When did climbing become recognizably modern?

Let's discuss this and why the answer is somewhere around 1993.

Of course, to answer the question we first have to define "climbing" and "recognizably modern." For the first, I'm only talking about rock climbing here - I don't think ice climbing, for example, would look familiar until curvy leashless tools were invented and that was much later.

To me, "recognizably modern" means that you could show up the crag that year with your current gear and take your current approach and not look out of place. Sure, your 2020 hairstyle would be silly, and your rope would be skinnier, but everything would be mutually intelligible. Your approach to a climbing day would not draw remarks or reproach.

To determine that the answer is 1993, I submit Masters of Stone II: youtube.com/watch?v=sAEUQyx… Masters of Stone I is unfortunately not on Youtube so the fossil record is incomplete. But that is why we have the science of archaeology.

The sport climbing sequences are fully modern. There are quickdraws with bent gates. Bolt hangers haven't changed. Climbers are wearing downturned shoes with sticky rubber. They whip, they hang, they project.

Trad sequences too. Ron Kauk plugs TCUs in the Needles - you can pick them up on the internet for $60 a pop. And he sends 5.13 in purple Mythos. They might not be the shoe of choice anymore but they're still made.

The bouldering is where it gets a little dicey. There aren't many crashpads in sight. And the film uses YDS grades for boulder problems along with a rare B-scale sighting. But the V-scale had been invented by 93, even if it wasn't fully adopted.

And the big wall sequences seem a little antiquated: no one is banging inch angles on the Zodiac these days.

Nor has Dan Osman's passion for massive whippers aged well.

But what makes it modern is what isn't there: no one is arguing that sport climbing shouldn't exist. No one is saying bouldering is just practice. No one is enforcing the no-hangdogging ethic. All the major formations in Yosemite have been climbed and people are working on freeing them and setting speed records.

The games climbers play haven't changed much since 1993. Gear has improved but not revolutionarily. Standards have risen but the sport is the same.

This isn't to say that nothing's changed. The film almost completely omits women climbers. Shelley Presson gets maybe 45 seconds of screen time and that's about it. There were plenty of female crushers in those days so their absence reads as negligence by the filmmakers.

Now, I was in 3rd grade when this movie came out. Old timers, tell me why I'm wrong.

Well, in Enormocast episode 196, Calous says gear and shoes haven't changed much since the mid-90s relative to the changes that came before. Sounded like the guests pretty much agreed given what they used when starting out.

1993 also saw the Nose go free, which I think showed what happens when a comp climber goes (back) to hard trad, and breaks previous expectations of who can climb it.

I'd also go with the release of the LS Miura (1995?) - an aggressive, downturned, asymmetrical shoe that's still sold today.

That or the Gri Gri for sea-change type of stuff.

A good observation and interesting to think about. It also means that 2023 will be the 30th Anniversary of Modern Climbing. And you could argue (b/c this is the internet and we are all locked in our homes this spring climbing season) that there hasn't been a major shift in the sport in 30 years. Sad.  

Ryan Kelly wrote:Sad.  

Yuppp

I initially saw the title and expected a lame premise and far-fetched argument. Then I read it, and yup - I think ya nailed it.

And yes, now I feel OLD. Thanks for that. :-(

Fun post, thanks.

Nerd... (I secretly love it!)

Nkane even before I read your thoughts, my own were very close. For me it was Jeff Lowe's World Cup climbing comp in Berkeley, CA in 1990. It seemed like a Rubicon, even at the time.

No one is going to say the Honnold free soloing the Free Rider in 2017 wasn't the start of a new era?!? Modern Era 2.0

Ryan Kelly wrote: No one is going to say the Honnold free soloing the Free Rider in 2017 wasn't the start of a new era?!? Modern Era 2.0

I mean it’s certainly one of the most outstanding climbing achievements ever, but in a way it seems like an outlier? I don’t think Honnold has created a soloing revolution by any means, and from where climbing is right now, it doesn’t really look like soloing is going to become a super popular discipline on par with sport climbing in terms of the number of people doing it.

Would the growing prevalence of hand jammies push the year closer to today? Even now they're sometimes scoffed at, but the number who do so seem to decrease every year. However I wonder what the reaction to them would be in the 90s and 2000s, especially if someone was to send something noteworthy at the time (like the Salathe) using them.

How about the modern climbing gym? Not like the small plywood walls of yore but the big Walltopia mega gyms of today? Talking to my dad(used to climb trad in the day), that, to him, is the biggest change...

