Trends in Climbing: Prediction Thread

Hey! I was thinking about climbing in the Olympics and thought it would be fun to have a thread where we write predictions of what climbing will be like in the future. For all these, I'm thinking with about a 20 year horizon. I'll start with a couple:

1. Bouldering is king. Indoor climbing walls and holds are really pretty good nowadays, bouldering gyms are usually cheaper to build, bouldering has a lower barrier to entry for new climbers, the kids are crazy about it, and it's less likely to result in lawsuits when people forget to clip into autobelay (that last point is in jest! I think...). Boulders are also the pinnacle of climbing being "hard", which people are really into nowadays (a later point). All this means bouldering becomes more and more popular in proportion to other disciplines of climbing.
2. Chalk use is discouraged. With all the talk of leave no trace, sustainability, impact, etc., it's only natural that chalk use come under scrutiny. I find it funny when people fuss about the visual impact of bolts when chalk on handholds lights up a desert sandstone climb like a christmas tree. Surely all those climbing companies can R&D some amazing towel or other substance that does the trick? A great article on the menace of chalk: https://www.rockandice.com/john-long-writing-symposium/no-chalk/
3. ...and shoe rubber might change too. Shoe rubber is younger brother of chalk: less noticeable but also annoying. Everyone's climbed a route with polished and slick footholds from shoe rubber. This'll be a harder nut to crack since the stickiness and performance of climbing shoe rubber is pretty important to sending routes, so I imagine solutions might include new ways to remove the grease from routes. All of this is spurred by a focus on impact due to the increased popularity of climbing.
4. Bolts, bolts, and more bolts. In the past, the "boldness" of a climb was definitely included in the prestige and perceived difficulty of a climb. Nowadays, people just care about the difficulty of the moves and would prefer to not take huge whippers. In addition, you can now watch a 30 minute bolting tutorial on youtube and go crazy at your local trad crag without someone there to talk some sense into you. And you know what? Bolts are great, it would probably save a few broken ankles and other accidents if routes had a few more bolts (and of course, more outdoor sport climbing).
5. ASCA, the Access Fund, and local climbing coalitions expand. Indoor climbing has this huge surge of upper-class coastal yuppie (which I guess I am sorta a part of), and these orgs will benefit in the form of donations and volunteer hours. Maybe a lot of those dollars go towards wasteful bureaucracy, but some of it will probably benefit climbers.
6. Less and less aid climbing. Everyone is crazy about pushing grades now, less so about the quality of climbing. If you go to a climbing gym, this is often the only thing new climbers think about: getting their first V4, or first 12a (on top rope, hangdogged for 30 minutes). This'll sort of spill over into aid climbing, where people try pretty hard to do as much of a bigwall clean as they can, new hard routes just go at 5.12 or 5.13, no one will care about the aid grade. "Free Solo" will be part of this; people will care about doing El Cap all free, rather than just getting to the top.
7. Speed records get more common. This'll sort of be the Strava-ication of climbing: in the same way people care about and note the FA or FFA of a route, people will note the best speed times, and it'll be normal to record your time too. People will do easy climbs they've already done just to improve their time.
8. No one reaches V18, 5.16a is climbed but no 5.16b. This is just me being armchair climbing expert. V17 seems pretty gosh darn hard, and in 20 years people might propose V18s, but they'll get downgraded. 16a seems more attainable with more prep and rehearsal, but 16b seems impossible (and I recall that Adam Ondra said so too?). Someone can pull up that chart of when each grade was climbed to extrapolate for a more scientific prediction.
9. Permit systems expand. A big part of the appeal of national parks is the "pristineness" of the nature, meaning the place isn't crowded and it's not overrun with trash and other human impact. This necessitates a permit system, or congestion pricing, or some other way to decrease or limit the number of people at the park. This also can apply to individual routes: in the same way it's damn near impossible to get camping in Yosemite valley, you might have to get a permit for certain days to be on the nose (don't finish in time? I guess you have to rap!), where they limit it to having say 10 parties on it at a time. Pray the consultants NPS hire to figure this out do a good job. All of this, of course, is caused by the increasing popularity of climbing. It's not the wild west of climbing anymore, there's only one Epinephrine or Casual Route split between more and more climbers.
10. Vanlife explodes in popularity. If you think this trend is already out of control, you've seen nothing yet. Three forces will contribute: electric vans becoming available; Starlink and satellite internet becoming available, and the huge increase in remote work. These factors will reinforce eachother, creating a robust industry of premades and conversions, and you'll see a doubling in the number of vanlifers every 2 years, like some kind of hippie Moore's Law.
11. Indoor Climbing goes "mainstream" as a sport. It's clear that climbing is getting more popular, but what does "mainstream" mean? It means IFSC World Cups on ESPN, varsity and JV climbing teams in high schools, random people on the street know the basic rules and formats, most people know the most famous one or two climbers, etcetera. It'll exist in people's minds in the same way Golf or Tennis and other individual sports do.
12. Indoor speed carves out a niche, comp setting stays the way it is. I know most people here kinda hate speed climbing, but I've seen/met some kids and teens who seem to like it, and the nostalgia of youth is powerful, so their kids will end up doing it too, and it'll go into this self-sustaining vortex. It'll be an Olympic favorite too. As for comp setting, I think it's reached a decent equilibrium with the weird parkour moves, but I do have another prediction: more crack moves. They provide more variety of moves for the setters, so all those Japanese climbers will have to learn their upside down heel-toe hooks.

