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jstan
climber
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Oct 10, 2006 - 06:16pm PT
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Great discussion on a sensitive topic. Everything is relative. Joe Brown caught hell because he used even one piton. And so each generation goes. The question one asks oneself is, “in the medium each generation chooses do they do interesting and creative things?” And do they stay with that medium even when success begins to come less readily? For it is when success comes with difficulty that you finally gain the thing climbing offers. An understanding of your personal limit.
I am unable to understand the concept of toughness as a driving force. At the age of nine I almost rolled a tractor on myself. Did toughness require me to go tell my mom, “Hey mom. It’s cool! I nearly killed myself a few minutes ago.” I was just lucky. I connected the way the front end was coming up with changes in the way the tires were getting purchase. So I hit the clutch. Toughness never figures in when calculating how you view yourself. Stupid and lucky are two adjectives I use to describe myself when in a pinch.. Risks require only that you to know when to hit the clutch. Just what are people thinking about when toughness is a concern? I am never going to understand.
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Jello
Social climber
No Ut
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Oct 10, 2006 - 07:13pm PT
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Werner- take us diving with you...
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Lambone
Ice climber
Ashland, Or
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Oct 10, 2006 - 07:31pm PT
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I think "risk" is a completely relative term in the context of climbing, and therefore difficult to generalize in a discussion because it could be different for every situation and every climber.
I disagree with Chouinard that the "tools" of the trade are soley designed and improved upon to reduce risk or adventure (another overly relative term). Better tools certainly can make climbing easier, more comfortable, and even more fun...thus broadening the horizons of what is possible. But does that mean they reduce risk? Not nescesarily...and if so, why is that such a bad thing? Does more risk = a more worthy ascent? Or just a more foolish one? Sounds like a very macho attitude to have. Like riding a motorcycle without a helmet is way cooler then with one.
I think Yvon was speaking about ice climbing tools (maybe not) so let me bring up an ice climb as a case in point. Slipstream in the Canadian Rockies. A 1000m climb topped by a massive glacial serac. Objective danger is huge and therefore the risk is high. Does fancy equipment reduce that objective risk? I guess it could indirectly if you use it properly and it allows you to climb faster and spend less time exposed to the risk. But the risk, and adventure are still there. Do the fancy tools make it less likey that you fall and get hurt? Maybe, but i'd claim experince is alot more important then the tool.
And does a current climb of Slipstream merit any less respect on new equipment then in the "old days" when people had shoddy gear and climbed slow? Should it, and why so?
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 10, 2006 - 09:36pm PT
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So from all these posts in this wonderful thinking thread, a conclusion could be ......
We are all TOOLS
Hahahaha .......... OK, maybe not, .... (shrugs)
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Jello
Social climber
No Ut
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Oct 10, 2006 - 09:44pm PT
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Yes Werner...we are TOOLS. But who wields the tools? Do we, ourselves? Do we tool ourselves? Why?
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 10, 2006 - 09:47pm PT
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Jello
We tool ourselves (directly and indirectly) when we lose sight of the truth.
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TYeary
Mountain climber
Calif.
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Oct 10, 2006 - 10:03pm PT
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Well said Werner.
Minimize the gear maximise the experiance. The more "tools" one has, the more diluted the adventure becomes. The one tool we can't leave behind is ourselves, no matter how hard we try. For me, the idea is to get out there and manage risk. Whats acceptable varies from person to person. Take just enough to get the job done without extra weight in the pack. How far one can wind his or her neck out is directly related to their experiance, boldness and fitness. I think we are all chasing an E ticket ride in one way or another.
Tony
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Jello
Social climber
No Ut
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Oct 10, 2006 - 10:05pm PT
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Right on - as we used to say - Werner. And that's the whole point of the climbing adventure, isn't it - to put yourself in positions where you have no choice except to confront the truth - embrace reality?
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Anastasia
Trad climber
Near a mountain, CA
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Oct 10, 2006 - 10:15pm PT
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The point is that if the tools help you get more adventure, that is good. If it is taking the adventure away from the sport then it is negative.
I personally rather climb from the ground up with the least amount of gear. Yet, some gear advancements have improved our experience. Sticky rubber shoes, thinner ropes etc.
Are prosthetics tools which allow climbers that have lost limbs to keep on climbing a bad thing?
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 10, 2006 - 10:20pm PT
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What is the point in this so called adventure?
Where are we really going?
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Anastasia
Trad climber
Near a mountain, CA
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Oct 10, 2006 - 10:38pm PT
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Ah my friend, climbing is a personal journey. I always thought the destination is for the individual climber to discover and define.
