UKH

Over the years, climbing has shrunk. 

It started with mountaineering, which lead into crags, which became smaller, which became boulders. 

Outside of this, lead walls are less popular than bouldering walls and finger boards are on the up. 

Popular climbing appears to be getting smaller.

Are we staring at climbing becoming a series of single move challenges? 

I think no but definitely more bouldering for the simple reason of accessibility. You get the experience of climbing without a lot of the faff Of trad/time commitment of routes when you boulder.
 

Also I think bouldering is easier to sell from a Amarketing point of view. Ie look at these sexy guys and girls standing rounding in the sun compared to mountaineering (look at these bearded humans wearing thick down suits risking their lives on a mountain 3weeks walk from a village eating crappy rations whilst rocks fall past their heads)

Having said that ultra running is having a moment right now so maybe endurance climbing will come back around 

Ultra running is an interesting point, it is much cooler than sprinting currently. 

I agree that marketing has a lot to answer for, it creates the genres in the first place. To quote Joe Brown "we used to go bouldering, we just used to call it arsing about". 

But sir, those are trad climbing shoes/sprinting shorts you simply cannot go bouldering/run an ultra in those, the universe will implode. 

My cynical side is looking forward to the first bouldering harness hitting the shelves. 

What about the sitting start ?  They were the thin end of the wedge

Sitting? Well you can start there but you miss the first 3 moves where the best climbing is. 

The best climbing is very short grit trad!

You get to have all the cool gear, youre normally near the car, and you only have to be able to boulder about F6B to scrape up some big numbers.

And you can even use bouldering pads at the same time! 

Perhaps I should broaden my expectations and look out for Trad Pads too. 

Surely the next important stage in climbing 'development' with be doing no moves at all, simply being able to hang particular holds or hold a particular position.

And after that, no moves and not even any holds. Very Zen.

Very good, I am about to move from my chair to my fingerboard, a move from cool to old school.  

My climbing career (for want of a more appropriate word!) is a microcosm of that.

I started off inspired by books on the Himalayas, and thought I should get some experience in the Alps first.

I started doing some trad to train climbing ahead of an alpine trip and quickly got obsessed. That lasted 5-6 years.

I started doing sport and bouldering to get fitter and stronger for trad. They took over for a few years. I did do a bunch of trad again for 6 months in the middle before running out of regular partners...

Then I started pretty much just going bouldering. That's been 5-6 years now with only a couple of sport routes here and there.

To take John Arran's point, there have been periods of up to a few months at a time that I have just fingerboarded to train for bouldering!

Now I have a woody in my garage so that's less likely... maybe it's the start of a reverse in the process...

I haven't climbed an Alp with a rope since 2007 and never did make it to the greater ranges!

Ps I think bouldering walls originally grew in popularity because they are simply better than lead walls, even if outside you usually climb routes. (Perhaps unless you have rickety knees.) Then people in cities gradually realised it was a fun activity that came with no strings attached (pardon the pun) and the masses started going so it has grown further.

Agreed. I don't really boulder outdoors anymore but indoors I only go to bouldering walls. If you're training, bouldering walls, circuit boards etc are so much better than indoor leading for specificity and youre not making it a two man job. 

Some no move graded problems on the Beastmaker for you

https://www.reddit.com/r/climbharder/comments/aeguuj/beastmaker_2000_benchm...

Nothing changes. I recall years (and years) back going to Wales for a weekend with Parky and two Sheffield rock jocks who I won't embarrass by naming. On the Saturday we did Creeping Lemma and Sind, they found Gogarth too intimidating to climb but still managed to get stuck at the bottom of the crag and need rescuing. On the Sunday we climbed at Craig y Forwen, doing Great Wall amongst others. They spent the day doing pull-ups and deadhangs at the foot of the crag!

Chris

I started climbing in the late 80s and enjoyed everything from bouldering to mountain routes from the start, following on from old men who felt the same..  they  just called their bouldering soloing short routes. Early guidebooks explain how to do crux moves. I look in my history books and see black and white photos of mantelshelf games of famous mountaineers in huts.  One of the first climbers in the UK set his Imaginary Boulder Problem challenge at Wharncliffe pre 1900. Your thesis of change is nonsense, climbers have always been inquisitive in movement and exploration.

