What Is "Climbing" For You?

[ashw_justin]

You're climbing once you've committed to significant difficulty. This means you are climbing when you feel like you are climbing. That's why some can continue to "climb" things that most of us "hike," and this is valid.

 

What if you had one leg. You would have to climb all kinds of shit that others walk. But most of us just suffer from different levels of pyschological amputation.

 

Be the , climb nothing.

[Tony_Bentley]

What if you only had arms? Then everything would be climbing to some extent.

 

Climbing is expressed in two methods; first, to define what one does when one explains it to another individual.

Second; to use a single word to sum up an entire adventure, i.e.-"I went climbing this weekend"

 

Although skiing can be climbing, it really isn't because when you sum it up in one sentence it becomes, "I went skiing". Without the skis it would normally be considered climbing.

 

I think it relates to the method of communication from the individual and how the individual tries to relate the experience to another individual.

 

Bushwhacking for a flyfisherman is still flyfishing.

Bushwhacking for a kayaker is still kayaking.

[skykilo]

Clearly, the answer to the proper question is that it's all about the bushwhackin'. I'ma bushwhack my way to the Maple Leaf neighborhood circa 9pm.

[Tony_Bentley]

So really the answer is to avoid using the words to describe the endeavor and stick to the universal word, "bushwhacking" which has much more meaning to describe what one does for adventure.

 

I think it well describes what I do for adventure regardless of the endeavor.

 

Sky, I think your example was nicely put.

 

...and my expample:

 

This morning I had to bushwhack my way out of bed. I think it sounds better than "This morning I had to climb my way out of bed." As if climbing had any real meaning in the sentence.

I'll also be bushwhacking back to Maple Leaf tonight.

 

Nicely put eh?

[ashw_justin]

A good walker leaves no trail.

[ashw_justin]

The best man resembles water...staying in places that men despise.

[ashw_justin]

Knowing honor and keeping disgrace,

One will become the valley of the world.

Being the valley of the world,

One will be content with constant virtue

And return to the unhewn wood.

 

[AJScott]

Wonderful, this road to Cold Mountain -

yet there's no sign of horse or carriage.

In winding valleys to tortuous to trace,

on crags piled who knows how high,

a thousand different grasses weep

with dew

and pines hum all together in the wind.

Now it is that, straying from the path,

you ask your shadow, "What way

from here?"

[Geek_the_Greek]

Bushwhacking can involve serious danger.

Ask Szy*etc / bwrts about untrustworthy bushes. Haven't you heard of the 'Vegetable Belay'? That can be some sketchy sheet.

Ever done the Terror Creek approach?

On how many half-rotten, mossy logs have you had the honor of slipping umpteen feet into the undergrowth, fearing for the joints in your legs the whole way? You'll be lucky to land minus only a testicle.

 

I have never done the Terror creek approach.

 

But all that slippery log stuff happens while hiking too, fording streams and the like. As for veggie belay, sure, but that kind of means you're climbing or scrambling already, so it's a given. I still maintain that only climbers find themselves doing heinous bushwacking on not-necessarily steep terrain. If there was a trail there, it would be class 1. Without the trail, it's brutal bushwacking, ergo, qualifies as climbing.

 

There once was a man from Nantucket

ah, never mind.

[Tony_Bentley]

 

I like the idea that climbing is only what people do after the approach; sometimes but not always using a partner, rope, protection, ice axe or tools, crampons, etc.