Define Alpine Climbing?

[bonathanjarrett]

How would you define it?

[counterfeitfake]

Climbing in the alpine, duh. Do we have to have a pedantic bickering thread every week?

[knotzen]

Climbing in the alpine

 

That, combined with having a summit as the objective, is how I tend to think of it.

 

Otherwise, it's cragging.

 

For example, you could start at the base of Mt. Erie and climb to the summit, but I wouldn't consider it alpine because you're not "in" the mountains.

 

You could climb any of the Darrington routes, and they are in an outstanding alpine environment, but I would consider them cragging because you are not scaling a peak.

 

[Choada_Boy]

Define retarded question.

[knotzen]

Maybe he had a good reason for asking...

 

Let's ask him.

 

Dude?

[chirp]

 

[sk]

Climbing in the alpine, duh. Do we have to have a pedantic bickering thread every week?

 

Well YA otherwise what would we have to talk about

[bonathanjarrett]

Part of me agrees with the summit thing, then there is the idea that you need to be climbing in an "alpine environment" whatever that means, and then there is the fact that you are usually contending with other factors like approach, weather, 3rd and 4th class terrain, descent issues, glacier approaches, yaddy yaddy yaddy. I was poking around the AMGA website looking at the requirements for the Alpine Guide Course and was wondering how they might define "Alpine Climbing". So at the risk of getting a bunch of smart-ass answers, I thought I would throw it out to the cc.com community.

I think Twight talks in his book about lines he puts up in the Alps that don't go all the way to the summit, are they alpine?

There is, believe it or not, alpine environment in the White Mountains of New England. Is there alpine climbing there?

Snow Creek Wall, Tuolumne... alpine climbing or is the approach too short?

Genuine questions...

 

[Jason_Martin]

The AMGA unofficially defines alpine climbing as a route that attempts to attain a summit. I say this because if you look at their fill-in-the blanks resume for the alpine course, it asks if you summitted.

 

In my opinion it all depends. It's almost more of a gut feeling than a hard and fast definition. I would not define Snow Creek Wall as alpine, but I would define Liberty Bell as Alpine.

 

Twight and others have climbed routes where one could summit. They elected not to do so for a variety of reasons. Perhaps this makes the routes alpine. Indeed, it would be hard to argue that flying out to some glacier in Alaska and climbing three pitches after a glacier approach on the side of some giant peak is cragging because you bailed after the third pitch... On the same note, no one is going to go out and bolt a nice sixty foot sport climb on that same peak...

 

Jason

[Mattski]

It is a simple answer, it is the environment you are climbing in not the type of climbing. There are sport, trad, mixed and ice routes that are alpine climbe because the area is typically above treeline, possibly glaciated and often has an approach of some length giving it a level of committment not found cragging(issues with rescue, not length of the route).

 

If you get into the stly of climbing then you are not talking about theenvironment but the style. Red Rocks in one example where long routes have more in common with alpine routes by the difficult approaches and remote nature of the upper canyons but no one would call the Bugaboos cragging because it has all the environmental hazards of the high alpine.

 

The summit is not what defines alpine climbing but it is what helps define the success of an alpine climb.

[catbirdseat]

Above all the term "alpine" when applied to climbing refers to a greater sense of committment than non-alpine climbing. That's what really sets it apart, whether you are going for a summit or not and regardless of whether or not you are above the tree line. The fact that you must be a lot more self-reliant. If anything goes wrong it's going to be a lot worse than if it happens at a crag.

[Bug]

((seconds of bushwhacking X percent chance of precip) X (absolute Temperature C/weight (lbs) of pack) / (altitude X average gradient of off trail travel) = alpine factor.

The closer to 1 you get, the more alpine it is

[G-spotter]

Only avatars with Alpine in their names (like Feck) should answer this question.