Honesty has always been a given in climbing. We tend to believe our peers when they tell us what they’ve done. While trust is fundamental to our sport, it also wouldn’t work otherwise, because most climbing happens in a vacuum: just a couple of climbers, no witnesses. Our word is all anyone has to go by.

Of course, climbers aren’t immune from outright lying (I dedicated a column to infamous climbing hoaxes), but fortunately, this seems rare. What’s popular, however, is to claim a successful ascent despite one or more reasons why it fell short. Enter the “asterisk” — a curiously common crutch climbers use to justify a “send” without really sending.

I once saw a friend get to the top of a sport route and, about to fall, he lunged for the anchor — in this case, a metal chain hanging from a bolt — and latched onto it like a monkey swinging on a branch. While certainly a wild show, spectators assumed he would try again since he didn’t clip his rope to the anchor before weighting it, as is standard practice. To everyone’s surprise, he called it good … with an asterisk.

I’ve had my own asterisks as well. In 2010, I did a bouldery sport route in Arizona’s Virgin River Gorge whose crux was so hard for me that I couldn’t let go of the rock to clip the fourth bolt. If I had skipped that bolt and fallen, I would have hit the ground from 30 feet up. So, even though a “send” dictates leading a route, I toproped two-thirds of it before leading to the top. It was the best I could do back then, and I accepted that.

The problem with asterisks isn’t just that they allow us to claim an ascent under shady circumstances. After all, I doubt anyone really cares about my friend’s monkey business or my toproped sport route. One of the beautiful things about climbing is that we’re free to choose our own challenges and climb things however we want.

Where asterisks become problematic is when they’re attached to a climb that claims something significant, like a first ascent.

One famous example is the north buttress of Alaska’s Mt. Hunter (14,573 feet), one of the world’s most coveted alpine routes. After at least 15 failed attempts by various climbers, Mugs Stump and Paul Aubrey climbed most of this 6,000-foot wall of ice and rock in 1981 — a supreme effort. But, 700 feet shy of the top of the buttress (and a full 2,500 feet beneath the summit), the exhausted pair decided they’d climbed high enough to call it a new route. Mountain magazine even ran a cover story on their climb, and the pair became famous for their “first ascent.”

Two years later, Todd Bibler and Doug Klewin not only climbed the north buttress to its top, they continued to Mt. Hunter’s summit. “Their integral ascent to the top of the mountain is, and should rightly be, credited as the true first ascent,” wrote Alaskan pioneer, Clint Helander, on mountainproject.com. Thankfully, few climbers now accept the glaring Stump-Aubrey asterisk and attribute the route to Bibler and Klewin.

Closer to home, someone claimed the first female free ascent of one of the hardest routes on The Diamond of Longs Peak in 2017. Her widely celebrated ascent, however, was marred by substantial asterisks that didn’t quite fit the definition of free climbing. To her credit, she was forthcoming about the details. She even returned the following summer for a proper free ascent but was unable to pull it off.

Five years later, another woman climbed the same route in virtually perfect style: all free in a day, no falls. Those familiar with both ascents overwhelmingly credit the 2022 climb as the first female ascent yet, at least for now, it remains overshadowed by the earlier, asterisk-riddled climb.

While asterisks may not be inherently harmful, they can, in cases like these, steal well-deserved kudos from future climbers. Perhaps the greatest reason to avoid asterisks in climbing — as well as in our lives — is that they offer convenient excuses when, if we’re willing to believe in ourselves a little more, we don’t need any.

Contact Chris Weidner at cweidner8@gmail.com. Follow him on Instagram @christopherweidner and X @cweidner8.