Tyrol Declaration

[Sphinx]

[Dru]

stubai tyrol

 

whatever happened to the ugly, heavy old ice tool tyrols how come they are a crampon now?????? its like naming a cam the Boreal Fire

[Dr_Flash_Amazing]

Dru said:

stubai tyrol

 

whatever happened to the ugly, heavy old ice tool tyrols how come they are a crampon now?????? its like naming a cam the Boreal Fire

 

Quit T[y]rolling, Dru!

[Stefan]

Dwayner said:

Stefan said:

It appears that this declaration is a kind of mission statement.

 

Companies have mission statements who define who they are.

 

It claims to speak for climbers in general. It does not, however, accurately define who I am nor what I may believe about mountaineering values.

 

I'm not part of their "company" nor are a good many climbers I know.

 

- Dwayner

 

 

I agree. I am not a part of them either and they don't speak for me. It just seems they made this "declaration" for them maybe to set a direction? Maybe the declaration was intended for current and future member of the UIAA and somehow was lost in the translation that it was for all climbers? I don't know....I am just an internet lurker instead of actual participant in the UIAA.

[Dwayner]

Slothrop's comments would probably have been much more useful if he directed his insights directly at "the Declaration" rather than commenting on my comments.

 

What makes this important is that this sort of "declaration" can be hauled out and put on display as some sort of big consensus whenever laws or other rules are discussed or legislated.

[Sphinx]

Slothrop, I think Dwayner (and many other climbers) resents having rules set in stone. Climbing is anarchy, to use a well-know cliche. Overall, the arrrogant tone and the assumptions made in that "declaration" piss me off. Some (very few) of their points are valid, but most, eg, the partner-related one, are over the top. Period.

[Lowell_Skoog]

Sphinx said:

Climbing is anarchy, to use a well-know cliche.

 

What silliness. Climbing is no more anarchy than baseball is anarchy. Climbers operate in a world full of standards of behavior, both between climbers in relation to non-climbers. These standards aren't laws or rules set in stone, but they're real nonetheless. You can ignore them if you wish, but don't expect the rest of the world (including the climbing world) to accept you if you do. The notion that climbers operate apart from the rest of the world is an empty conceit.

 

[terrible_ted]

And the part about the UIAA that really pisses me off is all this bullshit about ropes! What the hell right do they have to tell me how many falls my rope should be able to take?? I'm glad they don't speak for me.

[fleblebleb]

Dwayner said:

Slothrop's comments would probably have been much more useful if he directed his insights directly at "the Declaration" rather than commenting on my comments.

 

Let me tell you Dwayner, arguing with you is far more fun than having a one-sided pseudo-argument with some nameless bunch of continentals with illusions of grandeur.

 

I lean towards Sloth's side, btw.

 

Oh, and I don't think Lowell and whoever are really having the same argument. Twight isn't really as dumb as Lowell's post makes him look. I've always understood the anarchy cliche to refer to actual upwards progress, using the equipment at hand. Certainly Twight never extolled anarchy in equipment choice - if I remember his book correctly, the bolt section says simply "Not in my book." By the same token, his training regimen seems to have been rather structured, with six month cycles and whatnot. But, if you show up at the base with only what's kosher (sorry Dwayner), then you can climb by any means possible, and climbing is anarchy.

[Dru]

"Climbing is anarchy. That is why we MUST MAKE OUR OWN RULES." - Reinhold Messner, unclear on the concept of anarchy.

 

Perhaps all would be climbing anarchists should read some Hakim Bey to become clear on the concept of "temporary autonomous zone" first

[Sphinx]

Lowell_Skoog said:

Sphinx said:

Climbing is anarchy, to use a well-know cliche.

 

What silliness. Climbing is no more anarchy than baseball is anarchy. Climbers operate in a world full of standards of behavior, both between climbers in relation to non-climbers. These standards aren't laws or rules set in stone, but they're real nonetheless. You can ignore them if you wish, but don't expect the rest of the world (including the climbing world) to accept you if you do. The notion that climbers operate apart from the rest of the world is an empty conceit.

 

I disagree, in that baseball is rigid, structured, and formulated. In climbing, you can do whatever you want (within limits, of course). You can attempt to climb whatever routes you want, in whatever style you want (I don't mean pounding pins on clean routes or leaving garbage, etc). There are no 'rule books', no committee telling you what you can or can't do. Climbing is much more free than other sports.

[Sphinx]

Dru said:

"Climbing is anarchy. That is why we MUST MAKE OUR OWN RULES." - Reinhold Messner, unclear on the concept of anarchy.

 

[slothrop]

I didn't really pick up on the arrogant tone. Sure, there are a few over-the-top or condescending bits, which Dwayner pointed out, but I find far more arrogance in the reactions of those who say, "fuck the UIAA and everyone else, I climb however the hell I want." Sure, it's your prerogative to climb with anarchy, but you're still being a dickhead if you bolt senselessly, leave your partner to die while you run for the summit, use a partner only to split travel expenses and then ditch/ignore him in Patagonia, chop a project without any discussion, ignore local ethics, heli-ski Everest, shit on the GNS, build fires in the middle of a bone-dry forest in August, or do any of the other stupid things that the Tyrol Declaration admonishes against.

 

Good comments, Lowell.

[slothrop]

Sphinx said:

I disagree, in that baseball is rigid, structured, and formulated. In climbing, you can do whatever you want (within limits, of course).

