Scott Camps
(from the 1970s)

I guess it became more of a personal journey—that’s what I really liked doing. I think it’s very important that a first ascentionist should be heavily active in repeating routes, particularly in a local area because you’re always broadening your knowledge and you know what you’re comparing it against. I know for a fact, a lot of the young guys haven’t done Out of the Blue and Into the Black [Tibrogargan] or Phaedra [Mt Maroon]—all those classic cutting edge routes for their time. That’s really important if you’re going to run around and beat your chest and demote routes that have previously been done and you don’t have anything to compare them against. You don’t understand how well people were climbing back then—climbing with hexes, small stoppers and a basic rack of Friends on this hard technical stuff.