What Makes a Hard Man?

Walk out into the desert with bedroll, no other bivy gear.  Bush wack through a jungle of thorns. Eat the rattle snake that bites you. Climb a chossy dust pile. Repeat until you find a classic. Write a book about desert climbs. Change your name to Bob Kerry. 

River Barry

Get a pair of waffle racers.  Eat the black bear that followed you through the woods. Climb past loose rock.  Carry six hand slung nuts.  Nab the FA on every x rated route. Get nick-named the Bank Manager. Change your name to Rich Romano. 

Proud committed coward here. We're not all trying to be hard men!

B Swrote:

This might he long but I’ll take a whack.

Hard man is an esoteric term we use to describe someone that is naturally and  intrinsically  driven to climb. I believe the more specific criteria that defines a Hardman could be one, or several of the following:

1. free solos double digit YDS routes casually, but you probably would never know because they don’t solo in front of anyone, or tell anyone

2. Onsights hard trad, meaning 5.11+ to 5.12. I remember hazel findlay saying in a podcast that anyone who can consistently on-sight 5.12 all gear should be considered elite.

3. Hardman is in control of the mind. “Bombproof mental game”.  You won’t see a hardman on route whimpering about a scary runout, sketchy gear, or intimidating features.  hardman puts 2 and 2 together and commits to a long runout with conviction. 

4. Secret sender. this character has probably changed over the decades, and i imagine a 1980s hardman to be a lot more competitive with their contemporaries, but a modern hardman i would say, flys under the radar, has few peers, and keeps the send for themself. The hardest person i know in my area, barely anyone knows by name, but has developed hundreds of routes in GA, put up several 5.13s in the state, and doesn’t participate in social media. This, to me, screams hardman.

5. inspired by the rock. Hardmen seem to always prioritize a feature of a route, especially in development. Seeing a perfect knifeblade arete, a daunting hang, or nobel prize winning open book corner gets a hardman all giddy and excited. To a hardman, grades are almost always secondary to the quality, position, aesthetics, and character of a route. 

6. Dedication. Hardmen are all in. Climbing is THE prioirty, the main avenue for emotion. They do anything they can to accomplish their goals, and don’t need encouragement. The hardman is the one waking your ass up from the air mattress at 6:30am, dressed, approach shoes on, coffee already in hand, waiting on you to get going to the crag. When it comes to actually climbing, hardmen get obsessed, but not to the point of detriment of performance or mental state. From the get go, a hardman knows they will complete a project, it’s just matter of clocking in, putting in the work, and getting it done, and they do.

7. Lifer. Being a lifer doesn’t necessarily mean that you climb your whole life. It means you remain a climber your whole life

Hardman exhibit A: Ken. Ken is my fathers climbing partner from the late 80s-90s. He was born and raised in Chattanooga. He grew up around the upper echelon of climbers in the area from that era. He was among the first climbers to ever visit Tennesee wall, would spend most evening bouldering at the base of the walls of Sunset Park. Within a few years, he was properly redpointing 5.12s on gear, and casually soloing 5.10-5.11. His cohort was the likes of Rob robinson, Robyn Erbesfiekd (he was good friends with her), Forrest Gardener, Shannon Stegg (RIP), Chris watford, our local legends. Logical progression, he traveled around the US as a classic american dirtbag climber. He would meet and climb with Ron kauk in yosemite, Bachar and croft in owens river gorge, other figures he befriended include Paul Piana, and yes, Lynn Hill. He went on to become a proficient aid climber, repeating many hard routes on the North side of Looking glass. To this day, despite not having climbed in about 20 years, He remembers precise beta about any climb he has done, down to a crystal. He knows what gear, what foot, what finger. 

A few stories: In his 20s, Ken met a  neighborhood kid whos parents said he wanted to get into rock climbing. He would pick him up from school and head straight to sunset to pack in as much vertical mileage as possible. That kid slowly got better and better, until he was better than ken and eventually moved out to colorado. That kid was Ben Ditto. if you’re not familiar, he is now a quintesential modern hardman. Numerous 5.14 ascents, master big wall climber of yosemite, patagonia, and baffin. He was featured in Reel Rocks “Dodo’s delight” aboard the Dodo with  Sean Villanueva O'driscoll and Nico Favresse, two of the hardest men alive. I like to think that somewhere in the past, Ken instilled the hardman spirit and inspired Ben to become the climber he is today.

Ken once was sentenced a year in jail for a DUI. Once he knew there was no way out of it, the day before he had to be admitted, he went out sunset and soloed some 20-25 pitches of rock, including Scream Walk, Euphoria, Flagstone, Cornerstone, some of the most classic routes at the park. Hardman spirit embodied.

This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you! I think the mental toughness and secret sender aspects are particularly important. Where does the Hard Man get his mental toughness and confidence from though? Is it innate, or acquired over many vertical miles?

