"Because it's there."

[Jennifer Kaye]

Oh, loosen up, mom. You should try climbing yourself. I hope this doesn't sound like an insult, as it absolutely isn't, but most people's anxiety about climbing comes from a kind of ignorance, a lack of knowledge of the systems and how safe it really is. The key is to get him some good instruction early on, to set the tone, so he knows how to make good decisions and stay safe.

It's all about education, like so many other things.

But when it comes to heights, my legs turn to mushy rubber.

 

[Peregrinator]

But when it comes to heights, my legs turn to mushy rubber.

That's the mental game, having strong feelings and moving anyway. Happens to everybody who climbs; the better you get, the harder the terrain has to be to make you feel that way. Fear of heights is a healthy reaction; they're inherently scary.

 

[Jennifer Kaye]

That's the mental game, having strong feelings and moving anyway. Happens to everybody who climbs; the better you get, the harder the terrain has to be to make you feel that way. Fear of heights is a healthy reaction; they're inherently scary.

You don't understand, though ... I become almost paralyzed on high bridges or in tall buildings near the window. I become all wobbly and very stressed. Climbing + me = not a mix.

 

[Moonlust]

You don't understand, though ... I become almost paralyzed on high bridges or in tall buildings near the window. I become all wobbly and very stressed. Climbing + me = not a mix.

What about short heights, like ladders or tops of stairs?

 

[Jennifer Kaye]

What about short heights, like ladders or tops of stairs?

I am okay with short heights, but one story up and near the edge and I become wobbly.

 

[Peregrinator]

Since in the early days skiers had to walk up stuff before they skied down it, skiing and mountaineering have always had close ties. Long before I was a climber I was skiing with atmas--who went on to become a ski instructor and patroller--and we had stopped to catch our breath. I told him it wasn't the skiing so much as the being in the mountains that I was excited about. Skiing and climbing diverged for a while, but in some places they stayed related, and the pursuit of ski mountaineering is now quite popular, "earning your turns" by climbing stuff to ski down it. The pursuit of "first descents" is quite competitve among the elite. Among mortals, the idea of getting fresh tracks in some "powder cache," a secret bowl in the mountains someplace, is reward enough. Skis are an excellent tool for movement over varied snow covered terrain, and the equipment has evolved tremendously from the eight foot hickory skis and bear claw bindings my grandfather wore with the 10th Mountain Division in WWII.

http://climbing.com/news/solituderace.jpg


Using all the tools of mountaineering to get to a run:

http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/0503/images/ski_rappeling.jpg

Skiing impossibly steep terrain:

http://doglotion.com/dogblog/hello/86/1439/640/Argentina6%20074.jpg

No crowds, no machines, no parking lots:

http://www.ime-usa.com/media/imcs/winter/ski_mntg_lg.jpg

And, of course, skiing on Mt Everest:

http://www.featheredfriends.com/images/Meaganski.jpg

 

[Peregrinator]

I am okay with short heights, but one story up and near the edge and I become wobbly.

There's a good chance that's why you're so nervous about your son climbing. I'd say your fear is slightly beyond the functional, if you freeze up. You could probably learn to function with heights if it were important to you for some reason, but most people never need to experience them, so why bother? My only concern would be that if the kid wants to go climbing, you not let your own fear get in his way. You sound like a pretty great mom, though, so I'm not too worried about it.

 

[Moonlust]

I am okay with short heights, but one story up and near the edge and I become wobbly.

Hm, thanks, that's interesting to me, because it's all just exponential in my mind. I'm able to rationalize things in my head that way, like a trapeze is 30 feet off the ground, so that's 5 ladders. Gravity is my friend, but can be conquered, stuff like that. So, do you think it's a fear of falling rather than a fear of heights?

 

[Jennifer Kaye]

Hm, thanks, that's interesting to me, because it's all just exponential in my mind. I'm able to rationalize things in my head that way, like a trapeze is 30 feet off the ground, so that's 5 ladders. Gravity is my friend, but can be conquered, stuff like that. So, do you think it's a fear of falling rather than a fear of heights?

Absolutely it's the fear of falling.

 

[Moonlust]

Absolutely it's the fear of falling.

Hooray, you've conquered your fear of heights!!!