We've been there for a while. Malc's one armer (f8A)

I too got into climbing for similar reasons. I got Joe Simpsons 'Touching the Void' once for a Christmas, which inexplicably inspired me to to start climbing. I then read maybe 15 more books on the subject until starting climbing maybe 10 years later.

Started with trad, did that for a year and quickly realised i really do not have the head for it at all. 1 in 10 outings i could keep it together. Then started bouldering which i hated at first but i now adore. The social, the accessibility, the athletic component....etc.

Wasn't it the Woodwards who said, many years ago, 'It's all the move'  or something like that. We seemed to have reached that point.

John

Reminds me of something I came across in a magazine nearly 20 years ago? It was an article by/featuring John Gaskins sprawled out on some pretty amazing looking boulders just up the road. Intrigued, I decided to go and check them out. When I got there I was stunned to find that I was taller than the boulder! Boy, didn't that lens distort reality. What in fact had happened was that the world had moved on and I'd been left behind.

I realised we'd reached that point some years ago, when I saw a climbing magazine offering a competition where the prize was a bouldering trip -  to the Himalayas!

Aren't you making a mountain out of a molehill? Or a molehill out of a ....?

Yes, I remember being amazed by that, and also finding out people went to Yosemite on bouldering holidays, how times change!

Chris

Ah yes its all about being seen when you go 'climbing'. In my 50 years on and off at the climbing game I've seen many of these people come and go most move on to other high profile 'look at me' activities. Most end up playing golf when the waistline starts to let them down. 

Popcorn time?

And this is why you'll never crush a send or slap a sloper on your beastmaker!

I remember going to a Dawes lecture once and he had a few pictures of a plastic Pink Panther toy lodged on various parts of a chair, his only comment was 'that's 6b', 'that might be 7a' etc. Very inspiring.

This reminds me of a formalist approach to the history of artistic modernism; you're concerned with the internal development of the medium, but you're completely eliding the social history that produced these changes.

Mountaineering started as the undertaking of a leisured middle-class in the C18th, seeking the sublime and a form of status; it is also bound up with colonial exploration. Cragging is rightly seen in the context of ever-increasing working-class and urban middle-class appetite for adventure on the weekend and with increasing holiday allowances in the 1930s - 1960s. Bouldering has a long history and is connected to the working-class countercultures of the 1960s - 1990s, with "dropouts" trying to get really good. But, in more recent years it probably represents climbing becoming a truly mass activity. The simplification of it - in terms of equipment and knowledge/experience, coupled with reducing the objective danger, is in line with this mass participation and democratisation. Sport climbing sits awkwardly across several of these tendencies. And the increasing mediatisation and commodification are also part of this mass participation.

Alpinism, from the British perspective, still remains the haunt of a mostly male and white, mobile and relatively wealthy segment of the middle class; bouldering is where you're going to see more women, POC and young people in general. 

As for the single-move: I've done plenty of routes and boulder problems that were no more than one tricky move. I don't think that's a direction with much scope. In fact, using bouldering mats to highball short trad routes is more the direction. I.e. using the methods of the New Class to f*ck with the conventions of the Ancien Regime - I'm looking at you, 1980s grit headpointers! 
 

Nice post. Officially liked. 

Bouldering is like having a wank.

Indoor climbing is like having sex with a plastic doll.

Trad climbing is like having sex with a real person.

Mountaineering is like having the full love job.

Fingerboarding is? 

a wet dream?

Some of the minimum requirements of what you will need and what to expect if you want to be accepted into your particular 'discipline'

Bouldering;  Small rock,big grade, small balls,big ego.

Indoor:       big wall,big grade,small balls,big ego.

Trad:   Big rock,big grade,big balls,big ego

Mountaineering: Massive rock,grade irrelevent,big balls,ego irrelevent

Not sure about that but I reckon you could alter some cycling shorts to stick a waterproof membrane in place of the padding. You then market them as sit start pants for those connoisseurs that realise starting off a mat is only cheating yourself. 

No. Virtual reality is the way of the future. Anyone conned into the need for belay glasses will be elbowing to the front of the online queue for goggles that light up all the in holds on a 2m high 1m wide 'bloc'. Sendvisor anyone?