I think my own experience of climbing has help me find myself. I always thought climbing saved me from worse things. I could have spent my days trying to find myself in the city cruising the club scene etc. Instead I found myself in the most beautiful places in the world. I found myself thinking about the basics, feeling free and proud of myself.
Nothing has ever made me feel so happy and well.
I am addicted.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Oct 10, 2006 - 10:43pm PT
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I'm familiar with the article from its first publishing and viewed it even then a little differently. I knew where Choinard was going with his final argument, felt then like many have expressed the same weaknesses in the argument.
I always saw the connection with the Piolet and Expurey's quote almost completely as a reference to the pilolet as a work of art as well as tool and it's purity of design. There's no doubt that the Choinard piolet is a work of art still collected solely as such as a famous firearm or sword, not for its' continued utility but solely for its' beauty.
Wish I had one!
Any bamboo handled ones for sale?
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TYeary
Mountain climber
Calif.
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Oct 10, 2006 - 11:50pm PT
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We're going inward, Werner. Inward. It's an outward journey to discover what's on the inside.The fewer the tools, the closer the look. Some of us like to get up close and personal. Some of us are comfortable in our own skin and some of us are not. Those who are, look deeper. As one looks deeper, "tools" only serve to interfer with the veiw, as it were. I think that's why soloing provides a good long, deep look at who and what we are. Few of us subject ourselves to such introspection.
Tony
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golsen
Social climber
kennewick, wa
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Oct 10, 2006 - 11:57pm PT
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I think some have been a little put off from Yvon's statements. However, I do not know of the context and whether we have lost something in the translation. I do know that almost 15 years ago, my buddy and I set out to climb the Salathe in a day. We had done the NIAD and that was my buddys first big wall. His wife had an office next to Yvons at Patagonia. When she told Yvon of our exploit and that we had made it he shook his head and seemed amazed. Was this less adventure? In his eyes? Does it matter? It doesnt matter to me. What mattered to me was my own thing.
However, his response to that tells me that his adventure statements may not totally jive with what gets printed.
I think what werner is saying is what is the point? For me, whatever I am doing I feel a need to improve in my own eyes. That hasnt happened with climbing in many years and I seem to be failing on other fronts currently as well. But there is a yearning for me to try. Its the journey, not the end result.
There are those out there pushing the adventure, doing things nobody has done, but there are not very many. We each need to look at our own explorations and get what we can from them. If I understood why I needed to do certain things, I envision myself sitting on top of a foggy mountain answering questions like werner asks. hehe
edit, tony seems to have nailed it....
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john hansen
climber
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Oct 11, 2006 - 12:33am PT
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michael angelo said he would slowly remove the marble from his statues until no more needed to be taken away.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 11, 2006 - 01:07am PT
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Great discussion! thanks all for participating!
I must appologize to Lambone because I completely missed his point about clothing. I cannot agree with him more that the modern revolution in clothing has probably done as much for climbing as the gear, at least when climbing is done in extreme environmental situations: like ice climbing, alpine, extreme alpine and mountaineering.
But I do not agree that these provide the same aid that climbing equipment provides. Let me elaborate here and perhaps I can explain where I'm coming from on the equipment-risk-adventure thing.
If I go to an extreme climate I can calculate with some certainty my chances of survival if I do not take a set of precautions, adequate clothing being one of those precautions. The outcome of my adventure is obvious, say, going to the arctic for extended period dressed for sailing the Atlantic. This is what many British expeditions did with well known results, they froze to death. Of course, Norwegian expeditions decided that they would study the best way to survive in that environment, dressed like the people who lived there, and survived.
It is not much of an adventure if you know for sure that you are going to die, or that you are going to live. That is, if the outcome is known before actually engaging in the activity then really it is just entertainment or homocide.
Now in climbing we use equipment to protect against the possibility that we are going to fall. I learned to climb without falls or rests, that is, you climb the pitch with no aid provided. Anchors provided a "safety net" in case you fell, but falling was not a part of the sport, "the leader must not fall."
In fact, most climbs I do these days do not involve me falling, especially if I'm on lead. I might top rope to practice climbs I cannot lead yet, or uncertain that I can lead. In a real way, I never use the protection, it is just an insurance policy. I am physically capable of climbing the pitches without any protection at all.
Now if I set off up a route that I have only a general description of the difficulties, location, etc. the outcome of the climb may not be predictable, that is, I may come to some difficulties which are greater than I am willing to attempt to overcome. I am risking something here, do I push a little harder to get up or do I just go down and not finish the climb? What am I willing to do? what am I capable of doing? What do I have the courage to do?
