Statement – The Ben Moon Story

‹Ever since I first set foot on rock at the tender age of seven years,
climbing has been the most important thing in my life. In fact I would go so
far as to say it is my reason for living and as long as I am able to climb I
hope I will. It is from climbing I draw my inspiration for life.›

On 14 June 1990, at Raven Tor in the Derbyshire Peak District, twenty-four-
year-old Ben Moon squeezed his feet into a pair of rock shoes, tied in to his
rope, chalked his fingers and pulled on to the wickedly overhanging, zebra-
striped wall of limestone. Two minutes later he had made rock-climbing history
with the first ascent of Hubble, now widely recognised as the world’s first
F9a.

Born in the suburbs of London in 1966, Moon started rock climbing on the
sandstone outcrops of Kent and Sussex. A pioneer in the sport-climbing
revolution of the 1980s and a bouldering legend in the 1990s, he is one of the
most iconic rock climbers in the sport’s history,

In Statement, Moon’s official biography, award-winning writer Ed Douglas
paints a portrait of a climbing visionary and dispels the myth of Moon as an
anti-traditional climbing renegade. Interviews with Moon are complemented with
insights from family and friends and extracts from magazines and personal
diaries and letters.