsor wants to have their stuff out there, and they’re not going to get it out there if you go and do some boulder problem in a cave in some country where nobody’s there. They want to see it. So it’s all part of being a professional climber.
I’ve done videos, loads of videos, and most of the time when you do them they’re quite good fun. They’re not a chore or anything like that. They’re quite good most times when you end up with the finished piece.
Do you think something is lost now that we see everything immediately? I don’t think so. You watch it if you want to watch it. I think it adds to it. I think it’s a positive thing being able to see what people are doing straight away.
I don’t watch much climbing. I watch a lot of surfing. I watch surfing every day. I don’t surf anymore, but I like to watch it.
The clips they get now of surfing, holding the camera in their teeth when they’re getting barrelled, then taking it out and holding it behind them, and you can see this big barrel coming up straight after. I like to see it.
It’s different when people are sitting there talking about it, but actually seeing people doing it, particularly live, I think it’s a great thing.
What about the climbing community’s relationship with the rock and the places we climb? Are we better custodians now?
I think people really look after them, more now than in my day. Still, you do get some real rogues about who just have no respect for nature or the countryside. But climbers certainly are very respectful of the rock, and they’re respectful of other people out there.
When I go out and still walk the dog around bouldering areas, people are always friendly and nice. From what I hear, when people go on climbing walls who’ve never been climbing before, they’re really friendly.
I’ve met people who’ve never climbed before and they’ll say, “I climbed the other day and I went to a climbing wall and people were really friendly. They showed me around. I wasn’t doing a move and some guy came up and said, ‘Try putting your foot there.’” That’s great.
Jerry paused
Climbers are a friendly and conscientious bunch. It’s a good sport. I’m proud to say I’m a climber.
The Real Thing
The Real Thing is the first feature length bouldering movie ever made. Britain’s top rock climbers Jerry Moffatt and Ben Moon take you on a rollercoaster road trip from the classic gritstone crags of the UK’s Peak District to the mecca of European and World climbing in Fontainebleau, France. Also starring climbing hero Sean Myles, the late and great Kurt Albert and French climbing legend Marc Le Menestrel. A must watch for all boulderers, with an unforgettable pumping soundtrack.
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