Candid Thoughts on Aid Climbers and Aid Climbing

Greetings Folks,

I am working on a bit of a writing project. I was hoping to collect a snapshot of contemporary attitudes regarding aid climbing and aid climbers. 

What are your thoughts: good, bad, indifferent?  

[P.S. I am intimately familiar with the old "Aid Climbing Rant"]

Thanks for your opinions and help...

Cheers from Osaka,

John 

Aid climbers are sick individuals with warped minds and stunted emotional development. I love them!

Aid climbing is pointless, dangerous and contrived. I love it!

My thoughts are that you've been on MP for 15 years. I'm guessing you've got a pretty good idea of the vibe. I'll gladly give you a discount on my climbing literature/capstone study/website click fodder consulting service. Only $150/hr and you get my uncensored thoughts.

Initially (during my first year or so of climbing) I didn't understand why anyone would want to aid climb. It didn't make sense to me why you'd do that instead of free climbing. Then as my trad climbing experience grew and my goals did too, I came to understand the different potential ways that aid climbing can be utilized to unlock bigger objectives and adventures. 

Hell, I use aid climbing for trad projecting too now. If it's something I want to project but is questionable that I could lead/flash, I'll aid the route to put up a TR so I can work out the moves safely before committing to a redpoint lead attempt. I can retrieve people's gear they had to bail off on routes over their head. I can use those skills to bail myself out if need be and finish a route. Aside from all that, big wall is now a much more realistic goal that I'm actively pursuing now. 

So I would say initially I was ignorant to the what and why of aid climbing, and with time and experience I've come to appreciate it's many applications. I still think folks that primarily aid climb hard routes are more insane than all the rest of us combined. 

Aid climbers are “handful of maladjusted geeks.” Oh wait that is ice climbers. So I guess aid climbers are just maladjusted.

I'm a big fan of aid climbing! I learned how to aid climb because I knew I was never gonna be a strong enough climber to get up the big walls in Yosemite free (or even French free). Well, I never did get up those big walls in Yosemite, aid or otherwise, but I had a lot of fun learning!

I enjoy the things that set aid climbing apart from free climbing; instead of pumping out and getting scared in just a few moments, you get to be scared for much longer! Like, a whole pitch, or more if your anchors are sketch :) I find easy aid climbing to be fun and meditative, just getting into the flow of it. And hard (for me) aid climbing is all about managing my fear. It's nice to be able to spend a lot of time on the wall while aid climbing, getting tired in a different kind of way to free climbing.

I love that I can look up at ludicrously tiny cracks and think to myself, yeah, I could probably aid up that, even though I could never free climb it. Aid climbing opened up a whole new way for me to explore vertical terrain. And I love all the gear, man do I love all the gear. I just completed my set of Moses Tomahawks with Rock and Resole's 25% off sale (gotta catch 'em all!). Offsets, ball nuts, brassies, tricams, Totems on two lobes, hooks, camhooks, they're all great!

The hardest part of aid climbing, I've found, is finding partners! So I just solo aid now hahaha. Props to the climbers out there still doing hard aid and finding the future free climbing test pieces.

Is ice climbing technically a form of aid climbing? I think it is

Is rock climbing while using chalk and shoes soled with sticky rubber technically a form of aid climbing? I think it is. 

Civilization, is aid. 

AID IS AID!!! 

Clean aid on freed or unfreed granite okay. Aid of any kind on unfreed sandstone, fine. Aid on freed sandstone, no bueno. Just my two cents. New free routes need aid pioneers to go first sometimes, but damage to the rock due to aiding after things go free seems to be maiming the verified possible.

I never understood the seeming distaste for aid some people have. Barring someone destroying rock or something with hammered pieces there is of course zero issue with it. I understand if someone does not find it to be what they like doing but so what. Some people don't like sport climbing some people don't like trad. To me it's just another way to explore outside which is, to me, a prime reason to climb. 

