Our Safe World

[Arc]

Sorry, wrong text.

[ashw_justin]

I think the imaginary fears and dangers are part of the strategy to entrap people into their empty and meaningless lives as consumer units. Chief among these is the fear that you don't measure up to your imaginary peer group. Just pick up any magazine and read the advertising. It's just as true for Outside as it is for Cosmo .

Your imagination is not so orignal. But good to bring this point up.

 

Run! The social psychology police are here! Clearly everyone here is just soooo much smarter, wow, how frightening...

[Mos_Chillin]

I feel like I have to break out of what I percieve to be a false sense of security, so as not to drown in the lie. Maybe that is why extreme sports are so popular now - a base need to stimulate the creative senses in a world where they are not just dulled by pummeling daily workloads of survival.

[G-spotter]

I'll play, and try to behave myself.

At the time I started climbing:

 

There were about 6 routes on El Cap (a number I did nothing to increase) Ascents of any of them were a big enough deal that successful parties got their names in the mags.

 

The best maps of BC's Coast Mountains were a quarter inch to the mile with 500' contours.........and the cartographers had winged it a bit here and there. John Clarke had yet to begin his onslaught, and huge chunks of the range had never or only rarely felt a human footstep.

 

Even in the Cascades one could, with a bit of research and scheming, find and stand atop some bump that had never been climbed..............not a major summit but an unclimbed one nonetheless. New route possibilities seemed limitless.

 

Those sorts of realities lent an air of...Jesus, I'm lost for an exact word here...but how about maybe mystery or exploration to climbing and mountaineering. I think it's a lot harder to get those same feelings today.

 

Maybe it doesn't touch very well on your safe world question but to have caught even the tail end of the never-to-be-repeated pioneering era was really very cool. I miss that sometimes.

 

 

hmm, the waddington range has 400 routes on 200 peaks.... seems to me like there is a hell of a lot left to do , just in that one tiny little corner of the coast mountains. sssshhh don't tell anyone.

[MisterMo]

hmm, the waddington range has 400 routes on 200 peaks.... seems to me like there is a hell of a lot left to do , just in that one tiny little corner of the coast mountains.

 

No doubt about it. My point was and remains that the experience will be much different than it was when there were, say, 100 routes on 200 mountains and there was vastly less information to be had.

 

This is not to demean current efforts in any way, but if you take, for example, the Munday's epic up the Homathko as the square one of Waddington area climbing then everybody since has built to some extent on the sum previous knowledge and experience and, in a sense, had it much easier.

[G-spotter]

well waaaaaah

i guess you might as well kill yourself cause the golden age is so fucking over then! you might never get to trudge your way up an untrodden dog route?

[MisterMo]

You misunderstand, or choose not to understand..........

 

I stated some things were different; I didn't hang a pejorative on it. There was and is no waah about it.

[G-spotter]

this is the golden age right now while there is still ice.

[knelson]

this is the golden age right now while there is still ice.

 

Phhhht. Just think of how much MORE rock there will be with all that worthless ice gone! Golden age, schmolden age.

[wfinley]

 

I recently read Seth Kantner's Ordinary Wolves. The book really brought home how much has changed in the past 35 years. The author grew up in an igloo north of the Arctic Circle before snowmachines, before the oil wells and before snowmachines and bush planes made travel simple and fast. The book chronicles the rapid change in Bush Alaska and in doing so shows how that change has affected both the people who live in rural Alaska as well as the land and wildlife. It's a very compelling read. That said... one of the things that struck me were the Q&A's published at the end of the book. Here's an excerpt (emphasis added):

 

Q: How authentic do you think the popular image of Alaska as the wild, rugged, uncharted West is?

 

SK: Depends on your perspective––in the Brooks Range in a storm in midwinter, you could say it's pretty rugged. But a lot of folks come in the summer and fall; they have GPSs and often now satellite phones. For $3.95 they can buy detailed USGS maps of every bend in every slough. Alaska, that I knew as a kid, is gone; the land is still here but planes fly over it relentlessly—from my perspective—carrying everything that Americans have too.

[archenemy]

I read that book a while ago. I don't know that I was as impressed as you were, but I did like it. I thought most folks could at least relate to the feeling of alienation that Seth felt within his own community--a lot going on with that part of the story.

[cj001f]

Some "golden" age is now. If you've the $ you can get to most any corner of the globe, with a copious quantity of information, and many connections to the world home, quickly. Cerro Torre basecamp 48 hrs from leaving Seattle - and when you get there it can be like you've never left home. There's a Dr who's used his phone w/data capabilities to diagnose and monitor patients from Everest. Any destination you've heard of will likely have a crowd of people just like you. If you want to find adventure you've got to find an untouched corner (hard now) or set some selfimposed boundaries. (like Erdens amazing project)

 

 

thanks for the book rec wfinley, I'll have to check that out

[archenemy]

I just avoid the whole thing and drop acid instead.

[cj001f]

I just avoid the whole thing and drop acid instead.

that was cutting edge 30 years ago - are there any FAA ascents left in the valley?

[archenemy]

No, my valley has none left.

[cj001f]

No, my valley has none left.

 

Well, money can solve that problem too

[archenemy]

can i open this at work?

[Johnny_Tuff]

Any destination you've heard of will likely have a crowd of people just like you.

 

Maybe we should stop introducing other people to climbing. Birth control for the sport, if you will. Instead of spreading the excitement we feel when climbing, or tales of the great places we get to go, simply give a few noncommittal, monosyllabic responses to all queries related to climbing. Resist the temptation to tell your girl- or boyfriend, your cousin, your roommate, your neighbor, your coworkers, etc. anything whatsoever about what you do on the weekends with all that bizarre hardware. If we stop creating more people just like us, there won't be so many of them crowding up the everywhere.

[archenemy]

Should we keep posting/reading about it all too?

[cj001f]

Maybe we should stop introducing other people to climbing. Birth control for the sport, if you will. Instead of spreading the excitement we feel when climbing, or tales of the great places we get to go, simply give a few noncommittal, monosyllabic responses to all queries related to climbing. Resist the temptation to tell your girl- or boyfriend, your cousin, your roommate, your neighbor, your coworkers, etc. anything whatsoever about what you do on the weekends with all that bizarre hardware. If we stop creating more people just like us, there won't be so many of them crowding up the everywhere.

I'm not seeing a downside.

[archenemy]

You climb alone?

[Johnny_Tuff]

You climb alone?

 

Do you notice a lack of people to climb with?

[archenemy]

I never see you out there,oh wait, are you a boulderer?

[Johnny_Tuff]

I'm not seeing a downside.

 

Exactly. Simple and effective; everyone plays a part, everyone keeps tabs on everyone else. Anyone seen at the crag or in the hills teaching someone how to belay or self-arrest or place a hex will instantly be recognized as having broken the sacred contract to keep the climbing population under control, and they would be punished by having to pay exorbitant parking fees.

[Johnny_Tuff]

I never see you out there,oh wait, are you a boulderer?

 

Not usually.

 

That's part of the balance, though. There are enough niches to occupy under the climbing umbrella to keep all of us spread out. No one's going to be bouldering at camp VI on some hateful iced-over wall; no one's going to be bivied at the base of my favorite sport route; there won't be six Unimogs crowding up the parking area at the bouldering zone. Additionally, there won't be valuable climbing gym space being wasted on slabby terrain and toprope routes, as, within a few years, no one will need such Gumbyescent features.

 

Can't you smell the utopia? It smells like...freshly roasted Brazilian coffee from Blue Gardenia! Mmmm...utooooopiaaaaa...