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unbreakablesoul
Mar 26, 2008, 5:56 PM
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I am a grad student and climber who is stuck up in Minnesota right now. Fortunately I am doing some cool research and I wanted to ask some questions of the climbing community.
I've been researching the risk that has been taken out of adventure programs (2 ropes required for top rope elements on a high ropes course, backing up figure 8 knots, backing up harnesses...)
It has lead me to ask, has too much risk been taken out of climbing? At first I thought no, but then I started noticing a few trends and comparing old climbers to new and checking out the differences.
Tying in with a bowline around the waist, or having a harness with a figure 8. Safety or comfort?
2 slings to clip in with while cleaning a sport route, both with lockers, or one without a locker?
Anchors that must be perfectly equalized (or as close to it as you can get).
A lot of these things sound like personal preferences but as more climbers get out there the sport grows and evolves based on what is being done now. Will the day come when you need 3 anchor bolts for a sport route? 3 Slings to clean them? Does everyone have to wear a helmet?
When I was taught to climb I was told that you can't belay without a ground anchor cause you are as good as dead without it. Fortunately I quickly rid myself of that by climbing with others and seeing that it is safe without it. However, if someone is teaching people to climb and telling them that, what does that mean for the future of climbing?
There is also the old climbers who climb on the most beat up old junk looking trad gear and clip carabiner to carabiner for extenders and flip their cam's in the air mid climb before placing them. Still alive and sending 5.13s...
So I would love to hear what you think is becoming too safe and what isn't as well as why. What have you learned and dismissed, or picked up along the way?
*Note: None of this info is going to be used in research or anything so feel free to just dump out whatever you want.
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randomtask
Mar 26, 2008, 6:07 PM
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Umm....................................
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sed
Mar 26, 2008, 6:15 PM
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climbing has been opened up to people who want to climb with less risk. Still, many still pursue a style of climbing that involves high risk. techniques and technology have allowed risk assessment to become more transparent and controlled but people can still choose for themselves how to climb.
S
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kovacs69
Mar 26, 2008, 6:33 PM
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unbreakablesoul wrote: I am a grad student and climber who is stuck up in Minnesota right now. Fortunately I am doing some cool research and I wanted to ask some questions of the climbing community. I've been researching the risk that has been taken out of adventure programs (2 ropes required for top rope elements on a high ropes course, backing up figure 8 knots, backing up harnesses...) It has lead me to ask, has too much risk been taken out of climbing? At first I thought no, but then I started noticing a few trends and comparing old climbers to new and checking out the differences. Tying in with a bowline around the waist, or having a harness with a figure 8. Safety or comfort? 2 slings to clip in with while cleaning a sport route, both with lockers, or one without a locker? Anchors that must be perfectly equalized (or as close to it as you can get). A lot of these things sound like personal preferences but as more climbers get out there the sport grows and evolves based on what is being done now. Will the day come when you need 3 anchor bolts for a sport route? 3 Slings to clean them? Does everyone have to wear a helmet? When I was taught to climb I was told that you can't belay without a ground anchor cause you are as good as dead without it. Fortunately I quickly rid myself of that by climbing with others and seeing that it is safe without it. However, if someone is teaching people to climb and telling them that, what does that mean for the future of climbing? There is also the old climbers who climb on the most beat up old junk looking trad gear and clip carabiner to carabiner for extenders and flip their cam's in the air mid climb before placing them. Still alive and sending 5.13s... So I would love to hear what you think is becoming too safe and what isn't as well as why. What have you learned and dismissed, or picked up along the way? *Note: None of this info is going to be used in research or anything so feel free to just dump out whatever you want.
I would not say the risk has been taken out. Climbers have just been given options that are safer. Weather the climbers choose to use those options are up to the individual. Sometimes I choose to wear a helmet and sometimes not. Nobody has forced climbers to do anything. We all have the option so no the risk has not been removed.
JB
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WVUCLMBR
Mar 26, 2008, 6:34 PM
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Climb with me sometime....super dangerous....I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.....what is a "locker"?
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dingus
Mar 26, 2008, 6:42 PM
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I don't think the risk has been neutered from climbing yet.
However, mainstreaming the sport has certainly set it on that path. If you look at the advice-over-time on the internet, the trend toward safety-homogenization is well under way.
The standard - 'get some instruction' reply is indicative of this attitude.
I think it is somewhat inevitable that as the inherent risk of climbing is realized by both risk-averse climbers and public land managers the sort of certifications and permits required for other 'high risk' sports will be applied to climbing.
Despite all of this, we can still easily kill or main ourselves. So its a question of degree and liability, frankly.
I think the worst thing imaginable is for a liability lawsuit to succeed against a public resource based upon risk/safety concerns. That will spell the doom of the freedoms we have heretofore enjoyed.
