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Captain...or Skully
Social climber
North of the Owyhees
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What's that, sonny? Speak up, ya whippersnapper!
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ron gomez
Trad climber
fallbrook,ca
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Balls are balls young OR..... old(but not bold). Just the old ones have more sense now.
Peace
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Michael D
Big Wall climber
Napoli, Italy
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Hell ya, I got's my hemet..ya dink I'm senile o sumpthang.
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Interesting question. But, it may be impossible to tell since there is no clear way to determine relative boldness.
For example, in the Valley, Peter Haan free soloed, on sight, "Crack of Despair" in 1971. At 5.10a, it wouldn't have garnered a mention a few years later, but it was sure bold at the time. Peter led the left side of the "Hourglass" with essentially no protection, on sight, and then soloed the Salathe when it was considered the most committing climb on El Cap. I think Peter was the boldest climber of his generation in the Valley.
But a little later, John Bachar soloed "New Dimensions," a 5.11 route, but only after wiring it. Charlie Fowler free soloed the DNB. Peter Croft free soloed "Astroman" and the "Rostrum."
I can say that all of these climbs seemed really bold at the time they were done. But they all seem more common place today.
It seems to me that boldness is always relative to current standards of difficulty as measured up against the more or less absolute state of death if you fail. Excluding life-after-death scenarios such as believed in the middle ages, you cannot die ‘more-better’ these days as compared to some past period; dead is dead, no matter how hard you climbed up to that point.
In objective terms, the boldest climber is the one that climbed with the highest cumulative probability of dying without actually doing so. By this standard an uncommitted suicidal climber of modest talent might take the prize for boldest. So most of us only laud boldness when the climber does not want to die.
Given all this, I would say that earlier bold climbs cannot be bolder than recent ones, but I am not sure how you can establish that current standards of boldness are greater than in the past: there is not much daylight between almost dying and dying in, say, 1975 versus 2009.
It might be that when you account for the current level of difficulty and the number of active young climbers, boldness is more or less constant.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Absolutely, I will say, the book on balls is closed.
If I may be so bold.
WTF?
Hell yes they are (a few of them); same as it ever was...
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Michael D
Big Wall climber
Napoli, Italy
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Might 'Boldness' also incorporate the sense of 'cognizance'? I've seen Bold climbers that put on a spectacular show, and Moronic one's (don't have a clue) that look like a bad B-class horror flick.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Back in 1992 I remember thinking that the gym mentality had taken over climbing and that young climbers were only flocking to the sports crags. blah, blah, blah...
Sometime that year, I met a young climber at the Mickey Mouse Wall and we decided that we would climb together in the Black Canyon the following weekend. And so we did, driving to the Black in his van that lacked a fuel gauge. We ended up doing Kachina Wings on Saturday and the Flakes (beginning from the north rim) on Sunday. Well, Mike was the fastest, boldest climber I had every roped up with. To boot, the Black Canyon trip was just a side diversion -- he went straight from the Black to do some climbing in the Alaska Range. I remember thinking at the time that all was well with the climbing world. My young climbing partner was Mike Pennings.
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WBraun
climber
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Ah ... climbers are pussies.
They can do all this so called bold bad ass sh'it.
But! can they take out the garbage?
And they can't quit climbing, now that would be bold ....
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jstan
climber
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In the 70's a friend was posted to Madrid for several years and she said two things. The people she climbed with in Spain were a wild crazy bunch who did it primarily because it expressed how much they enjoyed life. And they were a really enjoyable crew. I thought that pretty well summed up what climbing should be.
In my day one youngster came along and, to me, it seemed he was taking huge risks. Then I realized he was just that good and no one can really estimate the risks another is taking. I suspect, however, if you look at mortality rates you can estimate levels of stupidity.
So, in conclusion, I would suggest the question in the OP - has no content.
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RDB
Trad climber
Iss WA
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I think the differences is in the percentages. In the "old" days (pick your time frame) there were less climbers and from that group a larger percentage of bold climbers than what we have currently. These days with gyms and bolted sport routes at every level, there are just way, way more climbers in our community. They learn to climb with little or no risk. Hard to get beyond that introduction. And really little need to if you are so inclined.
Of the current group the percenatge of bold climbers is way down imo.
No question some really bold stuff being done but the safety net is generally bigger as well if you look at gear improvements, communication and training. Boldness goes down and the level of difficulty goes up kinda the natural order of things.
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Handjam Belay
Gym climber
expat from the truth
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In my 15 years of climbing I wouldnt call solos of Astroman, common...in the next 15 we wont call solos of Moonlight common either?
