RRC Archives

pigsteak wrote:The reason running is more athletic, no matter your speed, than climbing, is because if you stop, you stop. No one is going to finish that run/race for you.

Not trying to be coy but can't you just walk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6tz9860 ... re=related

bcombs wrote:real hard 11d slab climbing.

Bwahahaha. I'm guessing you don't get "out" much....

The orange route in the gym says 11+ and is kinda slabby. I think that counts!

heavyc wrote: supposedly Hemingway felt an activity wasn't a sport unless there was some personal risk to it: "There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.". I doubt he would have considered "sport"

Even though many of us have used this quote, there is no evidence that Hemingway ever said or wrote it.

From Timelesshemingway.com:
This is one in a long list of quotations mysteriously attributed to Ernest Hemingway. While the general public seem to agree that this is in fact a Hemingway quotation, scholars have some reservations and for good reason. The early Hemingway did not believe that bullfighting was a sport. For him it was a tragedy. See his October 20, 1923 article titled "Bullfighting A Tragedy" reprinted in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades edited by William White. Hemingway reiterates his beliefs regarding the tragedy of bullfighting in his 1932 book, Death in the Afternoon.
In July of 2006, Gerald Roush, a visitor to Timeless Hemingway, provided a possible source for the "three sports" quotation. He cited a story titled "Blood Sport" by Ken Purdy, which originally appeared in the July 27, 1957 edition of the Saturday Evening Post. The story is reprinted in Ken Purdy's Book of Automobiles (1972). Gerald provided a scan of where the quotation appeared and it reads as follows: " 'There are three sports,' she remembered Helmut Ovden saying. 'Bullfighting, motor racing, mountain climbing. All the rest are recreations.' " Gerald noted that the character of Helmut Ovden is modelled after Ernest Hemingway. This could explain why the quote has been so widely attributed to Hemingway over the years.
In May of 2007, Rocky Entriken wrote to Timeless Hemingway with another possible author of the "three sports" quotation:
"As I am told, the quote belongs to Barnaby Conrad, a writer of the same era as Hemingway and a San Francisco raconteur of some note. Mostly he did magazine articles but his books include The Death of Manolete. My source is Dan Gerber, yet another writer of the era."

bcombs wrote:The orange route in the gym says 11+ and is kinda slabby. I think that counts!

Touche, combs. For a second there I thought we mebbe needed an 8a scorecard smackdown...mebbe JR will post his. I tend to climb a bit harder on climbs with holds than those with "none"...

All this quasi-elitist of talk of "mediocrity" (cough, cough, R/X) got me thinking about one of my partners back home. Now mind you, he could maybe do 10a when he was a whippet-thin 225, not great to people here I'm sure, but his philosophy was that you weren't a real climber 8) 8) 8) until you had done El Cap....and not that garbage on the sides like East Butt and West Face...a "real" Cap route. After some training we did the Nose and had a good time. By his criteria, how many people are a "real climber"?


Not saying I necessarily agree, but in a way he's got a point, there's something about being as John Long puts is a "granite astronaut" that is ....well, you'd know....


Show of hands? Bueller? Bueller?

calcify wrote: By his criteria, how many people are a "real climber"?

Few and far between, but I too have climbed 10a at 225lbs. Does that count for anything? 8)

Bueller? Anyone?

Well, to answer your q, bcombs, anyone who's 'a climbing' is a climber in my book--"it counts", but unless you've done the big stone, not by my friend's. He was pretty adamant, even bombastic, about "big walls, big bawlse"...especially after popping his grade VI cherry. After a number of Newcastles he'd start muttering about 'something edifying' about following Harding (RIP) around....

I hear u, I've climbed a lot of ice and walls at about 190, same friend said I was an "honorary member" of the FBMC (Fat Boy Mountaineering Club). I weighed 2 bills with all the crap on fer sure. On the positive, wrasslin' pigs is easier when you've got some extra mass. I eventually learned --the hard way-- that dropping the pigs and doing the Captain in a day was paradoxically both "easier" and "harder". Still, getting "thinner" helps on smaller holds, dragging a couple of love handles over the harness is for sure a +(x) handicap. Bogey climber bitd...