The answer to these questions may depend on just how much and what type of equipment I have taken with me. If I have two sets of nuts and double cams from small to huge, well I will probably be able to make it up most climbs... I might even decide to have a bolt kit on me too, now I'm really ready for anything. The risk of not making the climb is lessened considerably. The risk to my being is reduced also. The risk may be all gone or negligible.
Now I may have a wonderful "adventure" in the process too.
But now let's take the Saint-Exupery edict to heart and start to strip away what is not needed. At some point we find that place where "there is no longer anything to take away". What of the 10 essentials are really not essential. What gear can I leave in the car? how much beta do I need? What level of commitment am I willing to engage in to do the climb? How much risk am I willing to take? Just how hard do I want to push it? How bold can I be?
I don't know the answer to any of this, it is a process. Perhaps I am putting more into what Chouinard said, but, the creation of tools for climbers to use thoughtfully, in the sense of engendering creativity, boldness, and technique in their climbing would be a fullfilling accomplishment. But those same tools used to allow a line to be forced in near complete safety by brute technology could not have been very appealing. So why continue...
I share the feeling that climbing is not merely "sport," and those feelings grew out of the act of minimizing what I took on a climb, and learning to depend more on my own ability as a climber, my choice to embark on a journey with no certain outcome, an adventure. Sometimes I got to the top, sometimes I came down before the summit. There are times when I was not sure I would make it down at all.
Anyway, we can see the split in the climbing culture, it is not necessarily along generational lines. But it isn't were we start out as climbers, but how we end up. And it is pretty much an individual thing, with good friends thrown in. It doesn't always die with us either, but it is there in what we leave behind, a picture, a story, a route, a youngster who learned from us, good memories.
In the end the level of risk we will undertake is a choice we each make. But as John has said in other threads, pushing ourselves out of our "comfort zone" can open the door to deeper understanding of ourselves and our existence.
Adventures can put us way outside our comfort zone... they can open the door.
That's one of the reasons I climb.
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Lambone
Ice climber
Ashland, Or
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Oct 11, 2006 - 03:34am PT
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how about tools that allowed aid climbers to push more extreme aid climbs up the captain and other walls? Like the RURP, the Birdbeak, and Copperhead, and refined hooks.
These tools allowed climbers to venture into territory of extreme risk, into "if you fall you die" territory. Strip away these tools and the climb doesn't become more pure, it becomes non-existant, some might say imposible...without bolts anyway.
does Yvons sentiment that the advnacement of tools, such as these, reduced the risk and adventure in climbs hold true? I would think they opened the doors for the riskiest climbs ever done.
Charlie Porters famous 35 RURP placement A5 lead up the Tripple Cracks comes to mind...with a suspect anchor taboot! Or for a more moder version, what about Gerberdings A5 lead on Reticent?
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Oct 11, 2006 - 08:17am PT
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I have always been annoyed by Chouinard’s comments in regard to “what’s left” in climbing. RR had similar attitudes for awhile too, when he said back in the early 1970’s, “it’s just a mop-up operation now” even though I myself was part of that golden era and some of the 70’s.
These two men and some others of that time, really believed privately and not so privately they were the chic ones, and claimed the whole prize with nothing left but exercise for the new climbers still to arrive! Although the fleeting sense of great forboding magic would always be gone from the Valley after many of the lines on major features had been done, the elephant in the room is that most of the best rock climbing had still to be done. Again, most of the finest, most interesting, most creative routes had still to be climbed. Yosemite has not been mountaineering for a hundred years; it is rock climbing.
Largo and I both feel that there were tons of fantastic climbs “that got away”, or were still to be done when we phased out years after these dictums.
So in their comments, I get mostly unfriendly self-aggrandizement, not real statement of fact other than, again, that the impalpable sensation of “new territory” has in a sense vanished but it has vanished from the entire world in our time in many ways. We go to Mars, we go to the Moon and we engineer living tissues; there is a feeling that it “has all been done” everywhere, to some. And some of this is just the wisdom of growing older too. I am sure a 14 year old climber coming to Yosemite is having pretty much the same experience I had 43 years ago.
It is insane to expect things to stay the same, RR was fond of saying back then too, and as he and others struggled with their paradoxical transition out of hardman status to other wonderful things they picked up and excelled at, they kind of knew it was coming, had to wonder what it would be like, but then also kicked in the teeth a bit those who would follow through time what they had started and suggested. It is really rather churlish, incorrect and belittling, frankly.
