Why send your best when you can drag your partner down to your worst?
There’s nothing better than going on a climbing trip. The opportunity to travel is the greatest perk in any climber’s life. There is climbing in every country on earth … just point to some place on the globe, and if you’re a climber you automatically have a reason to go there. Think about it. It’s pretty cool. (No, seriously, think about it. See? Pretty cool.)
I’d say 10 days is the minimum amount of time for a climbing trip to be “worth it,” though I’ve also flown down to Hueco for just a weekend (twice). It takes at least three days just to get used to a new area. Then, you have to pepper in rest days (about three)—an inefficient waste of your time, like showering or meditating, that I loathe but do because it’s necessary. That leaves you with four days to try to send something, which suddenly doesn’t seem like a whole lot considering you’re on a 10-day trip, especially for a guy like me, who has a proven track record of needing an entire season to do just one route.
And while there’s nothing better than going on a climbing trip, there’s nothing worse than going on a climbing trip with a partner who sucks. A bad climbing partner can ruin everything! I’m a pretty friendly, open-minded guy. I’ll climb with just about anyone—I don’t care who he is or what he does or how hard he climbs. Just don’t be a dick, and we’ll get along. But I’ve gone on trips with certain climbing partners who have actually made me want to quit climbing altogether, which is a little like making the Pope want to give up Catholicism.
Anyone who can make something you truly and dearly love feel like torture (an experience I also have, strangely enough, while reading the rosy prose that we call mountaineering “literature”) has to have been sent from Hell with the purposeful mission of ruining your vacation, right?
It’s almost too perfect, too well planned. It’s almost as if his trip itinerary looks something like this.
Day 1
Forget harness at car. Don’t mention this until your partner is tied in and racked up with shoes on. Stand around apologizing profusely while still not going back to car to get harness. After getting harness and belaying him on first hard route of day, make sure he falls twice as far as he should. When he pulls up on rope to regain highpoint, don’t help him at all. Also, lower him at really erratic speeds.
Day 2
Start being really competitive with everything: climbing, who knows more things, etc. Be overly pedantic when talking to your partner about things you know he knows. “Scotch has to come from Scotland—otherwise it’s not Scotch. I know my single malts preeeettty well. Lagavulin 16 year is a great one. You really need to try it. Maybe one day you’ll get to.” That sort of thing.
Day 3
Injure yourself. Roll your ankle on the approach. Then make your injury his injury. “Oh, we can’t go to that crag that you really want to go to today. I don’t think my ankle could make it there.”
Day 4
Rest day! Research a wholelistic naturopath that’s four hours away. Visit (he drives) naturopath to fix up ankle. Make sure naturopath is also closed.
Day 5
Insist on only toproping. Hang on every hard move, and then dismiss the route as being “Just OK.” Once on the ground, talk about your wildly outrageous climbing goals you don’t have a shot in Hell of ever doing. “Next season, I’d like to free El Cap. I could use a belayer. What are your plans?”
Day 6
Decide, for no reason whatsoever, to start mouth-breathing and slurping your food as if everything you eat is hot soup. Chew loudly with mouth open.
When your partner climbs, just stare at his back and say over and over in your head, “I hope you fall, you motherfucker.”
Day 7
Mysteriously forget and/or possibly lose chalkbag. Use his. Then, spend 1.5 hours toproping project. Tick up every single hold. Then don’t ever get back on route. Say you’re saving that one for next time you come back to the area, which in all likelihood will be never.
Day 8
Continue scorching his eyeballs with your headlamp when you talk to him at night. Don’t do the dishes.
Day 9
While cleaning on toprope, get one of his cams stuck. Really jam that sucker in there so it’ll never, ever come out. Be really condescending about it, like it’s his fault. “Why’d you place that number 3 in a number 2 crack?”
Day 10
Right when it looks like he’s finally about to send something, just sit down on the rope and pull him off the wall. You swore you heard him say, “Take.” Honest.
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Free climb.
Free thought.
This Week in Climbing
- The son of Tenzing Norgay goes full base and calls Everest climbers “overnight mountaineers” — “The shocking reality of climbing Everest in 2022” in the Telegraph.
- The RunOut podcast: new monster bonus episode. AMA #2. Join us on Patreon to listen to this episode and more!
- Ukrainian mountaineer Antonina Samoilova displays Ukrainian flag on summit of Everest.
- Alan Arnette, as always, comes through with the thorough summit reports from Everest season, including my friend Manoah Ainuu who was part of the first all-Black climbing team to reach the top of the world.
