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lucaskrajnik
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Jan 12, 2009 - 11:53am PT
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Interesting, as a climbing history fan this is a good question.
As a youngster myself, and growing up around alot of young and old climbers. I've noticed that thery aren't as bold.
Of coarse you have your extra ordinarily good- climbers "that can hold on to very small holds" .. but it seems there just number chasing. Thats cool and all, everyman to his own.
But looking back when guys were putting up crazy stuff. like ~hang dog flyer~ and ~1096~ all on passive pro.. o..and in swamis and rr boots. ;)i love that pic
THEY ARE MOTHER F#@ken BOLD.
Yea kids do that stuff now.. but its all repeat. With certified and tested mechanical gear... The entire route topo-ed to sh#t on which hold to grab and what not to grab.
So no young climbers are NOT as BOLD as they used to be.
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jstan
climber
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Jan 12, 2009 - 01:40pm PT
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Up thread I attempted to make the obvious point that no one can actually tell how bold another person is being on technical rock. You really don't know how great that person's reserves and abilities are. In alpine climbing where a change in weather can determine everything, boldness is a little easier to get a handle on.
I would like to expand a little on my comment the OP "lacked content." Since boldness can't be known the question has no answer and is not a real question. In fact asking this pseudo-question may be destructive. We have a lot of real questions to which to find answers and if these pseudo questions drive wedges between us, our ability to talk about real things is diminished.
We need to grow larger and to focus on real things.
If we become fascinated by "boldness" we will have inadequately prepared persons paying very large prices. Taxpayers may become unwilling to see public lands used as vehicles serving someone's desire to spend their lives as vegetables all paid for by the taxpayer. Your father is not wealthy enough to keep you in-hospital for fifty years.
Read the newspapers. Considerations of this sort have only just begun to increase in importance as regards public policy.
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Nefarius
Big Wall climber
somewhere without avatars.........
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Jan 12, 2009 - 02:13pm PT
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Wow! We waste a ton of time "debating" some really stupid things here. What would be really bold is debating something worthwhile rather than some folks attempting to put others down to stroke their own egos.
Just so you guys know, all of the old, old guys I've hung with, like Beckey, think the generation that came after them were less-bold wankers too. Of course, that generation thought the next lacked "boldness", etc. How many feet of snow did you walk through, uphill (in both directions), while barefoot, to get to school again?
If there was no boldness in the sport we'd all still be working towards sending Crack of Doom, as the hardest valley climb. There would be no .15b, nor .14, .13, etc. No climbs in Baffin, no one sending your hard routes on The Captain that took you 5 days (or more) in 24 hours or less, nor a huge block of the boldest, hardest aid routes in the valley and on The Captain, no one free climbing routes on The Captain that you had to aid, no one soloing things that most of you couldn't climb, in your prime, etc. We could go on and on.
The whole gear and safety argument is just foolish. You guys wouldn't have climbed ANY of the sh#t you did without improved gear technology. Maybe we'd be super bold if we were still leading Nutcracker with nuts, rather than putting up .14 crack routes with cams, right?
It's funny how things go on this site. Here we have guys from a previous generation saying the folks from the current generation aren't bold... A thread which stemmed from another thread, wherein people from that previous generation were arguing that climbing on pre-placed gear was bold as f*#k and that regardless of the fact that they'd aided each pitch prior to climbing it free (with pre-placed pro) and spent 3 months on the route, they were SO much more hard than a guy who climbed one of the pitches on TR prior to leading it on gear. Funny thing is, most of the non-bold, wanker climbers from the current generation would pretty much consider climbing on pre-placed aid placements (every 4 or 5 feet, from the looks) a wanker move and pretty much equate it to outdoor gym climbing. The *real* irony is that the generation who's calling us out would bag on us for days on end if one of us sprayed about sending a route on pre-placed gear, after we'd aided the pitch, and called it a ground-up, onsite free pitch, let alone if we called it bold.
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TKingsbury
Trad climber
MT
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Jan 12, 2009 - 02:24pm PT
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Guess I was born into the wrong generation...whatta shame...I coulda been bold!
Too bad all the rad sh#t was done before I was born...that being said, I like reading about it...
EDIT: well said Nef...
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Anastasia
climber
Not here
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Jan 12, 2009 - 05:41pm PT
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I think this question is very egocentric. It hints that the past might have been more glorious than the present. The fact is the past and now are the same.
AF
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Nefarius
Big Wall climber
somewhere without avatars.........
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Jan 12, 2009 - 05:49pm PT
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Sure... And, yet they are both moving forward, which means tomorrow will be more advanced than today and today is more advanced than yesterday... So, the same, and yet not the same.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 12, 2009 - 05:50pm PT
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" .... the past and now are the same."
How's that work? In the past you once were a little girl.
Now you are a woman.
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Rudder
Trad climber
Santa Rosa, CA
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Jan 12, 2009 - 06:07pm PT
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"""Up thread I attempted to make the obvious point that no one can actually tell how bold another person is being on technical rock. You really don't know how great that person's reserves and abilities are. In alpine climbing where a change in weather can determine everything, boldness is a little easier to get a handle on."""
I agree... and that's point one.
Point two... I think... is the copying versus inventing... like I have been bringing up. For instance... I was just watching the Dog Whisperer. Once he shows people what to do they do it quite easily.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Jan 12, 2009 - 06:09pm PT
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" .... the past and now are the same."