There's also lots of cool lore and characters in its history stretching to now so that's fun

Luigi Mwrote:

Is ice climbing technically a form of aid climbing? I think it is

Old timer alpinists considered the usage of ice tools and crampons to be aid. Mysteriously, they did not see the manufacture of holds in the snow to be aid. Interesting perspective from them none the less. 

In "games climbers play" Tom Higgins outlines how there are different rules for each niche in climbing which are designed to make them fair but challenging. Sometimes these rules get updated, usually to update with technological advances but sometimes for cultural reasons. I would say that under the rules of "games climbers play" for modern ice and alpine climbing that it's reasonable to say that ice tools and crampons are not aid despite offering significant advantage for the same reasons that sticky rubber, chalk, and modern protection advancements don't make modern free climbing aid. 

Ultimately everyone gets to decide the rules of the game they want to play for themselves; you could declare the usage of hands to be aid if you like. But ultimately we need to come to broad cultural understandings of what the rules are, and it seems fairly settled to me that the foundational tools of modern ice climbing are not a form of aid climbing. You're welcome to ice climb without them and deride everyone else as aid climbers, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect others to agree. 

Ricky Harlinewrote:

Old timer alpinists considered the usage of ice tools and crampons to be aid. Mysteriously, they did not see the manufacture of holds in the snow to be aid. Interesting perspective from them none the less. 

In "games climbers play" Tom Higgins outlines how there are different rules for each niche in climbing which are designed to make them fair but challenging. Sometimes these rules get updated, usually to update with technological advances but sometimes for cultural reasons. I would say that under the rules of "games climbers play" for modern ice and alpine climbing that it's reasonable to say that ice tools and crampons are not aid despite offering significant advantage for the same reasons that sticky rubber, chalk, and modern protection advancements don't make modern free climbing aid. 

Ultimately everyone gets to decide the rules of the game they want to play for themselves; you could declare the usage of hands to be aid if you like. But ultimately we need to come to broad cultural understandings of what the rules are, and it seems fairly settled to me that the foundational tools of modern ice climbing are not a form of aid climbing. You're welcome to ice climb without them and deride everyone else as aid climbers, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect others to agree. 

The article you reference - "Games Climbers Play" - was by Lito Tejada-Flores.  But your description was spot on.

Eric Engbergwrote:

The article you reference - "Games Climbers Play" - was by Lito Tejada-Flores.  But your description was spot on.

Thanks for the correction! 

It's a great read, I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it. 

Some very thoughtful and even deeply entertaining replies. Thanks so much. 

Please keep them coming... 

[Thanksgiving already here in Japan   ]

Ricky Harlinewrote:

Thanks for the correction! 

It's a great read, I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it. 

Ricky, for my own curiosity, how long have you been climbing? Just see you on a lot of threads and you strike me as a first 5 years overstoker.

John Clarkwrote:

Ricky, for my own curiosity, how long have you been climbing? Just see you on a lot of threads and you strike me as a first 5 years overstoker.

Don’t poke the squirrel John.

Ricky Harlinewrote:

Old timer alpinists considered the usage of ice tools and crampons to be aid. Mysteriously, they did not see the manufacture of holds in the snow to be aid. Interesting perspective from them none the less. 

"Old timer alpinists", you mean hikers?

John Clarkwrote:

Ricky, for my own curiosity, how long have you been climbing? Just see you on a lot of threads and you strike me as a first 5 years overstoker.

Started climbing in early 2016. I just love thinking about climbing, and sometimes with my health problems I end up thinking about climbing more than climbing. Hardly my preference, but that's how it do sometimes. Fortunately there are lots of amazing books about climbing, and this place is quite interesting from time to time.

I think everyone would be in agreement with you that I'm pretty stoked on climbing. 

@ John Schulz, I'd like to make a thoughtful reply regarding your original prompt, but I'd like to collect my thoughts for a day or two. I'm a slow thinker. 

Aid is cheating and not real climbing.

Says a guy with a small collection of aid gear who uses it whenever possible, and really wishes there was some locally accessible aid to try.

I don't trust those guys