William Bird's Communications Blog – "There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept."

April 12, 2020

Blog Five: Adam Ondra

A Community Leader

I think that there are a number of people that could fulfill the role of being a community leader in rock climbing however, one person in particular does this better than anyone. That person is Adam Ondra and the reason why is because he is continually pushing the boundaries of what is considered physically possible in climbing. He is the first and only climber to climb a route which he believes to be a 9c, which to anyone not in the climbing community, is a designation entirely of its own. Not only has no one been able to climb it after him in the 2 years since, no one is even close. The guy is absolutely off-the-wall insane when it comes to pretty much any facet of climbing.

He is the only person to come first in both the bouldering (rope less, shorter climbs often featuring overhanging walls) and lead climbing (the classic massive wall, long-roped version) in the same year. He has 18 first place finishes in the Climbing World Cup, with his sights currently set on the Olympics. Oddly enough, Ondra is not the favorite to win there. This is largely due to the event featuring speed climbing (a malformed version of traditional climbing) in addition to the lead and bouldering. He even won titles in the years where he was pursuing a degree in economics and business management.

That isn’t even talking about his conquests outside of competitions with some of the most impressive ascents you will find out there. Of the for hardest routes in the world, he has climbed 3. To put this into perspective, no single person other than him has climbed more than one. He has more than 100 ascents of routes designated as 5.14d or harder, which includes his just over 30 ascents of 5.15’s.

Although he is known for his deafening roars during and post climbing, he seems to be a quite gentle soul. He prioritizes the natural element of outdoor climbs and insists that it is the veterans of this community’s duty to instill the proper etiquette within newcomers. All in all, I have nothing but good things to say about Ondra and I hope to get the opportunity to see him compete someday.

March 28, 2020June 1, 2021

Blog 4: Climbing Beef

There are not very many instances of having huge disputes within the community of rock climbing. That being said, there are some instances for conflict regarding climbing style, but the vast majority comes in the form of personal disputes arising from it being a competitive sport. What I mean by conflict within the community is simply talking about which style (trad, sport, etc.) is the superior form of climbing. Back in the olden days, where climbers were camping out in Yosemite Valley hoping to ascent the Half Dome or El Cap. The disputes are fairly well documented in a movie titled Valley Uprising and I highly recommend you give it a watch if you would like to be entertained for a little while amidst this pandemic season. The dispute boiled down to whether or not one climbers style amounted to destroying the beauty of the climb. The other side of that argument was that the climbers style allowed him to climb things previously thought unclimbable. This was also a personal argument as both climbers did not exactly get along outside of the sport as well.

A more recent example of conflict within the community came with Adam Ondra’s ascent of what is supposedly the hardest route ever climbed thus far. He called the route “Silence” and suggested that it be rated as a 9c, something that has not been suggested since his ascent back in September of 2017. You would think that the conflict here would arise from people disagreeing with the rating, but it is actually something much more odd. Another world-class climber by the name of Séb Bouin attempted the route and was slightly dismayed to say the least at the hardest part of the route was tampered with. One of the cruxes in the route was found by Bouin to have “moist sleeper plastic” covering some of the holds making it impossible to climb. Ondra, being the last one on it was the obvious suspect. People in the community were very quick to jump to conclusions forming angry mobs sending hate his way. One of the more common thoughts was that he did so to prevent people from verifying his rating. This only lasted a short while as Ondra caught wind of the kerfuffle and clarified what actually happened. He had sent people to take molds of the route in order to precisely map it out to create virtual reality and augmented reality models. The silicone used in some very precise spots was not properly cleaned out. He took responsibility for the error and vowed to make it right after clarifying it was absolutely not done so for the purposes of marring the route.

For the most part climbers are all on the same page in terms of ideology and massive personal problems are few and far between. Climbers generally direct their energy into the climb rather than whatever else may be going on in their lives.

Thanks for reading and stay safe.

February 23, 2020March 11, 2020

Blog 3: The Purest Form of Rock Climbing

Rock climbing has experienced a lot of growth in the past few years. From being included in the Olympics to basically being banned from the holy grail of western climbing (Yosemite National Park). One of the most important trends in climbing today is the popularization of free-climbing. I think that there aren’t very many people interested in climbing that haven’t heard of Alex Hannold, Tommy Caldwell or the late Dean Potter, John Bachar and Dan Osmond. These men are all willing participants in the growing trend of free climbing or in Dean Potter’s case, free-basing. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept of free climbing, it really is what it sounds like. It’s “just” rock climbing with no ropes. Although this is not necessarily a new aspect to rock climbing, with the first recorded free solo being done by John Muir in 1869 in Yosemite; its popularity is certainly new. Most climbers up until recently would never even entertain the thought of freeclimbing and yet now the boundaries are being pushed harder and farther than they ever have been before by a significant group of individuals.