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pleasantOs
climber
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yes handjam...Honnold is pretty damn "bold" to put it mildly.
i cannot wait until someone free solos the nose.
will it actually happen?
when lynn free climbed it in a day, it was monumental and bold.
speed demons summon their boldness by climbing it as fast as they can. for some of them it seems so important that it almost starts to consume their life
truly amazing, non the less!
practically super human to the common groundling!
caldwell's back to back free climbing lines are definitely bold.
sharma is bold in the sense that he is pushing the grade limits.
i think "boldness" is definitely a state of mind.
we all can feel very "bold" at times.
spending a long, cold night out in my sea kayak during the longest night of the year in '08 while it was pushed up into the mangroves with creatures lurking about in the Florida Everglades didn't feel exactly bold, but very cold. however, for another person maybe they would've felt more bold by having experienced this same adventure. i feel that boldness seems to stem from prior experiences we've had on the rock, in the water, or the air...any medium really.
even the mildest free solo of 5.easy can feel "bold"...especially if the rock is a bit wet, no?
this boldness stems from ego, which stems from our selfish sense to feel that we are somehow better than average.
when we throw in a little death, i agree, that window of boldness in a sense definitely shrinks.
dying is not very bold, but tragic.
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Rudder
Trad climber
Santa Rosa, CA
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I'm blown away by Dean Potter and Alex Honnold... and John Long is my hero.... but there is really only one guy, like him or not:
Warren Harding
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jan 10, 2009 - 03:41am PT
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Bold climbers as a percentage of total climbers - '78 vs '08? It's not even remotely a contest.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jan 10, 2009 - 08:06am PT
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Much bolder stuff is being done now, but, since there are more climbers, perhaps the percentage is lower.
in the 70s and early 80s, climbers were competing by bumping boldness, perhaps more so than difficulty (since "training" was sort of a newish concept)
Fact is, it's really same as it ever was. Some folks want to climb hard, some climb bold, but if bold was really that bold, there would have been a lot of dead or crippled people back in the day, or today.
It's not really happening so are we really talking that bold (or is there Karma and a God protecting us from our boldness backfiring?)
Peace
Karl
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jan 10, 2009 - 08:21am PT
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http://www.climbing.com/news/hotflashes/pearson_claims_e12_on_english_slab/
The hardest traditional route in the world may be a slab climb. The young English climber James Pearson has climbed The Walk of Life (E12 7a) on a steep slab on the North Devon coast in southwest England. At this grade, the route must include hard 5.14 climbing with death-fall potential.
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mcreel
climber
Barcelona, Spain
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 10, 2009 - 09:24am PT
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Karl, Karl, you're so 2008 :-). That route was recently repeated by a guy with a bum elbow, and he managed to place 25 pieces in 50 meters. http://www.davemacleod.blogspot.com/
Well, I'm not posting again until I get my butt at least 4 meters off the ground (bouldering, that is). For me an' mah brittle bones, that's bold enough!
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Captain...or Skully
Social climber
North of the Owyhees
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Jan 10, 2009 - 09:55am PT
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Dig it, Karl, you forgot 1 thing.
Fortune favors the Bold.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Jan 10, 2009 - 09:56am PT
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We were saying in the 80’s that climbing had lost out to gyms and lycra. That the “child that wants to eat its mother” had dined finally on the robust but moribund body of historical climbing. It seemed we were heading into a “kinder, gentler” interpretation as sport climbing set up shop and we all took it for a lot of test drives sometimes even in competition with traditional versions of the art. The entire ship of modern climbing appeared at first to turn away from its fearsome rigor and tenets and instead head for a safe and comforting harbor nearby.
Well we couldn’t have known that it never would get quite that bad. It surely did appear this way though. I am seeing that today we still have some of the best minds of a new generation working at seemingly invisible pitches, climbing at such a continuous, hardworking and difficult level that frankly climbing still looks like a religion rather than some sport or past-time played out merely in jest with brightly colored plastics. We have Honnold who clearly is going to free solo El Cap very soon; Sharma putting in 250 ft 5.15b pitches in the hot desert working endlessly while taking enormous whippers; Tommy C’s link-ups and so on.
Perhaps we should wonder if “boldness” is maybe not constant but has actually increased, that it has gotten clearer and sharper than ever in some parts of the sport. In any event, we added tons of climbers in the last 30 years and many of them are a new type of individual amongst us that just sees the game as a safe playful activity in privileged nature. But we have also still been producing the true visionary and insanely hardworking people that carry forward the exact same flame that Pratt and Sacherer ignited 50 years ago--- now ablaze larger and more startling than ever. I think climbing is more spectacular---bolder---than ever before as its history gets richer and richer, knowledge deeper and more cogent than ever before. I think soon it will be “colorful enough” as Sharma says, to englobe itself and hold whole lives for good.
Not to go on too much, but there have been many dead spots in modern climbing history when it seemed of course that “it’s just a mopping up operation now” as RR used to say. (How wrong can someone be??) And interest would flag; fewer climbs were going in and individuals would leave the sport. But we can look back now and somewhat to our surprise, the general curve shows us overall making steady headway through what was the unclimbable and the ultimately fearsome. It continues too; it is so encouraging.
best ph.
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