Hot Takes 2025

Give 'em

Mine:

Too many treat climbing like a religion or something. No skill ever takes the place of good character and treating people right.

No skill or sport strength makes you a god. This is arrogance and ignorance.

Gatekeeping crags is silly. 

Gym to crag courses and most intro to sport and trad classes leave out critical information. How do you assess if a sport route is safe for a new leader to lead? How do you bail safely from a sport route? When is the appropriate etiquette to rappel and when is it expected you will lower through the installed anchor hardware? Why do these classes not teach crag etiquette??

I want to clarify that this is not an insult directed at the many extremely competent, knowledgeable, and gifted climbing instructors out there. They're doing great work and I admire and respect them. But we have a systemic failure where much critical information is neglected and it creates common shit shows at crags. New leaders having close calls that could easily have been avoided with some education on selecting appropriate routes, a swarm of gumbies hogging a classic all day, poor LNT ethics, etc., etc.

I think there is a very large opportunity to greatly improve gym to crag education. If the point of such courses are to prepare newer leaders for being self sufficient at the crag then we are failing them in a big way. Climbers need to know a lot more than just how to belay, lead, build and clean anchors, and self rescue which seems to be the points modern climbing education covers and excels at.  

Modern ACMG/AMGA guidecraft is so removed from gym-to-crag skill levels that most guides assume (improperly) those basic etiquette skills are already known.

Intermediate level guidecraft (PCIA/PCGI) is closer and worth investment in order to build a more robust gym-to-crag system.

Hey, you asked for a hot take, right?

Ricky and J L, you both nailed it right on the head. 

Im gonna take this hot take a step farther and say that becoming an SPI seems as easy as passing the TR belay class at a gym. This is solely based on observations at home and some people that I have met who claim to be SPI's that come through the gym to promote themselves. My goodness. Im not going to mention names or guiding services but a few of these SPI's display some wild irresponsible practice and just dont seem aware of it. So this therefor gets passed onto their clients. Additionally, they often do mega group "intro to trad" style classes with like 15 - 20 people hogging up really popular routes and are so loud that other climbers cant communicate. I genuinely think that they don't think anything is wrong there. 

The consumerism in climbing to solve problems experience and practice solves 

Jabroni McChufferson wrote:

The consumerism in climbing to solve problems experience and practice solves 

Choss with fun movement/interesting holds is superior to bullet stone with boring climbing 

Leaving ropes up on a popular wall while you eat lunch should be punishable by death. 

Lay backing <==> crack climbing

The idea of any grade being definitive is completely ludicrous 

J L wrote:

Modern ACMG/AMGA guidecraft is so removed from gym-to-crag skill levels that most guides assume (improperly) those basic etiquette skills are already known.

Intermediate level guidecraft (PCIA/PCGI) is closer and worth investment in order to build a more robust gym-to-crag system.

Hey, you asked for a hot take, right?

Recent experience has shown me that guides have some of the worst etiquette in the climbing community. Either they never learned or they don’t care when they have clients.  

In case anyone has forgotten:

In journalism, a hot take is a "piece of deliberately provocative commentary that is based almost entirely on shallow moralizing" in response to a news story, "usually written on tight deadlines with little research or reporting, and even less thought".

Climbing, as a culture/community, is incredibly inclusive.

Max R wrote:

Leaving ropes up on a popular wall while you eat lunch should be punishable by death. 

Leaving ropes up while you eat lunch should come with an expectation that others should feel free to ask to run TR laps on your rope.

Becca Joy Steinbrecher wrote:

No skill or sport strength makes you a god. This is arrogance and ignorance.

Agreed but ONLY CLIMBING? 

J L wrote:

Leaving ropes up while you eat lunch should come with an expectation that others should feel free to ask to run TR laps on your rope.

It should come with the expectation that people pull your rope

nobody should ever recommend someone go to jtree when someone says "hey wheres a good place to go sport climbing"

Lots of routes were developed badly for no other reasons than ineptitude and circumstantial convenience.  There’s no need to be sanctimonious about the first ascent and retro-bolting has its place.  

Up to date fixed anchors are sometimes warranted regardless of original design to create a safer and more user friendly crag.  

You probably broke into a new number grade sending soft routes.  That’s okay.

On-sighting a sport route with the draws already hung is a pink point.

You don’t need to be mostly nude to climb hard in the gym.  Your spray tan,  tatoos or yoga lingerie won’t help you get up the purple route.

People are too serious in Rifle and it creates a bad vibe.

Jamming is subtle and technical.

Jamming is bad for your fingers and feet.

Avoiding offwidth is short sighted and unfortunate.

The North Chimney almost ruins the Diamond.

The harder you climb, the more fun it is.  

Climbing in groups of 8 or more is really annoying. 

Wearing a helmet at the base is basically always the safer and smarter thing to do.  

Most of the people who make climbing the center focus of their world and claim to be lifers will be entirely out of the sport within the next 5 years.

Including you, reading this. Maybe even including me, not reading this