Spoiler Alert: One will.

running down another (in)famous climbing quote (or two)

“No woman will be able to climb this route.”

- J.B. Tribout, 1989

Monkey Face

Jean-Baptiste (or J.B., or Jibé) Tribout is certainly no stranger to la controverse.

In 1992, Tribout pioneered the first 5.14c rock climb in the United States: Just Do It on the Monkey Face tower at Oregon’s Smith Rock State Park. If you just saw a photo of the route, you would assume it couldn’t be done. It was, at the time, considered the most difficult route in the U.S.

Tribout did it. So Tribout named it.

But hardly without controversy.

The route had been bolted — that is, set up with small devices up the route, which allows a climber to attach a rope to the rock as she’s climbing, thus preventing a calamitous fall even if she comes off the wall — by legendary climber Alan Watts.

But Watts hadn’t actually climbed the route yet. As Tommy Caldwell, another American legend, later wrote, “Jean-Baptiste Tribout came to Smith and essentially stole it. Every sport has its rules – both written and unwritten. Instead of using only the holds that naturally existed on the face, he defaced the route with a chisel, artificially creating better holds in the spots where he needed them. What Tribout did was raise a middle finger to everyone who had tried that route, especially Watts. He named the route Just Do It, to signal his distaste for the ethics of those who believed that a climb should be done using only existing, naturally formed features on the rock surface.”

Even with the chiseled holds, nobody matched Tribout until 1997, when Caldwell and climbing partner Chris Sharma both “sent” the route. After which they headed to France, to prove they could compete with anyone.

Which they did.

Back to our friend Jean-Baptiste, though.

Before pioneering that first American 5.14c in 1992, Tribout had climbed various 5.14s (a’s, b’s, and c’s) in Europe. After pioneering one of them in 1989 — Masse Critique on the south coast of France — Tribout supposedly said, “No woman will be able to climb this route.”

But before that, he said … well, he must have said many, many silly things, but we’ll have Lynn Hill begin our tale of silly quotes…

Yet for all that I liked about France, I sometimes found the French to be much more chauvinistic than the Easterners I lived among. One famous French climber who later became a friend, Jibé Tribout, flabbergasted me one day with an offhanded comment. While drinking café au lait and discussing free climbing standards across the world, out of the blue Jibé sputtered, “A woman will never flash a 7c.”

His meaning: women are not good enough to waltz up a route of 5.12d difficulty (the American equivalent of 7c) on their first try without falling off. I was speechless at this absurd bit of chauvinism. At the time Jibé had made his declaration, no woman had accomplished this feat.

This was in 1986, when Hill lived in the U.S. near the famous Gunks climbing area in upstate New York, but was visiting France for a couple of weeks. Shortly afterward she began competing on the European pro climbing circuit, and eventually moved to France.

By 1990, having earned fame and (some) fortune in Europe, Hill set her sights on something that no woman had ever done: climbing a 5.14a (both Hill and French climber Isabelle Patissier had by then climbed 5.13c, but the difference between 13c and 14a is larger than you might guess). There were not then any 14’s in the U.S. … but there were plenty in France. Again, here’s Hill in her 2002 memoir:

I felt capable but by no means certain of success. The 5.14a that I decided to try is called Masse Critique. This route ascends a prominent, slightly overhanging limestone wall, and its first ascentionist had been none other than Jibé Tribout. After completing the climb, he had allegedly proclaimed in predictable style, “No woman will ever be able to climb this route.”

You might argue that “allegedly” is doing a lot of work here, but the fact remains that Tribout’s quote has become a famous bit of climbing lore, probably because three years after he climbed Masse Critique, Lynn Hill matched his feat on her ninth day of working the route. “I had broken the 5.14 barrier,” she wrote, “and it felt like a dream come true.”

And remember when Tribout told Hill that a woman would “never flash a 7c”?

In 1992, Hill went climbing with a group that included Tribout. Inspired (or perhaps fortified) by the recent death (in a car accident) of her friend Wolfgang Gullich, Hill started up a 5.13b route – more difficult, that is, than 7c/12d – that she’d never tried before, and reached the top without falling.

Heading down the trail later, Tribout asked her if that was the first time she’d flashed a 13b.

“I responded with a simple yes,” Hill wrote a decade later, “and I didn’t even bother to rub it in that he had once said a woman would never even flash a 12d.”

Hill retired from competition after the 1992 season, having won an incredible 26 of the 38 events she entered (including her last one). But it wasn’t until the next year that Hill, having chosen a completely different venue, would become a household name in her native land. For that story, please come back tomorrow (or subscribe)…