New and Experienced climbers over 50 #22

Lori Milas wrote:

It is great reading about ya’ll kids! I wish I had known about this when my kids are growing up. I woke up to an Instagram picture of Jeremy Schoenborn this morning but geez… Does he know how lucky he is? This tall lanky guy who lives to be outdoors and climb, with a smile that goes from ear to ear and a deep enthusiasm for life. His parents knew what they were doing. Each of those kids is out living large. His brother is trying to be a pro surfer. Maybe he will and maybe he won’t but he’s having a hell of a lot of fun. I know those kids will find a career or college when it’s time. Or they can waste away with video games and depression which we see so often. So glad you parents are offering your kids such a variety of life giving activities and passions.

Wasting away to video games and depression is what scares me the most about our country, throw some of that legal weed and high fructose corn syrup into that scenario and you have a complete mess that will be hard to clean up.

M M wrote:

Wasting away to video games and depression is what scares me the most about our country, throw some of that legal weed and high fructose corn syrup into that scenario and you have a complete mess that will be hard to clean up.

Add in the isolation of Covid over the last couple of years. My neighbors kid was out of school for over a year and never left his bedroom he never got out of his pajamas — it was dark over there. I remember when I started seeing the No Skateboarding signs in our town. No bicycles, no rollerblades, no skateboarding – – what exactly are kids supposed to do every day? Here in Joshua tree it’s even worse. I thought every kid would be bouldering in the park with packs of friends. Turns out most kids have never been to “the monument“. So unless you have very proactive parents there’s a lot of ways kids can flounder. And you were right – – nutrition is one of them. I remember when Taco Bell moved into my kids middle school and Coke provided the textbooks – – there after there was no way to have any say over what my kids ate. Can’t even comment on legal weed I feel so strongly about it. It’s not that I object to legal weed but in the neighboring town to us every billboard is for some form of cannabis. And it is the answer to every problem you’ve got.

When I'm out on the road I get a kick out of identifying the stoned drivers, and I think there are quite a few of them. Unlike drunk drivers, who have trouble going in a straight line, stoners lose track of how fast (or slow) they're going. There's always been that occasional driver who can't go a steady speed, but over the last few years the number has increased a lot. And it's not just grandpa any more...   

Kristian Solem wrote:

When I'm out on the road I get a kick out of identifying the stoned drivers, and I think there are quite a few of them. Unlike drunk drivers, who have trouble going in a straight line, stoners lose track of how fast (or slow) they're going. There's always been that occasional driver who can't go a steady speed, but over the last few years the number has increased a lot. And it's not just grandpa any more...   

They're more likely just on their cell phones.

Randy wrote:

They're more likely just on their cell phones.

Calling ahead to see how late the dispensary in Mammoth is open...   

M M wrote:

Wasting away to video games and depression is what scares me the most about our country, throw some of that legal weed and high fructose corn syrup into that scenario and you have a complete mess that will be hard to clean up.

Add to that teen obesity, "always on" culture, instant gratification expectation, and social media induced pressure cooker environment.  There are so many ways things and life can go sideways for a teen these days.

We are so lucky that our kid, altho not athlectically inclined or gifted, has yet to be snarled by any of those trappings. We cook and bake together using real butter, cane sugar, and fresh ingredients. We have honest discussions about health, wellness, addiction (vaping is rampant at her high school), drug and alcohol use. One thing that we have done consistently along the way - which I believe had helped a lot - is travel.

Mark Twain's quote - "“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”  More true today than during his time, and in all aspects of one's life.

Just want to provide a counterpoint to all the ideas that the "dangers" to kids these days are so dire. I grew up in the 1970s and 80's. My public high school was basically a sex resort for pederast teachers. My XC coach went to prison for having sex with a student but he was far from the only one.  That shit would never fly at the public schools my kids attended.

When I was in elementary school, Kids in a neighboring town were kidnapped while on a field trip and literally buried alive for a day until they escaped.

Pot back in the 80's was routinely laced with PCP and all sorts of bad trips and accidents resulted. We also had access to meth, coke and heroin, if we wanted. Depression wasn't spoken of but plenty of kids killed themselves, still, they just didn't get mental health treatment. A "bad" kid I'd grown up with my entire life put a deer rifle muzzle to his head and used a stick to push the trigger. That was in 8th grade.

Date rape wasn't really considered a thing. Ideas around consent were still in the Stone Age. If she was too drunk to say "no" it was her fault and lots of dudes took that as a yes.