Yes there are tons of intermediate climbers now who are gymclimbing the dickens out of real rock. These people of course are highly visible but are not our only example; they are not the standard by which things are progressing, just highly visible. And yes they think they are doing something too; RR must have loved saying, “sport climbing is the child that wants to eat its mother”. But there are many unbelievably powerful and talented younger climbers climbing as Yvon himself had called for way back in 1963, the really risky dangerous wild places all over the world using modern techniques and equipment. In some respects, modern advanced climbers can’t win, in this Yvon and RR scenario, because the claim is the whole cake has already been eaten supposedly, but meanwhile go all over the earth and climb hard using Yosemite methods---it is contradictory and ungenerous.
I agree with Werner and others that climbing is not a game or sport. Gullich liked to insist that “it is just a sport” in order to shunt the endless trashtalk about its spiritual aspects and laughably return climbing to some kind of ordinary footing like soccer. But in many respects this move is disingenuous too, as it cannot explain why and how he would place himself in the situation of an unroped solo of Separate Reality or some of his other feats. To call it a sport only is simply to hide from the really ambiguous unsolvable question climbing embodies at that level and to certainly not do the thinking.
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jstan
climber
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Oct 11, 2006 - 09:42am PT
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According to Wikipedia the phrase “Know thyself” was inscribed in gold at the entrance to the temple at Apollo. Author unknown. That was centuries before Christ and here on ST that dictum is still reverberating among authors struggling with it just as honestly as did the ancient Greeks. Should we cease struggling with it – it will all be over.
Among the many excellent observations Peter has made there is one I have long found fascinating. The need each generation feels to say that everything has been done. In the late 19th century physicists widely thought everything had been done. Only a few minor things needed cleaning up, such as the blackbody law for thermal radiation. Well, that turned out to be one hell of a clean-up. Perhaps this is something people have to believe when they finally grasp how it is all going to end. Help me out here. Is it more satisfying to believe, “When I died, everything ended.”? Or is does it feel better to believe “I was part of a great river.”? The first seems simply a statement of poor planning.
I had little difficulty finding my personnal limit, completing that task by 1969. Just lucky I guess. After finding my limit the new routes and stuff in the tiny place where I lived, that came easily, seemed a waste. I was taking wilderness needed by all and turning it into something less, with no constructive output. Really. No climbing area needs 15,000 routes out of which only 1000 appear in a guidebook. While every single day people need to look up at a rock and feel awe that, “That hasn’t been done!” I have to ask a question.
Have we really thought through what it is we are doing?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 11, 2006 - 11:41am PT
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When you strip the experience of climbing down to its essence it becomes a journey along a perilous passage. Somehow you have found your way from the start to the finish and have survived.
This is similar to many other challenging passages one can embark on, going to the moon, mars, sailing across an ocean, treking through the few wild places left on the planet.
I like Maysho's characterization above, "turning off my headlamp." What a simple and powerful way to think about the whole process. It is actually quite common to just turn your headlamp off, and the immediate effect is stumbling about in the dark on an uneven path, whacking into brush, being a clutz as the sense of sight is denied. But something happens, you begin to sense your surroundings more, you need to, not just with your eyes adapting to the dark, but the feel on your feet, and listening, and you are paying much more attention because you have to.
I think that once you have done this, "turned off the headlamp," you start to open to the idea of minimizing your reliance on technology as a way of openingn up connections between you and the environment you are in. After all, technologies exist to mitigate the harsh aspects of the environment... perhaps clothing being one of the first technologies, who knows, certainly fire.
So it is on a climb. Aid climbs go where no free climbing is possible, at least at the contemporary free standard. There is style associated with the application of aid, this has been debated in many threads in the ST Forum... and there are considerations in establishing aid climbs concerning other climbers.
Once again, in answer to Lambone above, the limits and appropriateness of the application of technology to climbing is not a hard and fast rule. No one else cares if you walk with you light on or off.... they do not get the same connection in your act as you do... so we can only imagine what Charlie Porter was going through nailing the Tripple Cracks for the first time. But it is precisely that feeling, that state of mind, that many of us seek out, because we can imagine it.
I think Chouinard has always said that if you are seeking the same feeling by repeating a climb, like The Shield, you are not likely to get there. The known can never by unknown. I think that is a debatable point, but part of what drove the Golden Age into the world was seeking the same sense of unknown that had prevously existed in the Valley, prior to all the development.
It's not that the Valley lost its significance to climbing. It is that the climbers so intent in unlocking the secrets had essentially done so... at least they had answered the questions they had posed. They couldn't come up with any new questions... a later generation did.
I am reminded of the Sheridan Anderson cartoon of his Robins character standing next to his Pratt character, they dressed in their superhero costumes, "Are there no more worlds to conquer?" asks Robins... "The bar opens at 4" replies Pratt...
Apparently the overwrought concerns regarding limits is not a new one.
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