Terrible Climber wrote: How about the modern climbing gym? Not like the small plywood walls of yore but the big Walltopia mega gyms of today? Talking to my dad(used to climb trad in the day), that, to him, is the biggest change...

But that's the thing, at least as I witnessed it - big gyms first emerged in the mid 90s. Holds have become more colorful, and the brand names have changed, but in essence there's just more now than there were. I wouldn't say they are fundamentally different than what emerged back then.

Ben Carr wrote: Dang, great post. As far as bouldering goes, I would definitely say that Rampage (Sharma) is fully modern, with everyone using crash pads and the big projecting sessions that are commonplace today. I doubt that was the earliest point though, but I guess it narrows it down to somewhere in the 1993-2000 range.

Nope.

Midnight Lightening is "fully modern". But problems that John Gill put up in the 60's are just as modern as anything before or since. For boldering all it takes is a true committment to the difficulty of the problem being an end to itself (modern boldering), not just training for "real climbing". It was modern the day it was invented as a distinct pursuit.

Using a Maxi-pad doesn't make you modern.

Climbing has been "modern" since the big wall and free-climbing revolution of the 60's. Then and on the big walls and mountains it became style versus just conquering a peak with seige techniques.

The rest is just innovation in tools and materials and a relaxing of ethics. <<<---none of which is a bad thing, necessarily. As long as you protect the shared resource all climbing is personal.

To say that it is sad that climbing hasn't had a major breakthrough in 30 years is just to recognize that it has become a more mature sport. When was the last major breakthrough for running? Roger Bannister? Pheidippedes? 

Wow, cool thread here. I think the op pretty much nailed it - wild to think that not that much has changed in 25 years.

hillbilly hijinks wrote:

.... Climbing has been "modern" since the big wall and free-climbing revolution of the 60's. Then and on the big walls and mountains it became style versus just conquering a peak with seige techniques.

If the op is defining modern as... would a 2020 climber fit in or stand out like a sore thumb?...

Picture this:
It's 1960. Babsi and Jacopo roll into to Yosemite from Europe. They both (yes, including the female crusher) send Zodiac free, drawing on their strength from sport climbing and coached training in modern gyms. They hangdog the moves and project like a modern sport climber, and eventually pinkpoint (and nobody cares) the crux pitches on pre-placed cams, with a film crew there to capture the magic. How do I know? Because I watched the sponsored video on the internet.

I think 1960's climbers would lose their freaking minds!

The rest is just innovation in tools and materials and a relaxing of ethics. <<<---none of which is a bad thing, necessarily. As long as you protect the shared resource all climbing is personal.

Totally agree with this as well, and if these factors change enough I think it can be defined as a new era.

I think the best changes since the mid 90 are the (approaching) equal inclusion of female crushers in climbing media, and the growth of climbing advocacy and conservation groups such as Access Fund, local climbing organizations, and this part of the AAC.

And the biggest change since the mid 90s can be argued good or bad: the explosive growth of the sport overall.

The modern era is upon us. We've moved from the realm of modern "gravity sports"  to a unique (and very marketable) space. Gym Climber Magazine, Honnold, outsourced manufacturing, etc. You get the idea. It's exciting, kinda like how skateboarding was after Tony Hawk's Pro-skater 2 came out, but before Tony Hawk's Pro-Skater 3&4, and SKATE were released.

I actually think Ryan is onto something - running is somewhat timeless - at least since the time that we've stopped running away from things with bigger teeth and claws than us, or running towards things to exhaust them to then kill and eat them. Now we just run for that weird, intrinsic feeling inside us that it's just something we should be doing (and it seems it's beneficial to our bodies to do so). You don't need to be taught to run or need specific gear to run. Right foot, left foot; repeat.

A lot of climbing is getting over the quite universal fear of heights/falling. We chased things off of cliffs to kill them, and mountains were forbidden places where the gods lived.

Sub 2 is still an incremental improvement to what's been done in the last oh, 60 years - and probably less of a progression than climbing has seen in the same amount of time? 2:15 marathon time was done in bare feet in the 60's - far from the perfect conditions of the Nike run experiment.

Shoes with carbon fiber plates in them are also not a new idea.

Terrible Climber wrote: How about the modern climbing gym? Not like the small plywood walls of yore but the big Walltopia mega gyms of today? Talking to my dad(used to climb trad in the day), that, to him, is the biggest change...

The most significant change in the last 25 years has been the proportion of women participating. The next most significant is the growth of indoor bouldering. The Climbing Works in Sheffield, the first really big bouldering-only gym opened in 2006. It has been the template for 100s of others.