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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Richard - Everyone knows what a librarian is and does.
Organizing historical symposiums, conducting researched interviews with climbers of record and writing books about climbers of record like Tom Frost go well beyond what a librarian does.
I viewed Vargen's session as an opportunity to bridge the gap between our positions and ourselves and I find it interesting that you viewed it as some great debate or public trial. Roper, Ament, Jones and a host of other folks that have done consequential historical work have done so without academic credentials in history just as I am doing. When you chose to attack me on a thread announcing NACHA then I just assumed that you had no real interest in resolving anything and canceled the session as I didn't see any purpose in it. I would have simply written an article if disputing your version of events in detail was my goal.
We have a great deal more in common than difference as you point out but trying to get a clear picture of your preparation, goals and execution on this route has been anything but straightforward hence my frequent jabs and vitriol.
Too bad the opportunity has passed but I too have more worthwhile things to do than go around and around over one route. Guys like Pete just love to stir the WOS pot whenever they disagree with something I say so it stays in play on this forum. Folks like a good squabble I guess.
Anyhow, I have tried to move past it just as you have and on to more generative activities. We are both pretty stubborn and this controversy and Jeff's film doesn't make anyone look very good but Ammon's brother oddly enough. Our dispute really wasn't put in any sort of reasonable context in the time allowed so it all got pretty muddled. I would have done better to have stayed out of Assault on El Capitan and let it all go.
Had you needed a rescue you would have gotten one to be absolutely clear.
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Klaus- They need witnesses and a definite timeline.
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Fat Dad
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Coz and Kurt Smith were busted for upgrading the Muir anchors. Sloan is an out of control POWER DRILLING addict. Why does the Park Service not arrest him? They should
I've been puzzled by that as well. This is the kind of beat down that should happen privately. Ratting him out to the park service will only set future bad precedent.
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WBraun
climber
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Werner is on Sloan's side, he said it.
Never said any such thing.
I'm on nobodies side.
You're all free to die in your own ways ......
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Sloan seems hellbent on being very public and provoking a response in the process.
Regulating climbing is the last thing the climbing rangers and NPS want to get involved in based on my interaction with them.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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I will avoid
I could respond point by point to your latest account, but that would take far longer and involve more effort than even this response is worth.
The one thing I will not let you slide on is this: You manage to get in yet another "last word" about how I've not been forthcoming, which is pure BS, and now everybody knows it. Our story of what we did and how we did it was clearer than any other in climbing history, and YOU ensured that it stayed front-page and endlessly dissected in detail like no other route in history.
Throughout, Mark and I were more carefully transparent than any other climbers have ever been expected to be, and that in the face of endlessly detailed grilling. You (badly) played the role of dogged prosecuting attorney, claiming to be "seeking only the truth," while you provided no "recesses" from endless efforts to "discover" and magnify any "inconsistency" in a set of memories from three decades before. NO explanations were ever good enough, and you declared the verdict: "Guilty" before you ever started the trial.
There was exactly zero lack of clarity and transparency from our end! Yet, even now you try to cast your problems as our shortcomings. Nope, not gonna fly at this point. YOU have a problem. End of story.
But that's the only BS I'm going to bother to call you on in this, your latest spree of revisionist "history." Basically, you are moment-by-moment constructing a revisionist history for yourself, then you try to make it fly in public. You are NO historian, and I don't have time in my life to point-by-point correct your endless revisionism. You are pathologically unable to post on this topic without making things up. I'm bone tired of it, and of you.
So, as you say, "the moment" (IF there ever was one) passed, and now the best course is: "I will avoid." My sentiments exactly. If you ever do want to find some common ground, you can start with a public apology for your repeated, vociferous attacks on my personal integrity (which you yet again allude to in your latest post). Then we might just find that we actually do share a lot of climbing values in common.
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WBraun
climber
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Rangers are way too busy.
No time for this bullsh!t.
We are swamped .....
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JLP
Social climber
The internet
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If your opinions on *anything* had any value, it seems quite unlikely to me you'd have so much time to spend here endlessly posting them.
Bunch of useless fux spewing the boring and predictable.
Endlessly...
The same damn thing...
If only Eric were here ... !!
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Regulating climbing is the last thing the climbing rangers and NPS want to get involved in based on my interaction with them.
And that's a very good thing!
If Sloan didn't exhibit a pattern, the rap route wouldn't bother me. It's a trivial thing in the grand scheme of things, IMHO.
