[sdm]

I hate to agree with Will on downgrades but Steep Traverse is nowhere close to 6C. Maybe it might have made sense as a grade 30 years ago(?) when the average 6C climber would have had little experience of very steep climbing. Now that everyone learns to climb on a juggy roof indoors, 6C is a joke.

That doesn't make sense. It might be the case that there are more people who can do 6C in that style these days, but that doesn't mean it isn't 6C.

That is exactly what it means. We grade problems based on how difficult they are for the average climber to climb them. As the average skillset changes, so does the grade.

Over time, if the average climber gets much better at style A and much worse at style B, then by definition, the grades of problems in styles A and B need to change relative to each other.

To not revise grades over a period of time just leads to grades describing the difficulty to an average climber at an arbitrary moment in history rather than describing their difficulty today. If grades are to retain any meaning/relevance to climbing today, then grades have to change as today's climbers change.

[MischaHY]

I've been wavering on commenting on this thread but I think it's useful to contribute my perspective.

I spent most of my childhood and teenage years being bullied pretty badly for social awkwardness and none-conformity (I suspect due to undiagnosed ADHD amongst other things) and as a result have taken some time to come around to the concept of an enjoyable piss-taking/light mockery amongst friends and acquaintances.

However with that in mind though I've come to see it as a useful and funny part of the social experience - but within certain boundaries which avoid causing misunderstanding and emotional escalation/damage.

For me this works in the following context:

1) You must always have some level of pre-existing personal relationship with the person you're sharing the piss taking with, whether they are the subject of the piss taking or are joking with you about someone else is is the subject.

2) If the piss taking is happening in a public setting, then the subject should be present and taking part in the discussion. If the person is not 'present' then the discussion should not be public.

3) If the subject cannot be guaranteed to be present then the nature of the joking needs to be kept within appropriate boundaries. And easy filter for this is if you would feel comfortable saying what you're writing directly to the face of someone who you've never met previously and without context. If you're someone who typically struggles to read social cues then it's best to be more cautious.

If the piss taking strays outside of these contexts then it's mockery/bullying because the useful and enjoyable social element is lost to one or more of the parties involved and it becomes destructive rather than constructive.

The issue with this current discussion (and in a gentler sense, the overall tone of this thread - but I respect that there is nuance with anything that someone has openly published online) is that it's public but unable to meet rule two and is crossing the line on rule three. This is a difficult situation because most people here are making the valid point that there is a useful component to the information delivered and that using humour as a mechanism to deliver it is a good way to do so.

The key is to make sure that the subject of the social error can feel a little embarrassed but still see the funny side which allows for constructive social growth and group learning as opposed to ostracisation. This then strengthens both the message and the social dynamic.

Happy to be called out but that's my perspective as someone who learnt to love a little fun-poking later in life after much unhappiness.

Ooops skimmed over this before but worth replying to as unlike some of the other responses it's an actual attempt to analyse bullying and look at boundaries and rationale and form a coherent argument.

Good post, good argument, but it misses the key factor that the subject has deliberately chosen to post (or promote) media to an unlimited public audience showing their dabbing (or whatever). That very public showing I think negates some of your criteria, and makes it quite different to bullying about non-promoted issues. I doubt anyone would advocate trying to hack into someone's private videos or scroll through their phone to find unshared photos to then publicly highlight the subject's dabbing!!

Edit: Okay this video is unlisted, but JF , WTF did a skinny cunt 65kg waif need to lie down for a rest on this:

I agree with a lot of this but I don't think people use social media that way. I occasionally post vids of climbing on Instagram, mostly cos I like the platform for seeing what my friends and such are up to. I also am quite proud of some of the things I've done so I whack em up. I wouldn't say I'm promoting myself

As far as bullying goes there has been bullying on this site while I've been here. I think it's an important thing to talk about.

Funnily enough I think Fiend and I are broadly in the same camp in that I think the more deliberately a piece of content has been posted to be delivered to an external audience (i.e. an organised platform which has chosen to broadcast it to their collection of content consumers), the more valid it is to scrutinise the content through a social lense rather than a personal one - but I don't automatically see it as open season for a good slagging off (not saying anyone else specifically does either).

My personal feeling is that the best attitude to have in these contexts is that of wanting to better enhance the collective community experience around climbing. This is quite a functional approach because it allows for appropriate criticism/piss taking in situations where it will constructively add to the collective experience and help guide the behaviour of an individual, but puts certain filters on which help to avoid descent into destructive interactions.