I know lots of kids these days are struggling. Childhood and adolescences are often very hard. And, lets be honest, bad parenting has always been rampant. But I'm actually quite optimistic about the generation of my kids' peers. I think that as a group, they're doing great and will become amazing adults. 

Everything you say about the 70s and 80s is true Andrew.  But cell phones are a drug, and a bad one.  Lots of people today don’t know which way north is.  People are still living with their parents into their 30s and 40s playing  video games who have never held a job nor had a drivers liiscence  (I know two of them).  I was riding my bike 17 miles to make two bucks an hour at age 15.

Cloudy and cold today so we didn’t go up on the multi pitch as intended.  Steve on a new one we worked on today,  pockets including several monos.   Hard to tell how hard given that this is our seventh day in a row but V6 maybe? 

Ward Smith wrote:

But cell phones are a drug, and a bad one.  Lots of people today don’t know which way north is.

One of the things I showed my nieces and nephews when they first came to visit me was what a physical map was, and how where we were related to the larger area. I also would teach them about how to tell direction based on where the sun is in the sky. It’s fun. And I still carry a real compass in my pack even though I usually look at the one on my phone. 

phylp phylp wrote:

One of the things I showed my nieces and nephews when they first came to visit me was what a physical map was, and how where we were related to the larger area. I also would teach them about how to tell direction based on where the sun is in the sky. It’s fun. And I still carry a real compass in my pack even though I usually look at the one on my phone. 

It isn’t only ‘kids’ though, who over rely on phones and GPS and have forgotten about maps and actual directions. Many of my peers ( well, ‘near peers’—not kids, anyway) just slavishly follow their GPS —and frequently get lost or go the long way around as a result. Recently I went with a group of friends for their first time to a recently developed cliff that I’d been to on a number of occasions. One of them was driving and we came to an intersection. I knew that all we needed to do was turn left and the parking was a short way down that road, but I almost had to fight for the wheel because the GPS was telling them to go straight ( which would have been ridiculously round about). Same thing happened several times last month in the Red—I was looking at a map, they were ‘locked’ into the GPS.

Alan Rubin wrote:

It isn’t only ‘kids’ though, who over rely on phones and GPS and have forgotten about maps and actual directions. Many of my peers ( well, ‘near peers’—not kids, anyway) just slavishly follow their GPS —and frequently get lost or go the long way around as a result. Recently I went with a group of friends for their first time to a recently developed cliff that I’d been to on a number of occasions. One of them was driving and we came to an intersection. I knew that all we needed to do was turn left and the parking was a short way down that road, but I almost had to fight for the wheel because the GPS was telling them to go straight ( which would have been ridiculously round about). Same thing happened several times last month in the Red—I was looking at a map, they were ‘locked’ into the GPS.

GPS is fine----until you're on a glacial ski traverse in a whiteout and the batteries die.  At that point you'd be wishing that you had learned how to navigate with map, compass, altimeter and rope.

Andrew Rice wrote:

Just want to provide a counterpoint to all the ideas that the "dangers" to kids these days are so dire. I grew up in the 1970s and 80's. My public high school was basically a sex resort for pederast teachers. My XC coach went to prison for having sex with a student but he was far from the only one.  That shit would never fly at the public schools my kids attended.

When I was in elementary school, Kids in a neighboring town were kidnapped while on a field trip and literally buried alive for a day until they escaped.

Pot back in the 80's was routinely laced with PCP and all sorts of bad trips and accidents resulted. We also had access to meth, coke and heroin, if we wanted. Depression wasn't spoken of but plenty of kids killed themselves, still, they just didn't get mental health treatment. A "bad" kid I'd grown up with my entire life put a deer rifle muzzle to his head and used a stick to push the trigger. That was in 8th grade.

Date rape wasn't really considered a thing. Ideas around consent were still in the Stone Age. If she was too drunk to say "no" it was her fault and lots of dudes took that as a yes.

I know lots of kids these days are struggling. Childhood and adolescences are often very hard. And, lets be honest, bad parenting has always been rampant. But I'm actually quite optimistic about the generation of my kids' peers. I think that as a group, they're doing great and will become amazing adults. 

my school's XC coach married our star runner after '87 graduation! 

Kids now have access to even more drugs from unknown sources and the weed is at least 10x stronger. I appreciate the legal aspects of legalizing weed, prisons no place for a user or dealer BUT knowing a few severely depressed people who think weed(a depressant) is gonna make their lives better really turns me off. I have a relative who turned down an apprenticeship with a good union job because of the drug testing. Smart kid now has a warehouse job. Another relative never leaves her room except when her mom will take her to the weed store.

