Vertige Media: Are our brains built for climbing?
Albert Moukheiber: Our brains aren’t built for climbing. Our bodies are built to move. And moving sometimes means climbing over obstacles. So if you really oversimplify it, you can say our brains are built to climb. But I don’t like separating the brain from the body. The brain is an organ, just like the liver or the heart. If a sedentary lifestyle is bad for our muscles, our hearts, and our digestion, there’s no reason it wouldn’t be bad for our brains, too.
Vertige Media: Does our ability to climb date back to prehistoric times?
Albert Moukheiber: Of course. Go back in time. Imagine you’re a hunter-gatherer trying to reach berries or nuts. You need to be able to climb. Now imagine you’re out hunting and a dangerous animal is chasing you. If you reach a tree you can climb to escape or an obstacle you need to get over, you’re not going to say, “Oh well, I’ll stop here.” You need to be able to find holds—places for your hands and feet—on a cliff, spot danger in the foliage, or hear a stream and think, “Oh, there’s something that could save my life.” Humans evolved in a relatively hostile environment with a huge disadvantage: we don’t have horns, shells, or wings. So how did we make up for that? We developed brains that are exceptionally good at predicting what comes next, and we learned to work together.
Vertige Media: At the same time, exploring new territory has always seemed like a fundamental human need…
Albert Moukheiber: Seeking out new things is deeply ingrained in us. Early on, we wanted to explore “what’s out there” because we needed resources or wanted to see if there was somewhere safer. Then, once we’d finished exploring Earth, we said to ourselves, “Hey, what’s out in space?”
“Fear of heights is a protective mechanism. It’s your brain telling you, ‘This could kill you.’”
That search for something new often means getting past a natural obstacle. We couldn’t dig a tunnel through a mountain, so we went over it. We’re migratory animals. Birds fly. We need to walk, climb, and jump. It’s like playing a video game with just three buttons on the controller: “Walk, jump, climb.”
Vertige Media: Unlike jumping or walking, though, climbing seems a little unnatural. Why are we afraid of heights?
Albert Moukheiber: Fear of heights is a protective mechanism. It’s your brain telling you, “This could kill you.” And that’s completely normal! Some people even have a phobia of acting on an unwanted impulse: they’re afraid they’ll decide to jump. But what’s interesting is that this fear fades with enough exposure to heights. If you’ve never climbed to about 165 feet off the ground, your brain will see it as something new and try to protect you from it. Take people who live high in the mountains and have to cross a suspension bridge to get to school. They won’t be afraid of heights.
Vertige Media: In the documentary Free Solo, scientists study Alex Honnold’s brain and find no fear response. How do you explain that?
Albert Moukheiber: (He smiles) Well, first of all, I think that’s for the movie. Fear isn’t an emotion some people can feel and others can’t. Again, it’s a very important protective mechanism. It’s normal for Alex Honnold to stop feeling afraid on El Capitan (a rock formation in Yosemite Valley in the United States—Ed.) because he’s gotten used to it. But take him into a war zone, and if he still isn’t afraid, he’s going to die. What people take away from Free Solo is that Alex Honnold is “missing something.” No. Alex Honnold learned how to do it.
“If you go to Tibet and meet some Sherpas, they won’t be at all impressed by what Alex Honnold did. But they’ll probably be impressed by someone riding a scooter in Paris.”
Vertige Media: Why do we love the “superhuman” image so much?
Albert Moukheiber: It’s marketing. We need superheroes who do things we don’t do. That’s a very Western way of looking at it. If you go to Tibet and meet some Sherpas, they won’t be at all impressed by what Alex Honnold did. But they’ll probably be impressed by someone riding a scooter in Paris. We’re shaped by our surroundings. In an increasingly sedentary world, we’ve created an environment where we don’t move anymore. So climbing seems crazy when you spend all day staring at an Excel spreadsheet.
Vertige Media: Speaking of spreadsheets, is climbing really an “engineer’s sport,” as people often say?
Albert Moukheiber: That’s an overgeneralization to the 100,000th power. When I started climbing, the local scene had more stoners than anything else. And when you think of stoners, you don’t assume they’ve all been through intensive math prep programs for engineering school. Of course, if you look at who climbs in California, there are a lot more engineers. You need free time to climb and enough disposable income to buy gear. But beyond the generalizations, these claims mainly reflect selection bias. Besides, the favorite sport among senior executives right now is padel, a racket sport. Are we going to say engineers play padel because you need to calculate an arctangent to hit the ball?
“I think we should stop pushing the idea that climbing is about self-improvement and performance. I climb because it’s fun. The point is the enjoyment I personally get out of it.”
Vertige Media: We also often hear that climbing improves our cognitive abilities. Is that really true?
Albert Moukheiber: Yes and no. Any new activity can train our brains. But we’re never going to become math whizzes just because we climb. There’s an important concept in cognitive psychology called the “nontransferability of skills.” It’s like sudoku: you can become a sudoku master, but that won’t necessarily help you with crosswords.
I think we should stop pushing the idea that climbing is about self-improvement and performance. In other words, we shouldn’t do things only because we think they’ll make us better. I climb because it’s fun. The point is the enjoyment I personally get out of it.
Vertige Media: Does context play an important role in climbing?
Albert Moukheiber: We’re full of cognitive biases. That’s just how our brains work. So context can lead us to underestimate or overestimate the difficulty of a route—a path up a wall or rock face. If someone tells you, “This is really hard,” you’re going to find the route harder. Our brains make predictions and comparisons. If nobody at my gym climbs routes rated 5.11d to 5.13a, I’m going to think it’s impossible. Until someone shows up and sends one—climbs it without falling or resting on the rope. A week later, you’ll see 15 people doing it. When people find new ways to climb a route, they make it possible for others, too. We haven’t necessarily gained any new physical ability overnight. Something just clicks in our heads.
Vertige Media: What sets climbing apart from other sports?
Albert Moukheiber: What I find special about climbing is the sense of community. People help each other. We learn from one another. There’s a mental challenge you don’t get in other sports, and it comes down to the pace. In climbing, you can read a route—study it to figure out the moves—take your time, plan, and practice. In tennis, on the other hand, you have to react right away. The game moves so fast you don’t have time to figure out your next move. Climbing is meditative. To me, it’s like chess. The difference is that in chess, you have an opponent. Here, it’s just you and the wall.
