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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Taipan 22-May-2006 At 10:07:21 PM ronny

Message

Re: Annonimity
Pebbles it does matter whether you've put your name to your comments or not. What we are talking about here are opinions, not merely abstract concepts. Without knowing that someone actually believes what they've written on here you can't evaluate it as an opinion - rather its just an idea. We can debate it as an idea, but who cares it its just some random idea that no one cares about. If I created a fake persona on here and started saying that everything should be gridbolted, would that be a valid or worthwhile addition to the debate? No - It'd be a worthless random idea that no one actually thinks. By putting your name to your comments you say in effect "this is the actual opinion of someone in the climbing community".

Re: Fun
I think the thing is that saying that climbing is just about 'fun' trivialises it. it just leads to the question "well what is fun?". Of course jac means 'fun' to include all the highs, lows, scary moments, etc. but by calling it 'fun' you tend to trivialise those experiences, and it appears to describe a standard/smiling/safe/sunny experience. And there are people around that associate 'fun' climbing with nice safe bolted routes. So by saying its all about 'fun', you can unintentionally appear to lend support to the homogenising of climbing areas.
So you both should get over this stupid semantic debate and address the issues.

I think its the homogenising of climbing that is the problem. I have no problem with sport routes in their place etc rap points in appropriate places. But the reality is that climbing areas do change as more and more lines are squeezed in. No one seriously is suggesting that bolting is always inappropriate, but similarly surely you guys aren't suggesting that it is always ok to add a new line of bolts to a cliff just because it is possible to climb there. So the issue is just whether this line of bolts adds or detracts from the area as a whole. All this crap about whether new route bolters are selfish or not is entirely irrelevant.

On the route - just cause you can climb there doesn't make it a 'line' - but I'm not sure about this one really, it looks like it might be kind of fun(!) climbing. (had a look from the first pitch of WP a few weeks back).

dR