If you ever get the chance to take a trapeze/aerial class, you could probably conquer the falling thing too. I jumped off the platform into the safety net once, just to see what it was like to fall 30 feet. It wasn't really that bad, but it's because it was safe to do so.

 

[Peregrinator]

I think the two of you should come climbing with me.

 

[Peregrinator]

Climbing is one of the few sports I can think of in which gender is nearly, truly, irrelevant. men have all the top records, but only by tiny margins, and in the vast majority of climbing, women can absolutely hold their own. Most climbers make no distinction, and there aren't seperate standards; there's no "women's tee," as in golf. Climbing is so powerfully individual; a given person can either climb a given stretch of rock or not. Some great climbers who happen to be female:

Lynn Hill:

http://www.mountain.ru/people/interview/2001/LynnHill/lynn3_hr.jpg

Beth Rodden, belayed here by her husband, Tommy Caldwell, also a truly great climber. They were kidnapped in Kyrgizstan a few years ago and escaped when Tommy pushed their kidnapper off a cliff.

http://www.supertopo.com/images/w500/cr_yos7.jpg

Katie Brown, who was winning international competetions at age 14:

http://classic.mountainzone.com/climbing/99/interviews/brown/graphics/katie-xgames.jpg

Chantal Mauduit, one of the great alpine climbers, killed in the mountains:

http://www.barrabes.com/imagenes/T03N0005%5Cmaneldelamatta2.jpg

World-class mountaineer Alison Hargreaves, blown to her death off K2 in Pakistan:

http://www.dsimages.co.uk/admin/gallery/gallery/thumbnails/Alison-Hargreaves.jpg

All-arounder and quite charming climber Kitty Calhoun (I met her at a slideshow once):

http://www.barrabes.com/imagenes/T03N0002%5CescaladoraM.jpg

 

[Peregrinator]

There are many different systems used to rate the difficulty of a particular climbing "route." The system most commonly heard used in the states is called the "Yosemite Decimal System:"

Flat ground is considered Class 1
Easy Uphill: Class 2
Steeper, like a mountain trail: Class 3
Challenging, a fall is possible and would be dangerous, but very unlikely; ropes are only very occasionally used: Class 4
Technical terrain requiring rope to be safe from dangerous or deadly falls: Class 5.

Class 5 terrain is further subdivided into what was originally intended to be decimals; 5.1 being extraordinarily easy. 5.4-7, roughly, is considered intermediate, and 5.9 gets you into the realm of experts. The system was rendered inacurate because originally it was thought that no one would be eble to climb harder than 5.9 without employing direct aid (see earlier post in this thread). However, advances in technique and equipment, most notably the climbing shoe with its special sticky rubber, allowed people to push the limits, and some way of describing "harder than 5.9 but not so hard as to require direct aid" was needed. Climbers, being brilliant mathmaticians, simply extended the scale to 5.10, 5.11. 5.12, etc, pronounced "five ten," "five eleven," and "five twelve." Further division was required, so the first four letters of the alphabet are used as well above 5.9, such as 5.12A, meaning, 5.12, but at the easy end of 5.12. 5.12D is almost 5.13. These shades and grades are agreed upon after a few people climb the route; there are some climbs about which the grade is still disagreed. The hardest climbs in teh world now are 5.15A or so, again, pending confirmation by consensus. Since only a handful of climbers in the world can climb that hard, consensus can be difficult to arrive at.

Class 6 terrain is direct aid; no one has yet been able to climb the whole thing without pulling on man-added stuff to make upward progress. Aid climbs are classified into A1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and sometimes A6, with each increasing grade indicating increasingly "sketchy" gear. An A3 climb has "placements" which hold body weight only; if you were to fall, that placement would fail, and you would have to rely on the next piece to catch you. A5, true insanity, involves the whole system having body-weight only placements. Complete system failure and plunging doom is possible.

