Have you ever tried to explain this “sport” to someone who thinks that a crimp is really just a crazy pimp? I take it for granted that you all know what I am talking about when I write something like: “He would’ve onsighted the 5.13a, except for the tickmark beta that had been sprayed up from the belay submissive scrubbing the slopers with the bubba brush. Disappointed, he went over to the Anus Cave and brownpointed Dirty Diapers (5.11a R), which was a relief.”

Normal people don’t get that. Hell, I don’t get that. But there are a lot of things I don’t “get,” but that has never stopped me from writing about it with authority. That’s why I get to be an editor. Unfortunately, one thing that goes along with managing the words and content of an international, award-winning magazine like Rock and Ice is that people expect you to have all the answers.

That said, I’m capable of answering the basics. To wit, some common questions:

What’s “spray”?

A: After elite climbers tick a climb that has appeared in a Climbing Narc News & Notes post, they think that they are now a big deal and that other people will care about them. In order to discourage other climbers from trying this route and subsquently realizing that the route isn’t actually all that difficult, the  climber uses a special high-powered hose to “spray” away other suitors from reaching the route’s base, just like a police brigade spraying away a group of hippie protesters.

That makes sense, I think. But can you please explain the word “redpoint”?

A: That’s what Indians have on their foreheads.

Anyway, it’s a lot of pressure being expected to have all the answers, and sometimes, it comes to a point. For example, just one hour ago, I was debating with my co-workers about whether or not John Bachar “onsighted” the Bachar-Yerian, when he put the famous route up back in the 1980s. Does hanging from hooks to drill bolts disqualify the “onsight,” even though he climbed it without falling or pre-inspection from the ground up?

I know you all think it’s fun to debate the finer points of climbing style on the Internet instead of actually climbing yourselves. I know this because I occasionally check in on that peep show called rockclimbing.com, and its other equally stupid variants, to  see what kind of  myths the”experts” are passing on to today’s newest noobs.

It’s all so nitpicky and silly that it makes me remember, in a weird way, why I climb in the first place. To constantly return to a place of simplicity, where there is nothing but you and the environment—no matter what you are doing in it—hanging, falling, sending, onsighting or brownpointing. It’s all good, as long as it’s all simple.

Just don’t go brownpointing at Indian Creek … not without a WAG bag, anyway. If that place gets shut down, all the gumbies won’t have anywhere to go, and they’ll start showing up at the areas that I like to go climbing. Now THAT would be unexplainable, in the most tragic sense of the word.

This article (modified) appeared as a TNB eBlast four years ago in January 2008. To sign up for the R&I TNB eBlast, click here.