So of course this is just a snapshot of the climbing "community" or perhaps you're not even part of the community at all. You have your culture here and you dislike the fact that people have showed up here lately as a result of this story. You seem to have contempt for those who don't climb, but are curious about your lifestyle. That seems clear. I'm here because I'm interested in mountain climbing, and wanted to learn more about it, to be able to have a reasonably educated discussion about it with others, realizing that while I read the forums here, YES, you have climbed and I have not.
However, when somebody like Molly comes in here, asking very simple common-sense questions, the kind of questions I was thinking of also, and anybody with a brain would think of, it struck me as odd that you attacked her so viciously, so quickly and reflexively.
Some of you seem like smart, witty people, so it leads me to wonder:
Is it that you just don't really want to know what happened, even if some simple deduction might provide at least a much clearer picture of what happened?
If they went up unprepared, does this give your sport a bit of a black eye, perhaps, like maybe some of you are really as dumb as the non-climbers think you are, mentioning the Darwin Awards and all that?
Do you truly believe a non-climber can't put 2 and 2 together on some very simple questions about the sequence of events?
A non-climber has no right to even THINK about these things?
Is it just part of your culture that you avoid talking about the obvious, like it's whistling past the graveyard?
By the way, you can have your forum back in a few weeks. Yes, most of the interested people will have moved on by then, or will have been turned off much sooner, depending on whether they read the smart comments of somebody more professional or the poser comments of somebody who might be a 14-year-old, or just acts like one.
You'll still be here wondering why the hell you're so junior-high defensive about one woman coming in here and asking some really fucking obvious questions, however. Or maybe you won't be. Either way, you'll still go on doing what you do, right?
