Like Fingernails on a Chalkbag

Chris Dold wrote:

Pretty sure one time during my gumby days, I was on a snow slog on a particularly baking day and referred to the soft snow on the glacier as “chossy” because of its poor quality

Anything negative is Choss. Boiling spam with your Mac before you cheese it is, choss. That fresh flapper you ripped in the gym the day before your climbing trip, straight choss. That free campsite with all the broken beer bottles and sketchy tarps, yeah it works for a night but it’s fucking chossed out. 

Personally, languaging wrong deliberately is one of my sendiest pleasures in life. If I can get someone to repeat something I said and we both get a chuckle out of it, it can make my whole day.

But of course it’s different when safety is concerned. My wife and I don’t speak at all once the climbing commences. When we put on our harnesses we both tie in and until the harnesses come off we communicate exclusively in rope tugs. 

Alex Zadroga wrote:

Anything negative is Choss. Boiling spam with your Mac before you cheese it is, choss. That fresh flapper you ripped in the gym the day before your climbing trip, straight choss. That free campsite with all the broken beer bottles and sketchy tarps, yeah it works for a night but it’s fucking chossed out. 

And anything positive is "splitter". 

languaging wrong deliberately

  Brilliant!

we communicate exclusively in rope tugs

Hah!  

Your standard everyday fall is a whipper.

Lena chita wrote:

“Setting the route”. I’ve heard it in two wrong contexts:

1. a guy saying “I set this route”, meaning that he hung the draws. (I actually corrected him… not in a rude way. I wasn’t trying to be didactic, or anything. I was just confused for a second, when he said it to me, and when I processed what he was saying, I was like, oh, you mean you hung the draws?”

He turned it into a multi day argument, taking about it all day long, bringing it up the following week, and then messaging me about it.) 

2. “The setter put that bolt too high”— meaning the bolter/FA.

“Flash” for anything other than climbing the route clean on the first try, with some beta.

I hear this one a bunch. “I  flashed that route on my 3rd try”.

There was actually one time when a gym employee watched my friend dog a route at the gym for a period of time. Then asked her after she came down. “ Did you flash that route, I didn’t see the end?” My friend said, no, I hung. To which the gym employee responded, “yeah, I saw you hang at the 3rd bolt, but did you flash it to the top?”

All of these make me crazy. I've had people approach me at various crags and ask "did you set these routes ?" Nooo.... Setting is something that happens in a gym !

“Flash” for anything other than climbing the route clean on the first try, with some beta.

I hear this one a bunch. “I  flashed that route on my 3rd try”.

Everyone knows you get an extra flash attempt for every 10 degrees above 50. If its 70 degrees and you get it 3rd go, it was really only your first try and you can call it a flash.

Cherokee Nunes wrote:

Yes but do you pronounce it root or rouwt? Because I have a problem with one of them (but I can't remember which, so try me!)

It’s pronounced “route” and anything else is heresy. Unless it’s in the situation where it’s actually pronounced “route”, then pronouncing route “route” is the heresy.

Another favorite gleaned from MP tick lists:

Day 1: beta burns

Day 2: more beta

Day 3: new high point

Day 4: flashed 2nd go.

WHAT !?!?

I see the phrase “opened the route” in the climbing media in the last couple of years. It puts me into a temporary fugue state if my brain makes it past the first syllable, so I’ve learned to divert my attention in microseconds as a protective response. On some level I still must absorb it because I become rather nauseous.

Do you outside? From Random Dudes working the V5s at the gym  

Like Climb Outside (yes) or just walking through the cold Michigan winter to get here also yes.  

Even if you meant the first one it isn't as impressive as some (very much self insulting here) believe.  

phylp phylp wrote:

I see the phrase “opened the route” in the climbing media in the last couple of years. It puts me into a temporary fugue state if my brain makes it past the first syllable, so I’ve learned to divert my attention in microseconds as a protective response. On some level I still must absorb it because I become rather nauseous.