Here's a climber on "Moby Grape," a classic 5.8 on Cannon Cliff in New Hampshire, not far from where the Old Man Of The Mountain fell off recently:

http://web.mit.edu/jfitzpat/www/moby-grape.jpg

This is a classic 5.9, "They Died Laughing," on Cathedral Ledge in my beloved Mt Washington Valley, NH:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/Peregrinator/RockClimbing1HOCJune2004054.jpg

This is a classic 5.6 known as "High Exposure," in the Shawangunks of New York, a relatively easy climb that's caused many a heart to leap into many a throat:

http://photos.rockclimbing.com/photos/20/2027.jpg

Here's a classic really hard route, "Spinx Crack," which is rated 5.13:

http://www.defendersoftheplanet.org/Images/RockClimbing/SphinxCoverShot.jpg

Another view of Sphinx, showing how it overhangs:

http://www.climbingwashington.com/archives/images/archive59.jpg

 

[Peregrinator]

Random pics of some climbers I admire:

Alex Lowe, seen here in some remote corner of the world, maybe Baffin island or Antarctica, perhaps somepace in the Himalaya. Aside from being an unbelievably talented all-around climber who could do it all, Alex was a genuinely wonderful person. There are scads of stories about him being generous with his time and energy to climbers and admirers. In a world of prima donna, arrogant uber-athletes, Alex stood out as a decent human being. His death a few years ago in an avalanche--I believe he was 38--was universally devastating to climbers all over the world. Another of my idols, Mark Twight, said "You climbed better just because you knew he existed."

http://classic.mountainzone.com/climbing/99/interviews/lowe/graphics/sailpeak2.jpg

And here's Twight, who had the courage and vision to go to the Alps and challenge the French on their home turf. He created a persona for magasine articles of a dark, brooding, "punk" presence; he had been a singer in a punk band called the Avant Gardes. Mark is still out there, living in Colorado, writing, climbing, conducting trainings for elite military units, and every now and then startling the climbing community by doing something really hard in a continuous push. last one I remember hearing about was climbing Denali via the Czech Route in a continuous 63-something hour push. Twight is the author of a couple of my favorite books, Kiss Or Kill and Extreme Alpinism. I admire his ability to think through every aspect of climbing, and the methodical way he improves himself.

http://www.gymjones.com/images/disciples/disciple_1_2.jpg

Peter Croft is a softspoken and humble Canadian--I love Canadians, met him at a slideshow once--who decided one day to free solo a famous route in Yosemite called Astroman, a sustained-difficulty 5.11 he had very little knowledge of. He has gone on to climb many, many hard routes, and is admired by many as one of the top rock climbers ever. Note the absence of rope in the pic. He's on a 5.10 route here:

http://www.climbingwashington.com/archives/images/archive81.jpg

Chris Sharma was a child prodigy; he was winning national comps at age fourteen or fifteen and has gone on to do some of the hardest climbs in the world, including the first ascent of "Realization" at Ceuse, in France. When he did it, Realization was the hardest route ever climbed. What I admire about Chris is that he remains pretty humble; often when asked how hard something he's done is, he refuses to comment. He seems to have avoided the worst of the ego-thumping and just really loves climbing:

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/09.27.00/gifs/sharma2-0039.jpg

 

[Peregrinator]

http://nherf.no-ip.com/Wind%20Shear,%20Matterhorn,%20%20%20Switzerland.jpg

 

[Peregrinator]

http://www.scig.ch/images/03-wengen/329-Eiger.jpg

 

[Peregrinator]

http://www.wou.edu/las/physci/poston/nepal/pumori_sunset2.jpg

 

[Peregrinator]

http://ima.udg.es/~rigau/Images/k2.jpg

 

[Peregrinator]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/Peregrinator/Perg2.jpg

 

[Peregrinator]

Perfect, Misha. Thanks.

 

[HappyMisha]

Perfect, Misha. Thanks.

Cool! It works!

 

[Peregrinator]

http://mountains.tos.ru/kopylov/pict/kommun.jpg

 

[Peregrinator]

http://www.edforco.org/images/doing_business/qualityoflife/s_CascadeFlight7.jpg

 

[Peregrinator]

http://tc.chicago.il.us/baffin/images/50.jpg

 

[Peregrinator]

No one to climb with? Maybe a trail run is in order. Serious mountaineers train hard.

http://www.alpineworld.com/trail/Trail_Runner.jpg

http://www.skyrunner.com/img/p_elkpark.jpg

Some take it a little further.

http://www.npmarathon.com/images/Winner-SeanBurch.jpg