For me personally there's almost never a scenario where I wouldn't give someone a certain amount of slack in regards to their circumstances/misunderstandings/misinterpretations. This may sound slightly pious but it's more just because I'm aware of my own limitations in understanding the choices and meanings of others and so choose to offer that benefit of the doubt. I think it can sometimes be hard for highly socially robust individuals to understand how easily others can be negatively affected by criticism so I prefer to be cautious.

[Kingy]

Sometimes a sit start is harder with more pads stacked as the pull on is more bunched, eg Chilli Burn at Higher Chelburn in Lancs for me. Just sayin

[SA Chris]

I always struggle telling a dover sole from a bristol heel.

You have no sole.

[MischaHY]

I always struggle telling a dover sole from a bristol heel.

You have no sole.

Send them into Llanberis Resoles, he'll sort them out in no time. 

[andy moles]

Catching up on this debate about preservation of standards vs. not dunking on people (especially if they represent a minority in the activity), there have been some closely analogous goings-on in the Scottish winter scene of late.

It would be nice to applaud strong female representation in what is by far the UK's most male-dominated branch of climbing, if only they were playing by the same rules as (nearly) everyone else. Instead it feels awkwardly ambivalent, and a disingenuous social media vibe doesn't help.

[Will Hunt]

if only they were playing by the same rules as (nearly) everyone else.

For those of us who don't follow this, can you explain this?

[andy moles]

if only they were playing by the same rules as (nearly) everyone else.

For those of us who don't follow this, can you explain this?

In a nutshell, climbing mixed routes when they are not sufficiently snowy/icy, and are more like dry-tooling.

The Scottish winter conditions thing is a weird minefield, but it's generally agreed that mixed routes should be properly frozen and have a wintery appearance and 'feel', which has been fleetingly rare in the past few weeks.

[mrjonathanr]

You have no sole.

Send them into Llanberis Resoles, he'll sort them out in no time. 

Rumour has it he’s bought Pete’s Eats. Going to be renamed Llanberis Rissoles, apparently.

[Will Hunt]

In a nutshell, climbing mixed routes when they are not sufficiently snowy/icy, and are more like dry-tooling.

Hardly a new phenomenon, or one limited to ladies. For years my armchair view, kept to myself because obvs it's uninformed, has been that 90% of winter climbing that goes on is glorified dry tooling.

[petejh]

Oh dear. I'm fighting the urge.. but it's so difficult to read without correcting.

[andy moles]

In a nutshell, climbing mixed routes when they are not sufficiently snowy/icy, and are more like dry-tooling.

Hardly a new phenomenon, or one limited to ladies. For years my armchair view, kept to myself because obvs it's uninformed, has been that 90% of winter climbing that goes on is glorified dry tooling.

It's not new, and I definitely don't want to get drawn in on this, it just struck me reading this thread that there was potential for a very similar clash of priorities in this instance.

[jakaitch]

Oh dear. I'm fighting the urge.. but it's so difficult to read without correcting.

Do it, nibble

[Will Hunt]

Insufficiently snowy/icy, and are more like dry-tooling.

...mixed routes should be properly frozen and have a wintery appearance and 'feel',

Obviously I don't know what I'm looking at here but I'm interested. Does this fit within the "rules"?
https://www.instagram.com/p/CpFnMystdta/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

[petejh]

I think what you're looking at Will is another in a long line of examples of why instagram + hubris =  the death of the soul of *climbing.



* winter or summer

[scragrock]

I think what you're looking at Will is another in a long line of examples of why instagram + hubris =  the death of the soul of *climbing.



* winter or summer

Interesting notion, would you mind clarifying {for those of us in the cheaper seats} what "the soul of climbing" actually is?
Its a genuine question, please don't take this as a slight or an attack.

Cheers

[petejh]

Like most things I write on here it was slightly tongue-in-cheek - although that bloke's instagam post about climbing the winter route is pretty funny to observe:
Bloke who readily admits to not having any experience at all of winter climbing - with it's well-established and staunchly held views on the labyrinthine ethics* regarding style of ascent and condition of route - proceeds to climb 'hardest winter route'.... in the most out-of-condition conditions possible outside of mid-summer. Following top-roping**. And then sprays about it on instagram. Is this a satire on how ridiculous climbing and climbers has become? No, it appears it isn't.