- Must listen Enormocast: a deep dive with Scott Franklin, one of the best American rock climbers of the 1980s.
- Paul Ramsden and Tim Miller made an alpine-style first ascent of The Phantom Line, a 1,200-metre ED+ up the north face of a previously unclimbed 6,563-metre peak which they called Jugal Spire in the Jugal Himal area of Nepal.
Reader Dissent of the Week
My post about Seb Bouin (apologies for the click-bait title) “Who Cares About the World’s Hardest Route” got a lot of great feedback from readers, but also inspired a rather hilarious if cringey exchange involving a bunch of old “back in the day” guys (myself included) on Facebook.
Matt Lavender kicked it off with this comment:
In 1972, Frank Shorter won the Olympic marathon, kicking off the running craze in the United States. Not surprisingly, the increase in popularity brought in sponsorship money for top runners, helping marathon records to continue to fall. What no one talks about is the impact that the popularity had on the running masses. In 1975, over 90% of the Boston Marathon field broke 3 hrs 30 minutes. By 2019, the average finishing time for the Boston Marathon had increased to 3 hrs 53 minutes. That’s a pretty stark difference. We are seeing the same in climbing. Today’s average climber is far less competent than their counterparts of decades ago. In the same manner that running magazines began targeting the masses (endless “how to” articles and fluff pieces on “feeling good about being slow”), the climbing rags now cater to the lowest common denominator. The bottom end of the curve not only could care less about top end accomplishments, it is threatened by them. After all, it’s hard to feel good about flailing on 5.8 when Seb Bouin is pushing towards 5.16.
Rudy Ruana quickly questioned the premise that the median level of climbers is lower today:
I don’t know where you’re getting this average climber is worse than 30 years ago. Seems like these days low end 5.14 redpointing isn’t a big deal and most of the kids that compete are pretty much onsighting 13+/14-.
I jumped in with this comment:
Just catching up on this thread: Matt, my article was written to be positive, and to turn the spotlight on a major achievement that I felt people may have missed because social media makes it hard if not impossible to have a sense of proportion about what is and isn’t important in every facet of society. The number of people who aren’t themselves elite by your/certain standards has nothing to do with this phenomenon of letting newsworthy climbs fall through the sieve. Also, the statistics you cite in your original post do not reveal any insight. Watch how easy it is to give numbers, without context, to make point: the percentage of people who die on Everest is lower than any other 8000m peak, less than 2% of the total climbers–so Everest is safe … but on the other hand there are more people who have lost their lives over the course Everest climbing history than any other 8000m peak–so Everest is the deadliest peak in the world. See how easy it is to use stats to say something without saying anything important? The fact that people who don’t really know what they’re talking about and who have social media accounts can casually spout off context-free narratives such as this in comment threads or elsewhere is the reason we’re in a bad mess epistemologically. It’s the reason we have a hard time knowing what to pay attention to, knowing what’s objectively true, what’s real, what’s important. Anyway, I guess I’m just trying to say is that if people aren’t on the same page with understanding what is worth celebrating in climbing, don’t blame people who don’t know how to tie a ring bend or a butterfly knot and who can only climb 5.8. Blame the dumb discourse in climbing spaces on the internet.
Ultimately Matt resolved the discussion gracefully:
Your clickbait title: Who Cares About The World’s Hardest Route. My response: the majority of climbers no longer care. This is due to the trend climbing has taken and this trend very much parallels what happened in running. I stand by the relevance of the statistics. Most modern runners have zero interest in elite running times – ditto for the climbing masses; they climb to fit into the “climbing lifestyle” that has been marketed to them by the outdoor industry. 5.15d just means another movie at Reel Rock. … I hate seeing these threads devolve into personal attacks so let me attempt to pull things back a bit. I enjoy reading Andrew’s writing. At a minimum, he makes a serious effort to create something thought provoking – a welcome change from the insipid, beginner oriented fare that now fills the climbing mags. Regarding this article, I agree with Andrew that Seb Bouin’s jaw-dropping accomplishment deserves far more attention. Andrew and I differ in our explanations as to why DNA is not getting as much fanfare as it should. He places the blame on media overstimulation; I place the blame on a basic shift in character composition of the climbing populace. Regardless of who you agree with, I can state one certainty: I will look forward to reading Andrew’s next piece with far more anticipation than reading the next installment of “12 Ways to Improve Your Footwork.”
Daila Ojeda finds perfection in the Dolomites
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This is too specific to be fiction
Brilliant. I printed this out so I can use all 10 techniques on my next climbing partner.
#blessed #livelaughlove