Luckily my rig has cruise control cause I might be that guy speeding up and slowing down!

Alan Rubin wrote:

It isn’t only ‘kids’ though, who over rely on phones and GPS and have forgotten about maps and actual directions. Many of my peers ( well, ‘near peers’—not kids, anyway) just slavishly follow their GPS —and frequently get lost or go the long way around as a result. Recently I went with a group of friends for their first time to a recently developed cliff that I’d beein to on a number of occasions. One of them was driving and we came to an intersection. I knew that all we needed to do was turn left and the parking was a short way down that road, but I almost had to fight for the wheel because the GPS was telling them to go straight ( which would have been ridiculously round about). Same thing happened several times last month in the Red—I was looking at a map, they were ‘locked’ into the GPS.

in the first situation you described Al, if people didn't already know the most efficient way, a map might or might not have helped them to find it.  Meanwhile, as a lifetime user of map and compass techniques and someone well-versed in them, I'm here to testify that I and my companions have made a lot of mistakes, I think most of them because we misinterpreted our position on our map (combined with a powerful human tendency to ignore evidence and cram existing perceptions into preconceived frameworks). 

The old ways aren't, and weren't, even remotely foolproof, and modern GPS systems and software, properly rather than slavishly used, provide enormous advantages.  I've been spared a night out in the desert a few times because I had a GPS unit in situations where a map and compass were useless. I have a new route or variation or two in the Tetons that were the result of our inability to navigate via the directions in Ortenburger's guides.  I suspect that there are instances in which people have lost a trail and become disoriented (sometimes resulting in their death) that would have been quickly and easily rectified if they had a GPS unit.  Of course, there is no substitute for knowing how to use the tools one has, and knowing their limitations as well, but that's always been the case from the moment people started navigating.

Perhaps the flashy data on our Gaia GPS screens can lull us into a false sense of confidence. Perhaps the software might encourage off-trail detours that turn out badly. One thing I note, sometimes in my own behavior, is a reduced level of planning and so a failure to have a good sense of the "big picture." I think most of us pored over maps before our backcountry trips, and by the time we got there, we already had a lot of intuition about the topography. Now it is easy to dispense with all that planning (but it was fun!), switch on our mapping device at the trailhead, and follow the cues without the same clear sense of how everything fits together. This is especially true for driving navigation. Before GPS, I'd study road maps and more or less knew all the turns on my trip. Now I just switch on the GPS and---yes slavishly---follow the prompts. This results in my arriving at my destination with little and sometimes no idea about how I got there.

New technology provides new ways to eff up. Just think about belay devices! It may be that a generation that has grown up with a lot of technology might mistake it for being free of errors and gotcha's, I don't know. Maybe we've lost a sense of skepticism that is rooted in a considered evaluation of reality (we certainly have plenty of free-form skepticism unmoored from any connection to rational considerations). I'm not at all sure kids are more prone to uncritical uses of technology than their elders though.

Some things are better than they were. Sorta. But all the ills and evils are still out there, and I definitely felt pretty dejected seeing decades long progress for females thrown in the trash. I did not see that one coming. 

Idaho is COLD, and has been for weeks! It's been January temps, and basically fall never happened. There are a lot of trees still fully leafed out, green leaves frozen in place. Fortunately the ground was wet when it froze, but, I'm still expecting we'll be losing some trees and shrubs this winter. We'll see. 

Ski areas got open really early, snow in the mountains is a plus....but that snow has been there for quite awhile. We need lots more moisture!

For myself, I confess I just gave up entirely on any semblance of anything whatever. Succumbed to old, fat, ugly, useless...pitiful. A whole lot like what's detailed by some of you, except without the drugs, lol! I was keenly aware those drugs were there, though. That was.. interesting. And unfun.

However. This is now starting toward turn it around time! No excuses, which is both exciting and intimidating. 

We'll see how it goes, but I'm hoping the (almost) 66 year old will let the inner 19 year old lead the next dance. See what shapes up for the future 70, 80, 90, who knows how old's life to come! This old body is all I've got to work with, so that's got to be the main thing, now. See what she's capable of, or at least get set up as best I can for whatever comes along in the future.

Just curious. I've definitely got a 19 year old in here. How old are you guys? I have yet to meet anyone who is entirely their chronological age, but I suppose it's possible. I've sure seen a lot of very young sparkle in some very old faces!