* even if the ethics are stupid, inconsistent, illogical and murky around the edges, they are ultimately really not that difficult to understand if you take an honest look at yourself, your motivations, and the historical precedent. This is the ethic: climb when it's covered in hoar/rime, in most cases on most cliffs. Except those cliffs where it's customarily accepted not to which don't readily catch the rime - i.e. some aspects of Beinn Eighe for e.g., and other lower cliffs. Even then views differ on how acceptable that is.
Why?
1/ Because it's orders of magnitude more difficult to climb mixed routes in this condition.
2/ Because the type of weather required to produce that type of condition on a route (hoared/rimed up) is miles less frequent each winter than the merely 'normal winter weather' of it being just a bit chilly.
3/ Because of the above 2 reasons, adhering to the ethic preserves winter routes against hoardes of people climbing them in dry conditions - which is miles easier, miles more fun, and can be done at any time of year in a tee-shirt. If you don't wait for rime/hoar/snow then there's no reason not to dry tool a winter route in summer. And that then opens the door to everyone seeing what a stupid illogical game we invented for ourselves and promoted via narratives of derring-do.

** I once top-roped a winter route prior to a first ascent. It took away 90% of the challenge and I wished I hadn't bothered. This isn't grade 8 or 9 levels of physical difficulty, pre-practice isn't required as the challenge of the game we've invented for ourselves is all in the mental aspect of the onsight/ground-up, and the difficult conditions.

[scragrock]

Thanks for the eloquent reply and that certainly outlines your stance on the vagaries of winter climbing {or Ice Queening, as i like to call that particular perversion} but i don't think it addresses my initial question which was to define the soul of climbing from your point of view.

[petejh]

People's views will differ, but I would describe the soul of climbing as something along the lines of:
Climb for the sake of enjoying climbing, acknowledge that it's an arbitrary game with arbitrary rules designed to preserve the challenge of the game. Try to respect the arbitrary rules and accept the challenge. Question your motivations, if you find yourself avoiding the challenge. The rock, the climb, the history of the game and its characters, and the landscape in which the game is played are all important. You aren't.

[Will Hunt]

Why?
1/ Because it's orders of magnitude more difficult to climb mixed routes in this condition.

So mixed climbing is big grades for bad connies...


I'm messing with you, Pete, but only half-messing. When I used to enjoy baiting winter climbers on here about 10+ years ago it was because I was young and dumb(er) but also because I didn't really respect a discipline that caused harm to classic summer routes by climbing them in grim conditions (albeit less midgy) with inappropriate tools. Point Five Gully looks absolutely mint and I'd love to be dragged up it; Centurion not so much.
Plus all the people I knew who went winter climbing were crap and cowardly rock climbers but somehow turned into tigers who bragged of running out 50m of rope without protection (on Aladdin's Mirror  ) when they went winter climbing. Plus now half the walls have given over a load of space to dry tooling sections so that people can train like demons for Grade IVs.

[scragrock]

People's views will differ, but I would describe the soul of climbing as something along the lines of:
Climb for the sake of enjoying climbing, acknowledge that it's an arbitrary game with arbitrary rules designed to preserve the challenge of the game. Try to respect the arbitrary rules and accept the challenge. Question your motivations, if you find yourself avoiding the challenge. The rock, the climb, the history of the game and its characters, and the landscape in which the game is played are all important. You aren't.

That's a pretty succinct summary of what i asked, thanks.

I think this- "People's views will differ" is a serious issue from the get go.

Is it not the case that every new generation tries to break, bend, crush or circumvent the rules or standards set down by those who came before?, its all part of human progression for good or ill.
I also think your last few words are the ones that are least important to younger folk initially, my hope would be that a love and respect for the game sneaks in between the clamouring music, shifting pads the buzzing of drones and fans and the incessant shouts of "You got this".   

[Wellsy]

The soul of climbing would appear to be arguing about it on the internet

[andy moles]

Why?
1/ Because it's orders of magnitude more difficult to climb mixed routes in this condition.

So mixed climbing is big grades for bad connies...


I'm messing with you, Pete, but only half-messing. When I used to enjoy baiting winter climbers on here about 10+ years ago it was because I was young and dumb(er) but also because I didn't really respect a discipline that caused harm to classic summer routes by climbing them in grim conditions (albeit less midgy) with inappropriate tools. Point Five Gully looks absolutely mint and I'd love to be dragged up it; Centurion not so much.

Give me a call next season, very good price 

I'm inclined to agree about good summer routes, it's a shame there's such a long train of precedents that it seems impossible we'll ever go back. Mixed climbing on such routes is just bad connies, but bad connies are what we get in winter. Must be said that its best it is also surprisingly satisfying.

Anyway, this probably needs a topic split from dabs if anyone wishes to continue.

[Coops_13]

Double trouble

[finbarrr]

wow!
with friends like that...