Rick White
(late 1960s to 1990s)

It doesn’t matter if you’re a Grade 15 climber or a Grade 30 climber—there’s always something you can’t climb, you just can’t climb the next level. It doesn’t matter how good you are, there’s always going to be someone better. So everybody climbs and has excitement at their level of difficulty and their level of mental power. It’s different for all people, of course. It can be widely applied to people because of that—you don’t have to be the best climber to have a good time out on a crag with your friends…I think that’s the attraction of climbing. And of course you can improve and you can test yourself, you can test your physical strength, you can test your mental strength. It tests all those sorts of things in people.

Picture: Rick White a few months before his death. Jane White collection.