Best, Helen 

EDIT to add, early on in google travel directions, my son and I were sent down a road. To encounter a large lake. Road continued on the far side.   

This past season at City of Rocks, I ran into many many people that got dumped onto the dirt roads to COR, instead of simply staying on the 80mph freeway, then taking paved roads right to Almo. 

I have no idea why that one persists, but it does. Google has decided that dirt road has less traffic, while being blithely (or willfully) ignorant that it's a DIRT ROAD. 

Old lady H wrote:

This past season at City of Rocks, I ran into many many people that got dumped onto the dirt roads to COR, instead of simply staying on the 80mph freeway, then taking paved roads right to Almo. 

I have no idea why that one persists, but it does. Google has decided that dirt road has less traffic, while being blithely (or willfully) ignorant that it's a DIRT ROAD. 

Coming from Utah, the dirt is 16 miles shorter.  Saves me close to a half hour of driving.  Nearly a straight shot from Snowville.

Never used a GPS for that drive.  Its long been known as "the shortcut".

But, yeah...glad it's not for everyone.

Brian in SLC wrote:

Coming from Utah, the dirt is 16 miles shorter.  Saves me close to a half hour of driving.  Nearly a straight shot from Snowville.

Never used a GPS for that drive.  Its long been known as "the shortcut".

But, yeah...glad it's not for everyone.

Hmmmm. 16 miles gets you a half hour?? You're maybe a wee bit more bold on dirt than some are. 

But, people also get dumped onto the back road at the top of the park, too, through Oakley. That one is a lot of washboard, at best, and actually extremely slick when wet. Doesn't really save any time, and also bypasses the BBQ place in Albion. And the bakery at the Malta junction. And Tracy's/the Schoolhouse/Rock City Pizza/the Outpost in Almo. Not that any of those are a timesaver....jussst sayin. I got me priorities.

Ward Smith wrote:

Everything you say about the 70s and 80s is true Andrew.  But cell phones are a drug, and a bad one.  Lots of people today don’t know which way north is.  People are still living with their parents into their 30s and 40s playing  video games who have never held a job nor had a drivers liiscence  (I know two of them).  I was riding my bike 17 miles to make two bucks an hour at age 15.

I'm not saying everything is better now, just like I think it's wrong to act like old pearl clutchers and say everything is worse now, too. Life moves on. Phones and media are much more prevalent than they were in, say, 1980. I hate how addicted to Instagram and Snapchat a lot of kids (and adults) are. But on the other side, I've seen kids who would have been really isolated and miserable, for example, my friends' trans, non-binary kid, who found community and support online that they would have never otherwise found and that didn't exist for kids of my generation. And that kid went from suicidal to becoming a really well-integrated, content human partially as a result of that online support. 

I think it's always a fallacy to say, "Look at this (insert example of loser here) now. When I was his age I was ______." Reason why is that every generation has its losers and its casualties. And most of us are pretty successful. Lots of people from my generation are actually still living at home with their parents, too. Both my kids got jobs when they turned 15 1/2 because they wanted their own money and they were interested in the experience. And they still played video games and used social media. My son is 20 and away at college where he told me recently he hasn't played a video game in a year because he has so many better things to do with his time. He's headed off to Madrid next year for study abroad. And will be doing a high-powered professional internship next summer.

Also, both my kids know which way north is!

The best time to be a kid, though, is clearly the 1950s when you could buy your own atomic energy lab kit that came with real radioactive materials to play with!

Alan Rubin wrote:

It isn’t only ‘kids’ though, who over rely on phones and GPS and have forgotten about maps and actual directions. Many of my peers ( well, ‘near peers’—not kids, anyway) just slavishly follow their GPS —and frequently get lost or go the long way around as a result. Recently I went with a group of friends for their first time to a recently developed cliff that I’d been to on a number of occasions. One of them was driving and we came to an intersection. I knew that all we needed to do was turn left and the parking was a short way down that road, but I almost had to fight for the wheel because the GPS was telling them to go straight ( which would have been ridiculously round about). Same thing happened several times last month in the Red—I was looking at a map, they were ‘locked’ into the GPS.

this is so true, Alan. And lets not kid ourselves, most people of our age don't know how to use a map and compass to actually navigate by directions, either. They just relied on the Thomas Guide. 

Alaskan Pipeline, 11a?  Hardcore flared chimney thrash.