As we pointed our packed station wagon southward, entering into a three-day overland pilgrimage, my partner and I talked ourselves through the ins and outs of one of the core questions climbers ask themselves, each other and the world: Why does climbing seem so different than other activities?
Immediately my better half laid her cards on the table. 鈥淚t鈥檚 because of the inclusion everyone feels when they get into climbing.鈥� I stared at the white lines snaking by before my eyes as we drove. She did have a point. Climbing operates with a sense of community that many other sports and activities champion but don鈥檛 deliver on.
I offer here a sketch, albeit a stereotypical one, of the community encompassing all climbers. The community includes: absolute beginner climbers lacking experience and ability; climbers with a wealth of experience and natural ability; young climbing gym prodigies driven to the crag by their parents; and seasoned dirtbag types who work tirelessly for one month a year only to live out of a van, dumpster-dive for their groceries and climb full-time the globe over.
There are also seasoned academic lifers who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of higher knowledge, Birkenstock sandals with wool socks and leading with only courage and a belief in the divine; and the twenty-somethings who work at the climbing gym.
The community also includes young urban professionals who work hard for their six figures but still takes their laptop to the boulders and squeezes in overtime just to increase their climbing days; mothers who work full-time and use Crossfit to stay strong for climbing; fathers who work full-time, hit the gym in the evening and delicately navigate the sea of schedules to piece together time for his own climbing goals and trips; and semi-professional climbers who balance meagre salaries and free gear with an abode of the minivan ilk and a parent鈥檚 basement holding the remainder of their tattered cotton comp t-shirts.
There鈥檚 also the full pros whose thumbs pump out a litany of posts, tweets and instagrams and live in a slightly nicer van; and finally, there鈥檚 the pro-lifers who have done something so radical in days gone by that they redefined the act of climbing and are now paid to just be themselves so that we can all watch and hope to be them.
The list could go on.
All of these people, men and women, young and old, famous and infamous, under cover crusher and weekend dabbler, all make up the community of that weird semi-recognized activity, climbing. Each one plays alongside each other, asking each other questions, learning from each other, being inspired by each other and emulating each other. The most famous of us would as likely be giving beta on a particular move as asking if we needed help moving one last crashpad, the beginner giving a stranger a belay on a cutting edge ascent as rescuing a stuck rappel rope. We all share a similar dream, whether we have just been introduced to the activity or have done it for decades: We want to find unknown challenges and rise to their occasion, bettering ourselves in the anticipation of succeeding, only to begin searching for the next challenge. On and on it goes.
I recently watched a movie that gave me a great parallel to illustrate this difference between the climbing community and just about every other group. However, please don鈥檛 judge me by this cinematic pick. In Pumping Iron, Arnold Schwarzenegger is being interviewed about his bid to win the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition for a record-breaking sixth time. He laughingly states that he coaches and trains his rivals so that they fall short of greatness while he maintains his hold on the crown. Was it a playful jab or a common truth of high-level competition? I can see why Arnold later made his way into U.S. state politics.
Compare this to climbing鈥檚 World Cup, the highest level of indoor competition. The competitors are lead out as a group into the area beneath the wall. They are given a time limit in which to view and strategize how they will climb their route. While they view, they all work and talk together, trying to decipher the holds, the moves and the rests. These individuals compete against each other after first working as a community to understand the route鈥檚 challenges.
It鈥檚 obvious that while it would look like climbers should enter politics because of their ethical and moral bents, they would never hold up under the current system.
As I write and ponder these thoughts, I am drifting through a hot dessert submerged in a sea of granite boulders with my partner and daughter. I鈥檓 in heaven.