 

While the limits may be obvious to you (no hammers on clean routes, etc.), I think newbies could use something like the Tyrol Declaration to refer to as they learn their own style. I don't really see the document as setting anything in stone and it's certainly not a rule book.

[slothrop]

fleblebleb said:

Let me tell you Dwayner, arguing with you is far more fun than having a one-sided pseudo-argument with some nameless bunch of continentals with illusions of grandeur.

 

Yeah, Dwayner! Bring it on! It's not like Messner's going to log in to cc.com and debate with us... heh heh heh.

[bubblebutt]

The Horsecock Declaration

1. Declaration?, I don't need no declaration

2. I am a climber therefore I am an antisocial asshole so you can all fuck off!

3. I climb so gapers will think I am cool and I can posture and feel superior to other mortals.

4. I will always find multiuple excuses on why I failed on route. None will be my fault

 

[Sphinx]

slothrop said:

Sphinx said:

I disagree, in that baseball is rigid, structured, and formulated. In climbing, you can do whatever you want (within limits, of course).

 

While the limits may be obvious to you (no hammers on clean routes, etc.), I think newbies could use something like the Tyrol Declaration to refer to as they learn their own style. I don't really see the document as setting anything in stone and it's certainly not a rule book.

 

But do you want to give control to committees and organizations? Like in Russia, where climbers had to join clubs, all climbs were recorded, and you could only attempt a 5.10 after the club decided you had climbed enough 5.9s. And if you failed on the 5.10 you would have to go back to 5.9s for three years??????

 

Long's book has a section on ethics for newbies who pound pins on Da Toof or Ingalls. But keep the rules out of it, thanks.

[Dru]

declaration or no declaration i will pound pitons on clean routes, bolt cracks, chop bolts, leave 02 cylinders on da toof and not purchase deforest service tickets if i feel like it AND YOU CANT STOP ME!!!! define anarchy

 

the thing is.... i don't want to, so i don't. that's how anarchy is supposed to work. and thats how climbing anarchy works. DDD case in point.

[slothrop]

Sphinx said:

But do you want to give control to committees and organizations? Like in Russia, where climbers had to join clubs, all climbs were recorded, and you could only attempt a 5.10 after the club decided you had climbed enough 5.9s. And if you failed on the 5.10 you would have to go back to 5.9s for three years??????

 

No way. I'm not in the Mountaineers, either, to give a less extreme example.

 

Long's book has a section on ethics for newbies who pound pins on Da Toof or Ingalls. But keep the rules out of it, thanks.

 

Long's book, FoTH, Royal Robbins' books, etc. all have something to say about ethics. Even a recent catalog (Patagonia or BD or something) dug up the original clean climbing manifesto and printed it. I don't see that much difference between those things and the printed consensus of a bunch of organized, experienced climbers. I can ignore all of them as I wish, but it's good to get the influence out there.

 

[layton]

I am a Banana!

[wayne]

gotta go with the big picture veiw that Dwayner spilled with this possibly being some law type model for insurance or park-service policies outline. It does possibly put more regulations etc with a sport that provides near true freedom from the too regulated routines we are in.. But , take what you agree with and pass it on ? We are still gonna send the tooths in pure style, but maybe not step in someones shit as often?

[Lowell_Skoog]

Readers interested in this subject should read "Beyond Climbing Games" (subtitled "Alpinism As Humanism") by Lito Tejada-Flores in Summit, Fall 1990. Lito wrote the famous essay "Games Climbers Play" in the late 1960s. I won't post the entire article, out of respect for the author's copyright. (I'm sure you could find it in the Mountaineers Library.) Here are some excerpts:

 

Climbing, most of us agree, is a creative act. But what climbers create are not just routes, not just aesthetic statements, dotted lines up cliffs, articles in Climbing or Mountain, or footnotes in a guidebook. Climbers are busy creating their own personas and personalities, their own lives, as they climb. And when the climb is over, those lives go on, go forward: a one-way trip with no possibility of backtracking to rub out something that no longer feels quite right, looks quite right. How you climb today very soon becomes how you have climbed, which, just as rapidly, becomes who you are. [...]

 

The fact I'm leading up to is this: Many, maybe most of the choices climbers make (and certainly their most important choices) don't concern rock and ice and holds and dynamic moves and rope management and protection; they concern other people--climbing partners, friends, family, the community at large. [...] These are the decisions that stick with you, define you, have long and lasting consequences. Climbing games, it turns out, always involve more than one player. [...]

 

My point is that while climbing games themselves are both arbitrary and asocial (there simply is no real reason to climb other than "because..."), climbers also function in a broader context, in a world shared with others--a world where we define ourselves by the way our private games, ambitions, and dreams interact with those of other people. Climbers escape many but not all judgments. The meaning of a climb, any climb, is always twofold: There is the meaning we draw directly from challenge, movement, and skill, but also a meaning that depends on how (or whether) the climber's actions will affect others. [...]

 

It is hardly surprising that climbers, instead of climbing out of the complex web of daily life into something like solitude, discover that the radical nature of their choices while climbing lead to radical consequences in other people's lives as well as their own. Climbing is no exit from the dense tangled ecology of intentions and results we also call life.

[Lowell_Skoog]

fleblebleb said:

I don't think Lowell and whoever are really having the same argument. Twight isn't really as dumb as Lowell's post makes him look.

 

I wasn't aware that I was responding to Twight (or Messner, or anybody but Sphinx). My comments about anarchy should be viewed in the context of this thread, not what Twight may have written about tackling a hard pitch.