However, to respond to Anita with some general points, Erik is always able to "defend himself," and he has both joined and started quite a few threads for that very purpose. His "defense" always takes the same form: "'So and so' (choose your name-drop) thinks that what I'm doing is wonderful. Woot! Woot! I'm doing what everybody wants me to do. Woot! Woot! Oh, guys, I just so jazzed about the great energy here! Woot! Woot!"
His "defenses" are never substantive or actually responding to specific complaints, and he exhibits nothing but pure pride in all that he is doing "for" us.
"We" are between a rock and a hard place. Violence and threats of it are not right; so there can be no "force" in our "self-policing." And, almost universally "we" don't want sweeping retro (as opposed to 're')-bolting. "We" make this crystal clear to Sloan in these forums, which he does attend. And he basically flips his critics the finger while yelling "Woot!" "We" don't want the Park Service policing this for us. So, the "court of public opinion" is really all we have to work with.
In Sloan's alternative universe, "we" all love him and all that he does "for" us. It's become clear to me that he's not getting the message. So, it does appear that the only "solution" is to systematically remove every retro-bolt he puts in. Rinse and repeat; a battle of wills. It's disgusting and tiresome. But it's the only way to maintain freedom of expression for all involved. Couple that with contacting anybody who sponsors him in any way, and the "war of attrition" should wind him down long before it stops the removers/fillers.
I see such threads as not just "worthless hand-wringing." It's on these sorts of threads that consensus emerges, and a systematic plan of action can be formed. In the end, though, it appears to me that our only response can be to remove/fill his retro-bolts as quickly as possible and thereby force him into a "war of attrition" that he cannot win, particularly not with funding supplies drying up.
I think that retro-bolting, more than virtually any other activity, guts the very essence of what climbing is (at least, what it is to me). That's why I find Sloan's behavior (and his responses to those who try to call him on it) to be particularly odious. His Woot-based defiance is not "cool" or avant-garde, imo. It strikes me as just narcissistic defiance, it's not cool, it's not impressive, and it's not helping "climbing" be better than it is.
The rap route as an isolated incident would be pretty much nothing from my perspective. But this endless "dumbing down" that Sloan thinks is "climbing" is indeed a problem for the whole community.
(A big "IMHO" attached to every statement above!)
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Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
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I just sent it. In poor style but I topped out. You should try it.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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DMT perpetually expresses that he lacks the willpower needed for the send. Nothing can be done about it.
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Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
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It was a good climb. I disagree with the no threat clause though. The reality is that without the specter of personal or property harm, nothing changes.
Life comes with consequences.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Life comes with consequences.
True. But are "we" the self-appointed judges/juries to mete them out?
How many "we" legitimizes violent action? By what authority do we mete out punishment?
I've been on the receiving end of such "vigilante action," and I can personally assure you that the "herd" is not something you want to be part of.
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the albatross
Gym climber
Flagstaff
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Very well written madbolter. This issue is above and beyond someone doubling the number of bolts on an existing rap route.
It's the endless "woot woot" when confronted with serious questions about retro bolts (adding protection bolts to established routes), the shameless self promotion as a "steward", all while dumbing down routes to his own level of ability.
It is not a good idea to allow one person to establish for the community what they consider to be appropriate levels of protection in climbing.
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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Now I want to climb WOS as my first wall.
What is this thread about again?
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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We put, madboter1!
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F
climber
away from the ground
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Great post madbolter.
I sent it, (pre hung draws) and liked it.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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I sent it, (pre hung draws) and liked it.
I'm so jazzed that you bagged it, and nary a retro-bolt in sight!
Woot! Woot!
All you guys are expressing such great energy! Wooooot!!!!!
(Yikes. It's gagging to even joke around like that. But I guess that's style not ethics.)
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WyoRockMan
climber
Grizzlyville, WY
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Good post madbolter.
It's on these sorts of threads that consensus emerges
Not so sure about this. The percentage of climbers who participate on forums is pretty small. Is the posting population representative of the "community" as a whole?
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Is the posting population representative of the "community" as a whole?
Good question. I don't know the answer.
I suspect that it's a "representative sample," like polls that cross-section small "representative numbers." But I have no data to fuel my suspicion. (When does that shortcoming ever stop us, as human beings?)
Cmac has the data on usage, location, etc. It would be very interesting to know, for example, the poster/lurker ratio, etc.
Perhaps, at least, word of an "emerging consensus" can spread from here.
At the very least, I just hope that some nearby folks can be sparked to actually act in the "war of attrition."
I don't know. All I can do is whine and wring my hands from Colorado. You know, "What's the younger generation coming to? Don't they know what's sacred?" And all that other old-codgerly stuff.
Whine, whine. C'mon, guys, would you DO something about this?
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