Despite what you might think about these people (I’ve heard “crazy” and “nutjob” thrown around a lot) they aren’t all driven by adrenaline rushes. Alex, who is one of the more outspoken about his motivations says in a 60 minutes interview that he doesn’t consider himself an adrenaline junkie. He continues to say that rather than adrenaline which, to him, means something has gone wrong he is very calm and only does it for how cool he thinks it is. Now, this doesn’t hold true across the board as there are many who do it for the rush, but for me my favorite reasoning for freeclimbing is Dan Osmond who did it for the beauty of it.

Most free climbers today are pushing themselves to higher and higher difficulties of climbs. At one point the hardest freeclimbing route was a 5.9 rating. We are now seeing 5.12s being done consistently. Some of the worlds hardest climbs are being dominated by people who not very long ago would’ve been hesitant to climb even with a rope. Not only that, in March of last year, a relatively unknown climber by the name of Jim Reynolds not only free soled up a 5000-foot spire in Patagonia, he actually downclimbed it after. He climbed it without a map, never having done the route before and in extremely poor conditions. Another reason why I love this guy is because he isn’t even doing it for the rush, he’s even more of a perfectionist than Dan Osmond in that he doesn’t consider a climb to be a true free solo if you use a rope to rappel.

This is not just the progress of the sport, this is the progress of human beings defying death.

February 2, 2020February 2, 2020

Blog 2: The Benefits of Climbing Rocks

Rock climbing might not sound like the greatest of influences depending on what you’ve heard about the community but I’m here to tell you that it teaches a person some of the most valuable skills out there. Climbing teaches you a lot about how to treat other people, as well as helps you to improve upon yourself. To truly understand how you as an individual are going to succeed on a route you must strengthen yourself both physically and mentally. Not only that, but gym environments foster environments where you have the ability to help others grow, something that not a lot of sports allow for. It helps to improve your problem-solving abilities, exponentially increasing as you progress towards harder and harder routes. It is one thing to have a plan for how you think a route should be climbed from the ground, it is an entirely different thing to realize it won’t work when you are upside down and holding on for dear life. On top of that, climbing really can make you think about how much you value other people. For example, if you are a half decent climber that is working on a particular wall in the gym and a fairly new climber comes around and starts working on a problem that would be no problem for you to do. Should you a) scamper up and make it look like a piece of cake or b) continue working on things your level and ask if they want a hand with the planning aspect of the climb. Obviously reading it makes it seem obvious, but you would be surprised at how many beginner climbers who are just slightly better than a newbie will absolutely go out of their way to make themselves look better than you. This is completely non-existent in veteran climbers and to me that proves that it does make you a more empathetic, tactful person. On top of that, most people who climb will go out of their way to cheer you on in your climbs, even if they’ve never met you before. If I wanted to hire someone to work in the environmental sector, work ethic, empathy, and their ability to think outside of the box would be the three most important traits I would ever ask for and I don’t think I’ve ever met a more respectful, motivated and intelligent group of people than what is present in this community.

January 19, 2020January 19, 2020

The Beta for Happiness

Rock-climbing is something that I would suggest trying at least one time in your life. My introduction to climbing was as a kid attending a birthday party at a local indoor climbing gym. Even though looking back, the place was super small, almost always empty and they literally never changed the routes, that was the place where I fell in love with the sport. At the time I was much more interested in playing hockey however, so that love had to play second fiddle until I finally moved on in the second year of high school. By that point I had found a better gym and over the next few years I set out to become a better climber. The climbing community is somewhat of an odd bunch and I say that with as much love as I can. People that have never met will continuously put their safety in another’s hands and do it with a smile. It emphasizes a level of trust and respect or each other that I frankly don’t see a lot anywhere else and you see it even if you aren’t looking for it.

For someone reading this who doesn’t have any knowledge about climbing, there are three basic subcategories. The first is bouldering, where the wall is relatively short and large mats are placed on the floor underneath to break your fall as you don’t have or require a rope. The second is called top-roping and is what most people start climbing on, where a rope has been already placed at the top of the route and there is a second individual securing the rope as you climb. This person is called a belayer and although in recent years there have been auto-belayers (in which the role of the second is fulfilled by a machine) it is still much more common to see the old method as it really is a community sport. The third method of scaling walls is called lead-climbing, and this is the most common way to climb for experienced climbers as well as for those who climb outdoors. An individual’s experience in the rock-climbing community varies widely as it can be as much of a group experience as they want it to be. What I mean by this is that every single gym I have been to has some form of a singles night, no not for dating but rather for those who haven’t found someone to climb with to show up and have a belaying partner. Oppositely, there are lots of folks (especially those who like bouldering) who don’t especially branch out into the community and prefer to view the sport as a sort of meditative experience. As for me, I much prefer bouldering as the routes are often much shorter and technical, often allowing for or even requiring out of the box thinking to “solve” the route. Rather than referring to a pathway up the wall as routes, many prefer to call them problems, implying that they are many ways to run the same route. I absolutely adore this line of thinking and will often find that gyms who do not adopt the standard rating system for routes able to create much more interesting problems than those who do.

I would like to close by saying that in my opinion, climbers are some of the nicest, quirkiest people that I have ever had the absolute pleasure of meeting and to whomever is reading this, on behalf of your local gym we’d love to see you out there one day.