I'm sure I read a quote by him that picking up an upside down pint glass with the palm of your hand is 6b.

Judging by the number of likes/dislikes this is picking up I'd say there are quite a few po-faced blodderers about who need to acquire a sense of humour?

Personally, I'd put caving out in front of the above. Akin to group sex with performance-enhancing drugs? I must add that I can't vouch for this from experience, sadly.

Loads of boulder problems essentially boil down to the ability to do a single move. And lots of them are great. especially if you spend lots of time not being able to do this move and then one day it just happens. Some of the best days climbing them. I'm not even a boulderer really but it is fun. But so is doing 19 pitches where you had to get up at 3am and are struggling to even move by the end of it.  Great days.

Wash your mouth out you dirty beast - only joking.

Anyone using that language in company and over 25 years of age will just sound ridiculous. However its up to the youth to move things on but with bouldering with sit starts aren't they in danger of disappearing up their own arses! I'm afraid that ants and spiders out perform even the best of boulderers but context is everything as often quoted on here.

No, surely some sort of ghastly sexual perversion beyond most peoples' darkest imagination.

Especially with harnesses and tight rubber suits. I sometimes thought that's Joe Public's standard idea of caving!

It looks like from your profile you are carrying an empty bag

If grade 3 scrambles solo in the rain require just small balls I challenge you. Seems as though your profile is just a wishlist-so sorry,how sad,next.

I wasn’t aware I had a profile. Grade 3 scrambles, next you be telling us you need big balls for the stairs.

I’ve known HVS leaders get stuck and freeze on grade 3 scrambles. Also there are some pretty scary stairs out there

Who’s a HVS leader.

Friend of a friend who I met in the pub

I hope you maintained social distance.

Some shallow thinking here. Plenty of mountaineers with big egos as well as all the other disciplines. The difficulty of a mountain or one of its lines also commands respect so grade or style not irrelevant. Saying big egos is a negative slur but why? It’s not the only driving motivation but if the result is it leads to excellence and achievement it’s all good for most. Judge the achievement on its own merits. Yes, take an interest in the motivation and the personality but that is separate

Science teaches us that we are a reductionist species. Why the surprise?

My experience of UKC thus far tells me this.

There are two main camps. There are of course wonderful exceptions to these (to save anyone time commenting specifically). I know it isn't quite such a simple binary issue.

a) those who like the day out, the camaraderie, the views, the shiny gear, the pub at the end of it, the gear placements, but rarely if ever, the actual climbing itself. The onsight is all important but learning from failure and improving is frowned upon. This group are keen to impress those who don't climb with epic tales of Severe multipitches and seemed to be fueled more by ego and need for acceptance in their percieved community than others. They don't miss an opportunity to derogate climbing styles they dislike for whatever reason and dismiss it as humour. They genuinely believe that the best training for climbing is climbing, even beyond beginner level, although all evidence proves otherwise.

or,

b) those who love climbing for climbing's sake along with all the day out aspects mentioned above. They cherish the fluidity of a beautiful sequence and will go all out to succeed in pulling off that extremely hard move, training specifically to achieve it and knowing the better they become, the more climbing they can experience in whatever discipline they choose to partake in. They accept that the world evolves and climbing along with it and embrace that. When they share their experience you feel the love. This group tend not to judge and support those around them and avoid negativity and poor attitudes like the plague. They know ego gets you nowhere and find climbing a humbling experience and learn from it.

Corrected that for you:

I base this on the "fact" that a successful Everest ascent (I'm sure a reasonable summit to base my point on) and back to base camp may take a month or two. Nalle took 7 years to realise Burden of Dreams. I could go on with other examples, but that's a relationship!  Can't argue with the facts

 It makes you wonder if they could have upped their game by taking bouldering and training seriously. It certainly worked for every successive generation. 😁

It seems to some people that I'm having a go at bouldering I'm not , I still go out for a mess about although my knees are letting me down these days. I'm just having a go at the self importance of some boulderers who are dismissive of other forms of climbing. A lot of older climbers me included got into climbing through a love of the outdoors and started on trad single pitch but aspired to multipitch,snow and ice and the mountains, bouldering was just part of the warm up or if you were 'Billy no mates'. It has come as quite a shock that commercialism has meant that there are many coming into the climbing game who dont care about the outdoors, quite happy to climb on plastic and on boulders as near the road as possible-well whatever floats your boat.