Cheers
DMT
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cracklover
Mar 26, 2008, 6:51 PM
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Has the risk been taken out of climbing? No, emphatically no.
BUT... has the culture changed? Yes.
First of all - are adventure programs climbing? No, not at all. So forget all that stuff. But what about bouldering over big pads with a team of spotters? What about sport climbing, toproping, gym climbing?
Yes, all those things are climbing. And yes, they're all safer than some types of climbing "once" were.
But that's not the whole story. Climbing is still what you make of it. If you choose to solo, or to push your personal limits over poor gear, or to slim your margin of error on big committing climbs - you can get dead just as easily as ever.
So basically, climbing has expanded. It is now many more things than it was. Some of which are safer. Many of which are not.
Cheers,
GO
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majid_sabet
Mar 26, 2008, 6:53 PM
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Is climbing dangerous? Yes
(This post was edited by majid_sabet on Mar 26, 2008, 7:15 PM)
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krusher4
Mar 26, 2008, 6:57 PM
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nope, go climb a R or X rated climb in Eldo.
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shoo
Mar 26, 2008, 6:59 PM
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unbreakablesoul wrote: (2 ropes required for top rope elements on a high ropes course)
Seriously??? As a high ropes course instructor, gotta say, this is absurd. Overcomplication = more danger. A second rope has almost no direct value added for safety and only serves to make life more complicated and therefore more dangerous.
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granite_grrl
Mar 26, 2008, 7:16 PM
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The rod through my femur says no. Though I will agree with others here that the culture of climbing has changed. Sure, people have better equipment, but the percentage of climbers pushing themselves is much lower, and many people who are pushing them selves are now pushing in different ways.
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drljefe
Mar 26, 2008, 7:21 PM
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I think too much LYCRA has been taken out of climbing.
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hafilax
Mar 26, 2008, 7:42 PM
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North America's overly litigious tendencies have made discussing and teaching climbing more conservative. Some people take it more literally than others. There are certainly more options on how you protect yourself while climbing but the danger will always be there.
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dingus
Mar 26, 2008, 7:54 PM
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The point granite-grrl makes that climbers used to routinely take on more risk in greater % than now is probably very accurate.
Ran it out more, and with things like off widths not just a little more either. The climbing culture for a time embraced risk and many climbers sought it out.
And of course folks still do. But we certainly have the means now to make climbing far less risky than it once was and many, most or perhaps the vast majority, now embrace ways to reduce risk.
Many of the best trad routes I ever did were legacy routes established using gear and techniques that inherently included far more risk than the methods I employed when I repeated them.
Some of those climbs, perhaps again most of them - I would not have done in the original style. I wouldn't have had it in me frankly.
The mainstreaming of climbing, in part by the very folks who established climbs in VERY risky styles, Chouinard leaps to mind and plenty of others, opened the doors to the likes of me by reducing that risk to some extent.
Professional climbers catering to a more risk-averse client base adopted many standards and techniques to enable them to profit from an expanding base of less committed climbers.
And as she also pointed out, the style of pusung boundaries by taking on ever greater risks itself fell out of vogue. I think Kurt Smith said it well...
'if I kept on climbing that way sooner or later I was going to die.'
he and many other gifted athletes switched their boundaries to other, less risky realms.
How many climbing deaths per year would be considered 'acceptable losses?'
DMT
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on_belay_hombre
Mar 26, 2008, 8:07 PM
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In reply to: clip carabiner to carabiner for extenders and flip their cam's in the air mid climb before placing them.
There's a difference between risk and stupidity.
Risk seems to me like something inherent in the activity, not something you add to it, although one's own stupidity does add a risk factor.
Rock climbing is inherently a risky pursuit and the technology and advances we've seen over the years doesn’t come with a label that says "may reduce the risk of severe maiming or death". It's still a risky activity but we do what we can to keep ourselves as far from those risks as possible.
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shimanilami
Mar 26, 2008, 8:13 PM
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majid_sabet wrote: Is climbing dangerous? Yes
Is climbing with Majid dangerous? It's fucking suicidal.
(Just messing with you, man.)
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styndall
Mar 26, 2008, 9:01 PM
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I don't know. They used the tools the had to stay safe in so much as it was possible and still climb what they wanted to climb. I wasn't born until 1980, so, by rights, I should probably be stupidly risk-averse (right now, I'm finishing up grad school, about to go to more grad school, and I climb a damn sight less than I want to or should), but in the 80s, as a 7 through 10 year old kicking around rural Tennessee with a cool dad, we'd find some little cliffs and bluffs (around Cleveland and Collegedale, I know you're a Tennessee guy, you might know the area better than I do), and just climb the hell up, a bored guy in his early forties and two ratty elementary school kids in torn shorts, beat up sneakers, and ball caps. My dad would sometimes have to get to a ledge and then lift Eric or me up to some new holds, since ledgy climbing can be a bitch when you're under four feet, and we'd hang out, sit in the sun for a few minutes, then scramble down and try a new way up.
