The easiest climbing is the most dangerous?

John Gillwrote:

Well said, Peter. It's virtually impossible to replicate the social and technical environment of a past age. My favorite quote:

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

It's difficult to interpret the past accurately when the present is so overwhelming.

Thanks John, when I was writing the previous comment I forgot the famous quote, taken here from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Before the practice, mountains are mountains, during the practice, mountains are not mountains, and after the realization, mountains are [truly] mountains [again].”

Hope you're doing well!

Full quote:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-zen/#ZenAnt

Zen Master Seigen (Chin; Qīngyuáng, 660–740) expresses the process of self-cultivation to the effect that: “Before the practice, mountains are mountains, during the practice, mountains are not mountains, and after the realization, mountains are [truly] mountains [again].”  

Also this is a fascinating book:

John, Peter:  What's left for us to do?  Can the experience of climbing help us to see one's true nature? Serious question.

Bill Lawrywrote:

John, Peter:  What's left for us to do?  Can the experience of climbing help us to see one's true nature? Serious question.

Forget about "true nature". That's a topic of debate amongst philosophers and religionists. 

If it revs your engine, go for it. But I do recommend not putting all your eggs in one basket.

John Gillwrote:

Forget about "true nature". That's a topic of debate amongst philosophers and religionists. 

If it revs your engine, go for it. But I do recommend not putting all your eggs in one basket.m

Maybe I misread wiki.  There, it seemed like learning "true nature"  was a stepping stone to becoming buddhas.

Not being sarcastic.  Just trying to sort out whether there is any relationship at all between Zen and climbing.  Maybe not.

Trad Manwrote:

I once climbed in Taquitz while reading Royals autobiography climbing a route after reading the backstory. Usually I consciously limit what I know about a potential route before the climb, but I guess it's just a fool's errand either way.

This is a cool way to enjoy climbing, for sure. And as someone who climbs at Tahquitz (and also who knew Royal) I appreciate the sentiment. But I also agree that glorifying dangerously bolted routes just because that's how the FA did it can be a fools errand, too. Especially when we don't know why they might have been sparsely bolted.

Often, historically, moderates were under bolted (in terms of safety) by people who climbed at a much higher ability level and thought it was "wasteful" to put in a bunch of bolts to prevent a 50-80-foot fall they were never going to take anyway. I'm thinking of climbs like Walk On The Wild Side and Snake Dike to use a few well-known ones. Or a less well-known one that you will know would be Mickey Mantle. Is a 5.8 slab climb really "better" because you can take a 75-footer if you blow a foot?

Not saying they should be retrobolted, because there's plenty of other rock out there, but I don't think it's sacrilege that some people might think that's a decent idea, either. 

Bill Lawrywrote:

Just trying to sort out whether there is any relationship at all between Zen and climbing. Maybe not.

Like Zen and archery it has to do with immersing oneself in practice until a sequence flows, carrying the climber along more or less effortlessly, without conscious control. More or less. This doesn't have a lot to do with taking one from 5.12 to 5.14. Comparing with archery, one does a particular sequence over and over. But I'm uncertain how that helps in confronting a new potential climb. Francis S. has a better grasp on that than me. 

Talking about flow seems a silly exercise on this forum, where most are interested in nuts and bolts (figuratively)

John Gillwrote:

Talking about flow seems a silly exercise on this forum, where most are interested in nuts and bolts (figuratively)

Good point.

Jaren Watson wrote:

By all means, proceed, good sir. Sincerely!

Flow and fleeting glimpses of selfless awareness have struck me as a potential bridge between climbing and realization. I’ll refrain from saying more, as I’m sure we’d all rather read it from you or Peter.

If you’re amenable to expanding on the above, please do so.

For me, climbing can be an extremely  zen experience as it forces me to be in the moment, and the rest of reality does not exist. This is especially true  when free soloing, but recently I have found myself there, rope climbing, having climbed through the crux  of without being aware that it was the crux . Just that I was climbing. Just being here and now.
but back to the focus of the thread being that easy terrain is dangerous. It’s important to maintain that focus of being here now. The loss of focus perhaps on the descent or the hike out when are you starting to think about dinner or how long a drive you have etc. has more potential for miss steps.

Our thing stays new and exciting if you're young at heart.

Bill Lawry wrote:

John, Peter:  What's left for us to do?  Can the experience of climbing help us to see one's true nature?

Not trying to be nihilistic about this but to emphasize that looking for outward forms of validation such as "ethics," style, grades, reputation, first ascents, and all of the other constructs of modern climbing is pointless. Climb the way you want to. There are many vertical paths.

One's true nature might not be what the average human really wants to confront, no matter how amazing a climber they are. That truth is much scarier than any runout on a route. Whether climbing really helps you get there is debatable. I see a lot of climbers who seem to use climbing to avoid seeing their true nature.

