Do you climb rocks?
I grew up in the Rocky Mountains, eastern B.C. I used to solo chossy, blasted, roadside cliffs until one day I got stuck and had to do a very long and shaky downclimb. I vowed to never climb again until I learned how to use ropes. When I moved to Vancouver for university, I joined the outdoor club and learned how to do things properly. Conveniently, Squamish, the best rock climbing area in the world, is only an hour away.

Who makes those online buildering guidebooks?
My friend Owen did the programming; I did the content.

What’s the idea behind the guidebooks? Just to spread the good word?
Pretty much everything behind buildering.net is to spread the good word. I’ve considered some ways to make money to at least cover the hosting costs, but I suck at business stuff. Google Adsense gives you pennies a month — yippie! But hey, I’m open to climbing-related sponsors … *wink wink, nudge nudge*

Owen on the other hand has an eBusiness degree, so he’s wanting to completely redo the guidebooks, making them slicker, better, and hopefully make a little cash at it. We’re working on an iPhone app right now.

Have you ever been arrested for buildering?

Arrested but not charged. A few friends and I were out climbing and decided to do a crane swing. A quick how-to: climb a big construction crane, belay at the end of the boom, lower a rope to the ground. Person on ground grabs rope, climbs up crane to top of shaft, belayer takes up slack, swinger jumps. Think King Swing times 10. [Kids, do not try this at home. —Ed.] Anyway, we’d just climbed up and were sussing out whether the swing path was clear when I spotted four police cars headed our way. I could see quite far from up there and they were still about two miles away, but by the time we got down they were on us, guns in hand and dogs on the loose. …They cuffed us, threw us each in the back of a different squad car, then checked to see if our stories matched up. “You are under investigation for Break and Enter, anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.” They let us go, and under Canadian law had six months to decide whether or not to press charges. Nothing came of it. Break and Enter was such a bogus charge anyway. We neither broke into anything, nor had to climb over fences/gates to get to the crane. We just walked up to it from off the street.

Describe the hairiest moment you’ve encountered buildering:
Watching a friend fall 20 feet to hard concrete and break his leg was pretty scary. I used to organize parkour outings in Vancouver, until one day a kid didn’t quite stick his landing on a roof gap and almost rolled off of a six-story building. I decided from that moment on that I wouldn’t be putting minors in potentially lethal situations.

Do you think buildering will ever be an above-ground aspect of climbing?
One day buildering will become as popular as fantasy football, at which point I’ll sell buildering.net for $10,000,000, retire in Yellowknife, and take up ice fishing.

But seriously, buildering as a sport has been around for over 100 years. I’m not talking about the human-fly sensationalism aspect of it either, I mean climbing buildings for climbing’s sake. I’ve got a guidebook from 1897.  I think if it was ever going to become mainstream, it would’ve by now.

If anything, with governments and law enforcement agencies encouraging people to ‘keep vigilant, report suspicious behavior,’ I think buildering will be driven even more underground. We’re encouraging a society of snitches. Just open your Yellow Pages — there are hundreds of snitch lines in there for everything imaginable. It’s getting so bad that law enforcement has had to change their pitch recently. There’s signs all around Vancouver right now saying ‘Report the suspicious, not the weird.’ Seems people are a little too paranoid.