Steve McClure

The working class hero

Steve has been climbing for 30 years and in fact he, in fact, climbing more, better and in a more disciplins than ever. Although, he already back in 98 put up his first 9a and reguraly onsighted 8a+'s. In the 8a all time ranking he is #11. His third 9a came in 2005 where he also managed to boulder 8B,  traded E86c, flash 11 pitches Hotell Supramonte, Deep water solo - 16 m, 8b+ FA (world record), and putting up a 21 pitches route in Grenland -04 and #1 in the UK comp.

I met him in the kitchen in the guesthouse of Terradets. - Check this out, free bread from yesterday. Steve is a true working class hero and even instead of working his way out with good sponsor deals he saves Euro 5 per day, compared with his mate who get his demi-pension. Later he finds himself a ropebag and the working class style is always presence.

When I try to get answers from question about how is it possible to keep improving and beeing on the cutting edge even with so many different styles, I only get humbleness. In fact, I believe that he is not that good. (This is one reason why I put up all the facts in the ingress). So instead I asked him for some training advices.

Träningstips.

During the days in Terradets, Steve inspired us with many stories from different arenas and almost every evening he showed climbing movies or climbing pics from around the world. He really likes to take picture and suddenly he was up there in order to take pics om my 7c+ onsight which I and my partner perfectly considered as a hang-dog. Said told me that know you have to go for it and 'good luck with the last clip';) My god! As I stand there, with absolutely nothing left to even dream about a clip just a long fall. Steve reads my panic and put his camera way and in a very gentle tone, he leads me into a jug and wisperes - If you just put your hand five cm lower, it's a super jug. You are doing fine. You can do the clip! His voice is so encouraging so I made it and I just guess that if that had not been huge enough he would have let me grab his foot or even pulled up the rope himself.