The heart of it all boils down to the fact that in climbing we are working to develop ourselves on multiple fronts: movement (technique), problem solving, protection, and mental/emotional discipline/endurance and in this discussion we are placing an emphasis on exploring the latter.

If anything, I'd say the exact opposite has been happening; that (again on a percentage basis) the total climbing demographic is moving farther and farther away from recognizing and accepting the requisite level of personal responsibility and discipline necessary to embrace and manage the risks associated with free soloing.

In short, we now have a vast commercialized base of people who love the idea and identity images put forth of by climbing and a much smaller percentage who emerge out of that base that are willing and prepared to truly embrace it.

The simple fact of the matter is using safety equipment makes the activity safer, just like using seatbelts makes driving safer (regardless of whether the driver is reckless or not).

I find it somewhat annoying and a little disheartening to constantly read posts from 'old school' climbers who like to divide the climbing community into 'us' and 'them' based some idealized view of what a 'real' climber should be.

Show me one accomplished free soloist alive today that achieved their level of proficiency without the use of a rope and I will grant you your point. But you are not going to find one. You don't spring forth from the womb and start 3rd classing 5.12. You don't start 3rd classing 5.12 without one helluva lota rope work. So using a free soloist as an example of the relative safety of ropeless climbing to make the point that using a rope doesn't make climbing safer is a magician's card trick... make the rope disappear. Because that free soloist relied heavily upon the disappearing rope to make that amazing feat even possible.

In this arbitrary thing we call rock climbing the only inherent values are those we assign. These safety attributes you and alpnclimr1 harp on are only of value to the person doing the climbing.

In absolute terms? If I am staring up at a flaring granite crack and down at my feet are two racks of gear, one consisting of modern cams and biners, the other some hexes, nuts and ovals (in good repair mind you) unless I'm making some retro-point (which I'm not) I will reach for the cams. So will most experienced climbers, cept Hot Henry Barber and a few other holdouts. Most of us will choose to make climbing safer.

So? You say this as a lament. Why must the masses conform to YOUR ideal, instead of their own? If your free solos are appropriate, simply because you deem them appropriate, then the risk averse choosing to top rope some pedestrian 5.9 is equally appropriate. There really is no need to take the discussion beyond that.

If you old guys would learn to stop telling people how bad they suck and how far they've fallen from the glorious days of yesteryear, and perhaps start selling the virtues of your ways in positive language focused on modern objectives, you might gain a few more ears and a bit more respect for your views. But regardless, time rolls on, with or without you.

DMT

...Using safety equipment renders climbing safer. Not using safety equipment makes climbing less safe.

Now you can conjur up all the semi-solos you want. You can cite faulty use of equipment all you wish, it doesn't change anything. The simple fact of the matter is using safety equipment makes the activity safer, just like using seatbelts makes driving safer (regardless of whether the driver is reckless or not).

DUH!

I find it somewhat annoying and a little disheartening to constantly read posts from 'old school' climbers who like to divide the climbing community into 'us' and 'them' based some idealized view of what a 'real' climber should be.

Healyje,

Thanks for that great post. Tightroping was the perfect means to highlight some of these concepts.)

(Have you ever read the intro to Vertigo Games by Glenn Randall? There is a great little exerpt about tightrope walking in the 1800's)

Wake up to reality and get used to it. Back in the good ol' days there was a pecking order by the camping fire and a lot of other weird habits. It's a shame most of it is gone... some people could use a little more character and ethics.

LOL - thanks for proving my point. Perhaps you consider yourself to be one of the chosen few who is fit to judge the character and ethics of your fellow climbers

My fellow climbers have same ethics as I do.

Perhaps you consider yourself to be one of the chosen few who is fit to judge the character and ethics of "the old school" - bully for you.

This is true only if there is no correlation between the rate of reckelessness and using safety equipment.

A reckless driver wearing a seatbelt is "safer" than a reckless driver NOT wearing a seatbelt, all other things being equal.

Some people say they feel much safer after placing a marginal runner on X-route, although they know it will never hold. Without rope they might opt for staying on the ground. This is what I meant with correlation.

Dean Potter can likely free solo a familiar multi-pitch 5.11a R in the valley safer than I can climb with a rope on an unfamiliar route of the same rating in a climbing area and rock new to me.

bump???

What Dean Potter does or does not do has no bearing on your relative safety (unless he falls on you). You cannot compare his relative safety to your own.

Potter would be safer using a rope on that wired 11a and we both know it too. You would be far less safe on that unfamiliar 11 a without a rope than with.

If a guy stupidly runs it out using a rope once in a hundred pitches... does that one transgression render his use of the rope unsafe? Of course not.

Cheers
DMT

just curious - where are you getting those numbers from? It seems like similar statistics were quoted in another thread recently,....