Question :has anyone ever got into the climbing game through reading a book about 'derring-do' on a boulder or on a indoor climbing wall?

We tend to watch videos about bouldering these days....books are so 1922. 

A steak and kidney pie is much more tempting but some people are easily pleased.

Have you never been caving?

It's a training pyramid of improvement. 

In order to get better at trad, it's very useful to climb lots of sport. In order to get better at sport, it's very useful to boulder. In order to get better at bouldering, it's very useful to fingerboard. Every stage improves the next and every other beyond that (e.g. fingerboarding also makes you better at trad), so it's natural that even people who have an end-goal of improving their trad game ultimately end up doing a lot of bouldering and sport. 

Trad is my passion ultimately, but I probably do the same amount of sport climbing as it's safer, easier, accessible and has 100% made me a better climber. Those perks are also the reason that a lot of people exclusively climb sport. 

Also if your end goal is doing hard moves safely (which I'd imagine is a lot of people...), then sport and bouldering are more appealing. I think if trad was the only climbing, then a majority of people who do it in this day and age wouldn't be drawn to it in the first place. 

Yes, lots. Drug-fuelled orgies? None that I recall. I've wasted my life!

They definitely wouldn't have needed to chip all those holds :0)))

I'm happy to accept you aren't having a pop, however when someone makes a couple of jokes, it is fun, a bit of banter. When someone persistently trips over themselves to derogate a particular subject, most people will assume you have an axe to grind. I'm confident that isn't lost on you. 

Like yourself, I am astonished that people are happy to play on plastic exclusively, however working at a climbing wall, I do accept that for many it is better than the gym. The world evolves!

Using 'boulders near the road' is an extreme example although I admit it happens and is disappointing. If we look at the classic area of Franchard Isatis, it goes back from the car park approx a mile. I was amazed after my 5th or 6th trip to discover that 2/3rds of visitors there never went beyond the first 150m, but the same analogy can be used on all other disciplines including those you love.

When I'm in Bleau, I spend my rest days getting lost in the forest finding new rock and exploring recommendations of locals. That isn't wildly impressive, however the fact that liking highballs, I am often helping trad climbers and mountaineers tackle highball problems or slabs because they are shitting themselves above a pad or two. Why? They didn't consider developing necessary climbing skills were important.

Bouldering is not lightweight if you don't choose it to be and landing from 7-8m is often way more scary than falling on your own gear. I say that, because if most pro placements were so life and death, there would be an extra feature on UKC called 'obituary'. There isn't.  95% of trad is safe as houses and only a small percentage of alpine activity involves hard climbing on vert or overhanging rock. The majority is plodding onwards and upwards and not the Heinrich Harrer fueled adventure we all know about.

I got into climbing through books like White Spider etc but only because I didn't know about other disciplines at the time. The internet has made newcomers more aware of the options and of course a percentage of humans will opt for convenience. They always have done.... it's best we enjoy and focus on what we love and help those who wish to try alongside us.

Hope your knees improve..

This is the classic UKC view, 

I think this whole topic is about self-awareness and empathy. It is possible for someone to enjoy climbing for different reasons than you.

It is possible to discover a different side to climbing, shifting focus from adventure to perfecting movement and enjoy it equally, just as it is possible to make the transition from the other direction.

However for some people they only want one or the other, and that is ok too.

It is quite perplexing when people can't understand that others may love the same thing for very different reasons. Personally I love it all, I am just as happy abseiling into sea cliff as I am falling off the same hard move 2m off the ground, but for very different reasons.

This is the same in any sport or hobby. In running it's a fight over best distances, in cycling it's where you ride (road/mtb) in mountain biking it's crosscountry vs trail vs enduro vs downhill. In knitting its fairisle vs harris vs knotwork. In baking it's yeast vs sourdough. All hobbies have this sense of elitism and people always believe their niche is best. It's sad, but I guess it's part of human tribalism. We form bands and protect our shared identity. If you like everything, which tribe are you part of? None of them or all of them?