A good woman.

Bear Grylls is the ultimate hard man.  He wears tech pants, has an accent, and lead climbs on top rope.   

Your bail should be more heinous than most people's entire climbing career. 

eg. you have a 9.0mm set of 30m half ropes, two offset nuts, a piton, and a abalakov screw and have to descend the Central Pillar of Nanga Parbat in winter. Your partner has frostbite in his left toe and you're beginning to suffer from altitude sickness. You've known each other since 1996 and can actually tell what he's thinking and feeling by how the rope feeds through your munter hitch. (the rack was dropped when avoiding an objective hazard and you lost your belay plate) You have to be at work in ten days and you're not sure you can survive the next 10 hours. You both make it down and update your personal blogspot blog so that your other partners can see your trip report. You don't tell your office mates what you did for your vacation. You have no sponsors, and you still mentor the college kid who is super stoked to get good enough to flash 10c by taking him to the local choss heap where you tell him that smearing is an integral part of rock craft, and that if he ends up onsighting the 11a you'll give him a 2006 BD .75 that's reslung but still has a lot of life left in it. College Kid's eyes light up and he trys super hard but takes the whip and you've never been more proud to be a climber in your life. You think of Pakistan and relish in the simple act of being alive. 

Dean Potter.

Woke up at the base of Half Dome, did the RNWF in a few hours, charged down the cables and down 4000 vertical ft into Temaya Canyon, barefoot, ran to the base of the South Face of Watkins, summited after about 5 hrs, ran barefoot to the Tioga Road, about 4 miles, hitchhiked to the Valley floor, sent The Nose, all in well less than 24 hrs, with Timmy O’Neil. They were the first to do it.

Dean was an animal, a Superhuman if there ever was one.

Beanie + no shirt + V4 = hard

I wouldn't think it a plus for a hard man to finish quicker. 

Guess I'll stick with the 5.6ers.

YMMV

H.

 22 likes

Ever get the feeling there’s a female lurking contingent in the wings?

Kevin Worrallwrote:

Ever get the feeling there’s a female lurking contingent in the wings?

You ever feel like old guys make questionable comments sometimes?

Rocrateswrote:

For the masses who will never become pro climbers, the best thing to be achieved is the status of “Hard Man”. Everyone knows instinctually what a Hard Man is, and in a way we all try to be him. My question is: how do you know when you are a Hard Man? Is it when you have gotten up on every route at the local crag? Is it when you visit a different crag and onsight a 5.11, establishing your dominance? Or is it only when you tell someone who climbed a 5.6 at your local crag that they did it in poor style, and perhaps they should have finished quicker? I am looking for answers. I am a man (allegedly), but how do I become Hard?

 Yeah, gurl was merely having fun earlier. Too subtle, Kevin??   

For the real answer? How do you become a hard man?

You can't.

They simply are (male or female).

For myself, we can all aspire to badassery in large and small ways, serious....or not. But "hard guy", to me, is a real rarity. A very high level of expertise, but also more than a little danger. And that's acknowledged danger, fully understanding what you can and can't control and making hard decisions. Almost has to be alpine, just to even get into that rarefied atmosphere of big objectives, very high level of expertise, and....a strong possibility of it going south.

Outside of alpine?

Some of the guys bitd, for sure, including some rock climbers.

But, there were also more than a few who just....did it, whatever the "it" was. 

My local nominee would be Morley Nelson (rip), who was 10th mountain division in WWII, a falconer (which means also a climber in early days), and a man who was the apex of his field. 

Usually, those who are truly astonishing are also just quietly accomplished. Down to earth.

Best, Helen

When you walk down the street and Chuck Norris moves to the other side 

Kevin Worrallwrote:

Ever get the feeling there’s a female lurking contingent in the wings?

Older women talking about sex, we can't have that can we!

I was one of the likers. It's hard to be funny, especially in writing, and it was a wry comment that made me smile. 

Whoa everyone... this is 2023.

What makes a hard person?!

Seems like a good time to ask the MP brain trust about the old Climbing magazine strip  “Uh oh, it’s Hard Man”…

Who wrote/drew it, and any way of getting them/viewing them today?  

I stupidly got rid of decades of Climbing and R&I years ago during a move and regretted it almost immediately.  

ABC - Always Be Climbing. You can swish that around the glass as many times as you like, but across disciplines, I think this is at the core of the question. 

Vastly experienced, turns up at climbing locations all over hells half acre, will take the hard leads as often as possible, is a walking guidebook, might not be climbing the very hardest grades but she will be master of the grades she takes, has climbed thousands of routes, literally, has gone through ropes racks shoes gear car partners countless times. Will be keen to go out with you most any time you ask. 

There are lots of them.