So, how about it? I guess a lot of these predictions are pretty safe, basically the same thing as "climbing will get more popular", but I hope I brought up a few interesting points. 

Nick Tittertonwrote:

1. Chalk use is discouraged. With all the talk of leave no trace, sustainability, impact, etc., it's only natural that chalk use come under scrutiny...

I have been to Utah national parks that require coral colored chalk.

9. Permit systems expand. A big part of the appeal of national parks is the "pristineness" of the nature...

Or, more generally, outdoors jurisdictions would need to grapple with the management of more climbers. This could mean bans, restrictions, permits, rules.

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Other downstream effects of increased popularity of climbing:

- More money means more sponsorships. More pro climbers means harder climbs getting done, more hard solos, more speed records falling.
- Technological improvement in gear. More money in R&D and having wider user-base means more resource and incentive to innovate.
- Comp climbing on ESPN ocho.

I suspect that with peak oil now well behind us, and our inability to get our sh together and come up with a sustainable alternative, that climbing will be much more "pure' twenty years from now.

No ropes, harnesses, shoes. The best climbers will be the ones able to reach the hard to get to edible lichens.

More accidents

More permit systems

More regulations

More accreditations / certifications

More trade groups

More over-bolting

More impact

More gyms

More crowds

More “ethics” / “standards”

More frequent fixed anchor failure 

Fewer trees 

Fewer climbing areas

Fewer parking areas

Fewer mentors

More cowbell

Maybe I’m hopelessly optimistic, but I foresee indoor climbing exploding in popularity post-olympics, while outdoor climbing continues to grow at its current pace. I don’t see the majority of people that go to gyms having any interest in climbing outside. 

High end alpinism plateaus, if it hasn't already. Climate change makes the greater ranges more unstable, attempting new routes just gets too dangerous, and people don't want to die anymore. See Graham Zimmerman's latest IG post about temps being +10 Celsius on K2.  

Vanlife crashes as the appeal of homelessness wans and the vice grip corp america finally realizes the folly of remote "work" (work, haha).

And what Al Pine said.

In the US, indoor climbing continues to grow in popularity, particularly bouldering. The first stage is when indoor bouldering gets as popular as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu/MMA. Most towns will have a bouldering gym or two. Watching IFSC will be like watching UFC. In other words, most people will know of it, maybe even know the top climbers, but it will still be a relatively niche sport. Japan is basically at this stage already - they have way more bouldering gyms per capita than the US does.

The next stage is when somebody invents the CrossFit or SoulCycle or Peleton of indoor climbing. What would this look like? Moonboard etc. are already on this path with the social media features and rankings. The CrossFit of climbing would have a chain that sets up a “boulder of the day”(or week, etc) across all of its locations at different difficulty levels. The SoulCycle of climbing would be instructor led group classes where everyone does a bunch of laps on auto belay or a Treadwall type machine. The Peleton of indoor climbing basically already exists in the Moon/Tension/Kilter boards. It would just be more accessible for beginner climbers, have a better app, and be sold as a ready made package.

I don’t think it will lead to much more people climbing outdoors. The rise of SoulCycle/Peleton has not, to my knowledge, translated into tons more people buying bikes and riding outdoors. The people who like that sort of thing will be content to stay indoors and use it as a form of exercise. There are also plenty of towns in the US with no climbing gyms and no outdoor climbing for hundreds of miles. If gyms open up there most of those people will probably just stay indoors.

Cherokee Nuneswrote:

Vanlife crashes as the appeal of homelessness wans and the vice grip corp america finally realizes the folly of remote "work" (work, haha).

And what Al Pine said.

I think it's more like, BlackRock goes bankrupt, because after they buy up all of the single family homes for 50% over market value, all the potential new homeowners that are forced to rent, just live in a van now, causing a larger housing crash than 2008.  

Climbing trends...

Climbing Coalitions turn into the climbing police and wrangle in all climbers into their controlled domain. 