We soloed some stuff that was surely only fourth class, maybe easy fifth at hardest, and probably never more than about sixty feet tall, and my dad told us never to my mom about it, and that was that.
It surely wasn't 5.11, nor was it in 1968, but that sort of thing surely happens all the time, all over the place. Yosemite might have turned into a huge climbing gym, a destination for people with 10k worth of gear and a tick list, but you'll also see people just walking up mountains to see the top.
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tolman_paul
Mar 26, 2008, 9:04 PM
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It's not just climbing, society at large has allowed groups to push an agenda of save us from ourselves. Kids being mandated by law to wear helmuts while bicycling, etc, etc.
Climbing is and always will be as dangerous as one wants.
The biggest problem I see is that the current generation is being raised with a mindset of everything can be made safe, and if that is mindlessly applied, it is much more dangerous than folks who have a good grasp of the risks and deal with them appropriately.
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dingus
Mar 26, 2008, 9:20 PM
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styndall wrote: I don't know. They used the tools the had to stay safe in so much as it was possible and still climb what they wanted to climb.
Hmmm, both have said, along with Chouinard in his own way, that they eschewed available tools and techniques not in keeping with their (forgive me) pro-risk focus.
Bachar would be another, in his case he dropped ALL the tools cept for shoes and chalk.
Its not worth arguing over. I'm not them and never climbed that way either. But I believe them nevertheless.
Cheers
DMT
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styndall
Mar 26, 2008, 9:29 PM
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dingus wrote: styndall wrote: I don't know. They used the tools the had to stay safe in so much as it was possible and still climb what they wanted to climb. Hmmm, both have said, along with Chouinard in his own way, that they eschewed available tools and techniques not in keeping with their (forgive me) pro-risk focus. Bachar would be another, in his case he dropped ALL the tools cept for shoes and chalk. Its not worth arguing over. I'm not them and never climbed that way either. But I believe them nevertheless. Cheers DMT
It's possible, of course, that they actively looked for stuff that would kill them, but, since they mostly survived anyway, I've got my doubts. Bachar was (and is, I think, though I don't follow so closely) a soloing fiend, but I expect he had the sense not to solo things he thought would kill him or that he couldn't back out of if he needed.
Stuff I've read about John Yablonski makes me think that he might have been the best example of someone who seeks out actual risk, but I never got a chance to talk to the guy, so who knows?
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curt
Mar 26, 2008, 9:48 PM
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on_belay_hombre wrote: In reply to: clip carabiner to carabiner for extenders and flip their cam's in the air mid climb before placing them. There's a difference between risk and stupidity...
Actually, that used to be fairly common procedure.
on_belay_hombre wrote: Risk seems to me like something inherent in the activity, not something you add to it, although one's own stupidity does add a risk factor. Rock climbing is inherently a risky pursuit and the technology and advances we've seen over the years doesn’t come with a label that says "may reduce the risk of severe maiming or death". It's still a risky activity but we do what we can to keep ourselves as far from those risks as possible.
Most of us have done what we could to keep the risks of climbing at an acceptable level. Still, there's no denying that much risk has been mitigated by the many advances in climbing related technology. I'm pretty sure that climbing on a hemp rope would scare the crap out of me.
Curt
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on_belay_hombre
Mar 26, 2008, 10:04 PM
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In reply to: there's no denying that much risk has been mitigated by the many advances in climbing related technology.
But the mitigation of risk is all in the hands of those who use use that technology. A lot of the risk in climbing is directly related to climbers using the technology available to them effectively/properly/safely. Whether climbing on a hemp rope or the best rope made today, either can be scary in the wrong hands. That goes for any climbing technology...just look at the gri-gri.
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styndall
Mar 26, 2008, 10:09 PM
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on_belay_hombre wrote: In reply to: there's no denying that much risk has been mitigated by the many advances in climbing related technology. But the mitigation of risk is all in the hands of those who use use that technology. A lot of the risk in climbing is directly related to climbers using the technology available to them effectively/properly/safely. Whether climbing on a hemp rope or the best rope made today, either can be scary in the wrong hands. That goes for any climbing technology...just look at the gri-gri.
Hemp is much scarier than a new Maxim, wrong hands or no. Technology only works in the hands of users, sure, but to argue that new stuff isn't ceteris paribus safer by many measures is a bit silly.
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