I also find this intolerable. THE ROUTE WAS NEVER CLOSED! IT JUST HADN'T BEEN CLIMBED!

 I feel like I usually see from Euro sources, so I wonder if it's a translation.

In other sports reporting, usually for soccer, you sometimes see a similar construction, which I also can't stand: "so and so opened the scoring with a goal in the 21st minute..." THE SCORING WAS NEVER CLOSED! The defenders are trying just as hard after the goal as before! Nothing changed!

Nkane 1 wrote:

I also find this intolerable. THE ROUTE WAS NEVER CLOSED! IT JUST HADN'T BEEN CLIMBED!

 I feel like I usually see from Euro sources, so I wonder if it's a translation.

In other sports reporting, usually for soccer, you sometimes see a similar construction, which I also can't stand: "so and so opened the scoring with a goal in the 21st minute..." THE SCORING WAS NEVER CLOSED! The defenders are trying just as hard after the goal as before! Nothing changed!

If I wanted to nitpick, I would say ethics dictate you give the person who bolts/discovers, etc  , the opportunity to FA first.  So maybe it does work.  That beign said I often wonder about the "Name  opened the scorring" lines, Good points tho 

Bailey Nicholson wrote:

If I wanted to nitpick, I would say ethics dictate you give the person who bolts/discovers, etc  , the opportunity to FA first.  So maybe it does work.  That beign said I often wonder about the "Name  opened the scorring" lines, Good points tho 

I hear that, but I don't think I've ever heard "opened the route" in reference to a sport line that was red-tagged. I associate the term with first ascents of alpine or mountain routes, which generally don't get red-tagged or closed during route development the way sport routes can be. Here are some random examples of the usage I'm talking about.

George Bracksieck wrote:

I’m lying in bed after yet another surgery and wondering if general anesthesia kills brain cells. I know adrenaline does. Each would explain a lot. 

Yesterday, when the anesthesiologist told me what she was putting into my IV and that she was going to pass gasses, I asked which. She replied, “desflurane and laughing gas.”

“Nitrous oxide?”

“Are you a doctor?”

“I play one on Mountain Project. Do you indulge? Does it leak out?”

“Not too much. I do use it when I get Brazilians.”

So off I went to dream with the Gotez.

Now that I have read this thread, old anguish is resurfacing about how climbers use the word “runner.”  Why not “sling?”  We’re talking about slings, the strips of webbing (tape) knotted or sewn into loops.

When the Brits invented the running belay (ie: putting in protection on leads), they were talking about advancing the capability of the belay up the pitch, where each peg (piton) or chock (nut) or sling is placed and clipped with a crab (carabiner) into which the rope is clipped. The rope is running through the clips, creating the running belay. Each piece of pro is referred to as a runner.

A sling can be a runner, although a runner isn’t necessarily a sling. A sling over your shoulder or looped in an alpine draw on your harness is NOT a runner—until you use it as a runner. Get it?

This rant was inspired by the brave Gotez slain by the common usage of “runner.” In my dream, they called via Skype from Valhalla and beseeched me rise up and say something!

They got you on that good, huh?

Using “backstepping” to refer to putting your for/leg behind the rope while lead climbing. 

Backstepping is when you turn your leg to use the outside edge of your foot on a foothold!

Anytime anyone uses climbing terminology to describe something outside the context of climbing.

You know, like calling salsa spicy or the thing above your fire place a mantel…

simplyput . wrote:

Anytime anyone uses climbing terminology to describe something outside the context of climbing.

You know, like calling salsa spicy or the thing above your fire place a mantel…

"spicy" emanates from climbing?

How about drivers going "full send" at the nurburgring ?

Noah Betz wrote:

I’ll self-report here, I commonly find myself referring to boulder problems as routes. Not sure why but ‘problem’ or ‘bloc’ never come to mind

Straight to jail