Outdoor climbing generally sees a sharp drop off after another decade of soft, air conditioned gym climbers' window for a good weekend narrows to 61°-72°f, obviously with less than 7% rain chances. 

Outdoor climbing skyrockets during the shoulder seasons when weather is predicted to be between 61°-72°f, with rain chances below 7%.

Indoor climbing explodes and becomes a collegiate main sport. "13d climbers" will probably be able to climb 12a. Or, Gyms get taller, and everyone will climb 14a by the time they graduate high-school, leading to only hot narcissists being the sponsored climbers.

Trad climbing gear becomes futuristic, after the Totem Direct Lobe Loading patent runs out, but there's so few customers that trad gear is made exclusively by Merlin, and you have to pre order everything 4 years out.

All grades get bumped by a whole number grade, and Ondra will have retro climbed .16d, and flashed 16a.

If literally even one of these things happens I will quit. 

Wow no predictions about poop, you guys are not thinking big enough picture….will there be more? Will we start climbing in diapers? Will we not even be pooping in 2040?

More 12a gym bros getting shut down by 5.7's in Eldo. 

Trevor Taylorwrote:

Will we start climbing in diapers?

Start?

Dry tooling. Gyms get things started. Someone figures out a way for crampons to release rather than breaking legs, like skis do. New crags/routes available with a higher financial barrier of entry for that feeling of being special/edgy. Don't have to be so precious about the weather.

Cherokee Nuneswrote:

Vanlife crashes as the appeal of homelessness wans and the vice grip corp america finally realizes the folly of remote "work" (work, haha).

But will their employees stand for it? We've seen the wave of food employees saying fuck u to minimum wage, maybe actually going to work is too much for corporopeople.

The Olympics will boost interest in the athleticism side and less in the adventure side, so trad climbing will decrease in popularity.

The Access Fund, CC and the NPS will work together to ban climbing.

Nick Tittertonwrote:

Hey! I was thinking about climbing in the Olympics and thought it would be fun to have a thread where we write predictions of what climbing will be like in the future. For all these, I'm thinking with about a 20 year horizon. I'll start with a couple:

1. Indoor speed carves out a niche, comp setting stays the way it is. I know most people here kinda hate speed climbing, but I've seen/met some kids and teens who seem to like it, and the nostalgia of youth is powerful, so their kids will end up doing it too, and it'll go into this self-sustaining vortex. It'll be an Olympic favorite too. As for comp setting, I think it's reached a decent equilibrium with the weird parkour moves, but I do have another prediction: more crack moves. They provide more variety of moves for the setters, so all those Japanese climbers will have to learn their upside down heel-toe hooks.

So, how about it? I guess a lot of these predictions are pretty safe, basically the same thing as "climbing will get more popular", but I hope I brought up a few interesting points. 

I agree with all of your predictions except the one above.  Instead I think speed climbing will go away due to needing too specialized of equipment/setting to practice it effectively.  I also think that comp setting will move back closer to where it was 10 to 15 years ago: lots of coordination in a climbing context, not as much/none at all parkour involved, fewer slabs, and fewer routes which go out of their way to mislead the climbers in terms of sequence (which is different different than climbs with hard to read sequences) because no one wants to watch climber after climber fail to meaningfully make any progress on boulders or routes due to using the wrong sequence.  I agree about more crack moves/problems in comps.  

Daniel Chode Riderwrote:

But will their employees stand for it? We've seen the wave of food employees saying fuck u to minimum wage, maybe actually going to work is too much for corporopeople.

The Olympics will boost interest in the athleticism side and less in the adventure side, so trad climbing will decrease in popularity.

The Access Fund, CC and the NPS will work together to ban climbing.

I think you mean trad climbing will decrease in popularity in relative terms. Relative to the whole climbing population. Go to IC and tell me trad isn't popular. 

Luigi Mwrote:

I think you mean trad climbing will decrease in popularity in relative terms. Relative to the whole climbing population. Go to IC and tell me trad isn't popular. 

It's insanely popular now, I guess it might be wishful thinking that it will decrease but one can hope.

Luigi Mwrote:

I think you mean trad climbing will decrease in popularity in relative terms. Relative to the whole climbing population. Go to IC and tell me trad isn't popular. 

There's trad in Indian Creek??

I say this with all the love in my heart that I can muster as someone who has climbed in the Crick for over ten years ... it's trad in name only.

Where else in "trad" climbing can you rack up with only one or two sizes to choose from, place whenever you feel like it, never have to climb above your gear, almost never place marginal gear or passive pro, never extend your pieces and do the same move for a hundred feet?

I know many people who can redpoint 12- in the Creek who take all over 5.10 granite trad.

But yeah, #tradisrad #bearsears #lookmomimarealclimber