Must admit, I got a pretty good chuckle looking at JR's spray card. 13b isn't all that "elite", heck, I've redpointed that at home. Still, I found harder doing 13a/12ds at Rifle-not my home crag. I'm not shy to say the hardest I've climbed in Tuolumne is 11d, mebbe I'll have that breakthrough sometime. I'm just as proud of onsighting routes like the rostrum and bircheff-williams even though they were a "mere" 11c. Throw free blast in there too, though, that took a few tries... I'm no caldwell, I get tired after a half dozen pitches of slippery granite and gear fiddlin. Mediocre in a lot of books sure, but I had fun, interspersed with some moments of terror.

...the funny thing about Twight's "Justfication for An Elitist Attitude". He was pretty elite...at his flavor of the game. I'm pretty certain both JR and I could run circles around him clipping bolts tho.

shoot, we've all seen kids climbing 13+/14- after a couple years. JR, I'm guessing you've not really been "on high" or "out west" from the lack of pithy commentary. Spray card showing just a 'couple grades' bump over 4 years. Mebbe the superrad 8a scorecard has you popping 9a+ elsewhere but I'm kinda guessing not...correct me if I am wrong. I'll be slightly more impressed if there's some variety like Quinsana Plus at NRG...

Still, I'll offer the olive branch and invite you over yonder of the Miss next summer. We can warm up on a bunch low angle paddling to get ready for the "mediocre" Burning Down The House. You won't wanna be skipping bolts much like the 'lode though...but it's "only" 5.11c. It was put up by the "so-so" Kurt Smith and "pedestrian" Steve Schneider iirc. I guess it's so "no great shakes" that i'm not even sure if it's been repeated. so it's a ton fame and glory for a 'vanilla' route (but not a lot of points). I'll defer on the lead though...I know I'm not up to sketch that thing out.

If the rock star thing doesn't work out, you can always take up golf. Gotta tell you though, golf is a lot easier "on paper" than "in practice"...a lot simpler "in theory" than "practice"............technique, focus, mechanics....

....kinda like slab climbing

It always amazes me when climbers rag on golf, which many seem to love to do.

At least from my perspective, golf and climbing have tons of similarities. Both require a lot of technique, balance, and mental training. The mental training part is probably the biggest similarity to me. As a counter-example, I have skied my whole life and when I first started climbing just a couple years ago, I figured climbing and skiing would be similar as they're both 'outdoors' or 'extreme' (or whatever) pursuits. But after climbing for a while I thought climbing had more in common with golf, in that they're both kind of cerebral. Skiing is more just bombing downhill - pure physicality and less thought. Maybe that's just because I've been doing it for so long - I don't know.

For those climbers who don't think golf and climbing have much (or anything) in common: have you played and made efforts to improve in both sports (or call them whatever you want)? Have you ever seriously tried to learn golf? I'm guessing 'no.' How can you compare two things when you know nothing about one of them?

It seems like climbers just like to look upon golf with such disdain because it's a 'mainstream' or 'yuppy' sport, and climbing is SO cool and counterculture. To borrow from Andrew Bisharat, any such disdain is coming from a sport where we regularly wear manpris, headbands, and ballet shoes.

JR wrote:Golf is like slab climbing??? Analogy FAIL.

This was sort of an incomplete thought. I think of slab climbing as a facet of climbing. Much the same way, as say, putting is a facet of golf.

Calcify- Regardless of your appeal to authority. I think 5.11 slab is mediocre regardless of its location or protection. It is still 5.11. I am not saying this to diminish your personal accomplishments.
Is 5.11 slab hard for me personally? Sure. When I travel to area's like the ones you mentioned, do the routes feel hard to me? Sure.

Calcify wrote:13b isn't all that "elite"

I completely agree.

"15-year-old French kid Enzo Oddo repeated Realization AKA Biographie (5.15a)"

This is the climbing world that we live in now. I look at my climbing through this lens.

bcombs wrote: .... I too have climbed 10a at 225lbs. Does that count for anything? 8)

20 points!!!!