Interviews With Peter Mortimer, Dave Graham & More

A couple of interviews from the past couple of weeks that are worth sharing.  First is an interview done by the guys at ClimbTalk Radio with Rob Pizem, Dave Graham, Chad Greedy and Jon Cardwell.  They start off chatting with Pizem about how he got into climbing and his latest projects.  The understated Pizem even lets slip that he recently did the 2nd ascent of a potential 5.14 roof crack in Colorado’s South Platte that was first done by Jason Haas earlier this year.

Things get interesting when the crew of Graham, Greedy and Cardwell call in to the show on their way back from a session at Mt. Evans.  The guys talk about wolverines and the process of doing first ascents at a new area.  Then the phone is handed to Dave Graham who talks at length about his diet, how to climb harder, the difference between the scene in the U.S. and Europe and his first memories of climbing outside:

I think the very first time I climbed on a rock, I fell off of it and got a concussion and my friend Luke didn’t spot me because we didn’t know what spotting was.  I hit my head on the ground.  I climbed up this 45 degree wall that was all wet and I didn’t really know what to do and then I fell off.  But that was on the same day…maybe right around the time I did a 5.9 slab, on sight, with my Summit 5.10 shoes, and I was really psyched, in this quarry, in Portland.

Check out the full, very lengthy discussion here.

Also of interest is an interview Matador Sports did with Peter Mortimer from Sender Films about the 2010 Reel Rock Tour.  This is the first year the tour won’t have a feature-length film as its main event, the reason for which Mortimer explains like this:

Well, a couple of things. You don’t just go out and make a feature, it’s got to really call you. Like when we did King Lines, we wanted to do the definitive film on Chris [Sharma], and he had his arch project. It was all there. When we did The Sharp End, we were like, ‘We want to make a film about this side of climbing.’ The dangerous side, the psychological side, the risk side.

So I think for those, you have this big idea, and it drives you. And for the tour, neither of us were driven by a big idea this year. I think we were really driven to make as diverse a line-up as possible this year.

Check out the full interview to see just how diverse a lineup they’ve put together then check the calendar for a show near you.

Update:  You can download the audio from the ClimbTalk interview at this website