Just trying to sort out whether there is any relationship at all between Zen and climbing

If there was a connection between Zen and climbing, in my view it would be about discipline and seeing past rationally imposed constructs and categories. The truth of things may, in the end, by virtue of our subjectivity, our sensory and cognitive apparatus (per Kant) and potentially much more, ultimately be inaccessible or incomprehensible to us. But very few of us even begin to acknowledge that possibility.

In my experience as a climber, it is stunning to see the degree to which people are stuck in modes of perception, self or otherwise, which even the briefest reflection would reveal to be arbitrary and pointless. It's fun to play roles, for a while anyway, but they are just that, roles.

Alpinism and zen, perhaps. Climbing and zen, not a chance.

Bill Lawrywrote:

John, Peter:  What's left for us to do?  Can the experience of climbing help us to see one's true nature? Serious question.

Well, this thread has taken an interesting turn...

I'm always hesitant to try to describe "states of being" in words, it's always lacking.  But to make a long story short, my life as a climber started about 10 years after the start of my Zen practice, which started after hearing an Alan Watts talk on Boston Radio in 1970 and taking a survey course on Religions of the World my first year in college. (These days my main teacher maybe is described as Advaita path rather than Zen, but the words are not important.)

 What I will say is that I found after a while that climbing became a form of meditative practice for me.  If you have a definition that "seeing one's true nature" means experiencing integrated oneness of one's body/mind with the rest of the universe, such that there is no division into self and non-self, no perception of self, then I can also say that climbing may be the place where I first experienced that state of being for extended periods of time (which in itself is inaccurate wordage since perception of time does not exist in this state). So I guess I would say that climbing, like everything in life, can be part of a spiritual or philosophical or pragmatic living/survival practice (until there's no will or effort involved in it, it's not a practice anymore it's just a way of being and a state of being).  

So I'm laughing while typing this because these vague and a bit woo-woo words make it sound like I could be some kinda living Buddha but, no, far from it, nothing like that to see here. I know some living Buddhas and my state of being ain't them. (Frankly my ego's inclination is to not put this stuff out here, as a protective measure against public mocking.)  I am putting this out there because if you are asking the question, and you are already pursuing a path, I'm encouraging you to keep doing your work.  Your climbing practice certainly can be a useful mirror and a useful meditation.

This one time, I took a group climbing, and I found top bolts on about a 40 foot route, but no bolts running up it. It was clearly a top rope, nowhere to place trad gear. For reasons I can't remember, we had to move fast, so I climbed the route next to it, (which was fairly easy.) free soloing it for my first time, did a sketchy traverse over, clipped the bolts, set up our anchor and rappelling down mobdro.bio/  . I felt REALLY bad because there was a completely new climber with us, and I was just a terrible example.

hardy galiliowrote:

This one time, I took a group climbing, and I found top bolts on about a 40 foot route, but no bolts running up it. It was clearly a top rope, nowhere to place trad gear. For reasons I can't remember, we had to move fast, so I climbed the route next to it, (which was fairly easy.) free soloing it for my first time, did a sketchy traverse over, clipped the bolts, set up our anchor and rappelling down. I felt REALLY bad because there was a completely new climber with us, and I was just a terrible example.

I'd say in my own personal experience and from watching others actions, setting up top ropes during the beginner phase of climbing is the most dangerous part of climbing.

John Luke Lusty wrote:

If the climbing is easy, but difficult to protect, then I would argue that it is more "dangerous" than a slightly harder climb with better protection. Without any protection you are, well, climbing without protection. While you are still on that terrain, your experience (technical skill) and comfort (mindset) mean everything, but if you make a mistake and come off of the terrain - neither of these matter anymore.

"danger" here meaning the consequences of a mistake, not the likelihood of a mistake. I think everyone can agree that, all things held equal, easier climbing = less likely to make a mistake. The problem is everything else: what happens *if* you make a mistake?

Even a sparsely protected hard climb is safer as you'll hit fresh air when you fall.

Trad Manwrote:

Even a sparsely protected hard climb is safer as you'll hit fresh air when you fall.

BS

Trad Manwrote:

Even a sparsely protected hard climb is safer as you'll hit fresh air when you fall.

Usually a rating of "5.13 X" means there's less fresh air than you might want on that hard climb.

I tell my kids all the time that just because it feels easy doesn’t mean it’s safe.

With rock climbing, easy terrain tends to be non-vertical making it more dangerous?  My major climbing accident was on such a terrain. Now I have a very healthy respect for low angle terrain as well as easy climbs. 

Snake Dike is an easy climb you don’t want to on while on lead. 

John RBwrote:

Usually a rating of "5.13 X" means there's less fresh air than you might want on that hard climb.

Obviously I meant other things being equal