How's that work?
C'mon Werner, you of all people know the answer to that one.
As it was in the beginning,
Is now,
And ever shall be...
Climbs without end.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 12, 2009 - 06:12pm PT
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Hahaha ..... are you sure?
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Jan 12, 2009 - 06:19pm PT
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Hahaha ..... are you sure?
When I was younger, I was bold, and sure of many things. Apparently now that I'm old I can't be bold any more... So how can I be sure?
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Paul Martzen
Trad climber
Fresno
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Jan 12, 2009 - 07:29pm PT
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Everybody is bold and cowardly in different ways. If we belittle someones courage, we just don't understand the challenges that they face. Or, we are just in the mood to give them a hard time.
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nevenneve
Trad climber
St. Paul, MN
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Jan 12, 2009 - 07:31pm PT
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I think that the only comparison that holds any water is that the truly bold ones tend to stay outside of societies grasp. Whether it is omnipresent recording devices or whatever the collective "you" avoided before becoming old dads. That said I rather liked Werner's assertion that quitting climbing would be bold.
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dgbryan
Mountain climber
Hong Kong
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Jan 12, 2009 - 10:48pm PT
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Climbers were bolder BITD.
The bold climbers of old were as bold as the bold of today. Sometimes they were drunk, high or fat, which meant that the absolute level of their accomplishment did not match that of modern, bold climbers, but the boldness did.
Mostly the not-so-bold were also bold. This was partly because there was not much alternative.
I was also bold. Or at least bolder. This was primarily because my rack, which I shared with my friend and climbing partner, consisted of 12 pieces of passive pro, including a MOAC I had found and #1,2, & 3 Chouinard stoppers about the size of my little thumbnail, which a friend of the famly had brought back from Canada. Such boldness as wasn't attributable to my rack was basically down to stupidity, although to be fair, I climbed enough that it was reasonably well-informed stupidity.
Some of the not-so-bold were old, and to be honest, they really were not-so-bold. On the other other hand they could drink prodigiously, and did so. I myself progressed quickly from moderately bold climbing to drinking 22 pints of Guinness in a single afternoon, and you don't see many young people doing that nowadays. On the other hand, my heroes were the likes of Whillans and Barber, and I think there are no comparable contemporary role models available today.
Leaving aside the whole issue of sport-climbing (which is quite good fun) better gear has has obviously allowed the bold to operate at a higher level of absolute performance, and it is trite knowledge that the bold of old would be doing exactly the same thing if they were alive / active today.
However better gear has probably made it harder for the not-so-bold to be as bold as they once were. When the gear goes in pretty much everywhere, and you own enough of it to put a piece in at body length intervals (and I am only 5'8")it takes a lot of willpower to be bold. And you don't develop that by spending your youthful afternoons downing 22 pints of Guinness.
The result is that your testicles get smaller, and I have noticed a directly inverse proportion between these and the size of the gear shed out the back.
As an aside, it seems likely that better gear has also made it possible for more of the not-so-bold to remain on the fringes of the game, decrying the death of boldness and wasting their employers' time writing stuff like this.
Perhaps completely unrelated, but I have elected to begin 2009 with a beard, which I last had BITD, when I was bold(er), and I am wondering if this will reverse some of the decline.
Damian
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Anastasia
climber
Not here
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Jan 13, 2009 - 02:36am PT
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Einstein’s Theory of Relativity demonstrates that time is an illusion and nothing is really separating us from the past or future. We are all intrinsically connected, related and exist always. We are neither dead nor alive. We simply are: different and the same, spawning colors in a gigantic universal kaleidoscope.
Plus if you believe in the soul, no matter how my body changes... Does my soul change or is it only becoming aware?
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Dr. Rock
Ice climber
http://tinyurl.com/4oa5br
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Jan 13, 2009 - 02:52am PT
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Anastasia is right. Time is relative.
You can prove it, just remove the B in Bold from the Thread Title:
"Are young climbers as old as young climbers used to be?"
See?
BTW, Einstein dreamed Relativity.
At least that's what I heard on NPR this morning.
Same with Howe and the Sewing Needle, which started the revolution that we are leaving, and China is beginning, but I digress.
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lucaskrajnik
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Jan 13, 2009 - 10:47am PT
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wow... thread drift...these ..bold old climbers...must have taken some old acid, once or twice.
but yea u guys are all right. everything, is relative to your own personal perspective.
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jcques
Trad climber
quebec canada
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Jan 14, 2009 - 12:34am PT
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Nefarius, I understand your point of view. Before, in a crag, people discuss about security and daring. Isn't it the definition of boldness? Today, they talk about the last shoe or piece of equipment. In phylosophie, Socrate I think, said: "do the same and a little bit more".
In this discussion, what is "a little bit more" a climber can do today in comparaison with the climber before to be bolder? All was pratically done by the early 80th.
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Jan 14, 2009 - 10:21am PT
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jcques, I think I may agree with you in a narrow sense but I am not sure. I believe that 'boldness' is relative to the times and what is very bold in one era can be common place in another era. Maybe this is what you mean when you say that "All was practically done by the early 80th.
But I don't think that that supports any notion that prior generations are bolder than current ones. Boldness drives our sport and certainly current levels of boldness are at a much higher difficulty standard and are more spectacular.
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