Hot Takes 2025

Climbers can't call themselves environmentalists if they haven't at least tried to go vegetarian or vegan.

If you are aggressive about land acknowledgements, but still climb in the area, you're just a virtue signaling hypocrite 

Red meat and encroachment are that me espresso.

Climbing indoors is lame but it’s a blast 

5.3 and 5.4 sport climbs are absolutely real climbs. Every climber starts somewhere, and those grades serve an important purpose in the climbing community. They help beginners build confidence, develop technique, and get comfortable with movement on rock.

Some people dismiss them because they’re “too easy” or not challenging enough, but difficulty is relative. For a first-time climber, a 5.3 can feel just as committing as a 5.12 does for an experienced climber. Plus, these routes are great for warming up, refining movement, or just enjoying a relaxed day on the rock.

A crag that includes 5.3s and 5.4s fosters a welcoming environment where new climbers can progress at their own pace

Caleb wrote:

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

Tread carefully bud, you're gonna get cancelled 

Belaying high is irresponsible.

Posting beta vids is 85% vanity.

Having a desk job is an unfair climbing advantage.

Totems and Camalots should be the meat of your rack.  Everything else is specialty.

Trifold pads suck.

If there’s no room to park, go to a different crag.

Animal habitat management is being weaponized against climbers.

Most people are better climbers than they think they are and should get on harder climbs.

BD Camalots are stupid in any size under 4 where the trigger keepers are amazing. Every other major brand has significant advantages. Metolius you get two more cams for the same total rack weight while Friends and Dragons get amazing extendy slings. Camalots haven't innovated nearly as much as their competition in years other than to make ultralight, disposable cams that have a short life and cannot be repaired at their end of life. 

BD cams suck. 

Ricky Harline wrote:

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.  

My hot take: the majority of outdoor shitshows are not a result of gym-to-crag classes, which, in general, provide a much better base of knowledge than people receive informally from friends.

People who learn to climb from "accredited" guides are missing out on valuable learning experiences. 

I learned everything I know by trespassing and fucking up.  

Just because they are shooting automatic weapons nearby, doesn't mean they are aiming at you... 

If you leave a top rope hanging unused for more than 10 minutes when there are other people at the wall, you are rude and in the wrong.

Offering to let others TR on your rope when they ask if you're still climbing that route doesn't make it magically ok. This is not the generous offer you think it is. You're still in the wrong.

I'm never there to top rope, and certainly not on your gear/anchor that I don't know and don't trust. If the route is not about to be climbed immediately after somebody asks if it's in use, pull the rope.

Being a crusty old fart that polices everyone and complains about other people is just as annoying as young whippersnappers bringing speakers to crags and top roping through the fixed gear

It's 2025 folks, we need to promote crag to gym events. There's no such thing as bad condies inside! as long as the HVAC works 

Seriously Moderate Climber wrote:

My hot take: the majority of outdoor shitshows are not a result of gym-to-crag classes, which, in general, provide a much better base of knowledge than people receive informally from friends.

I certainly agree with that. I think it's a problem that needs to be tackled on two fronts: current providers could offer more education that's currently missing from their curriculums, and gyms could offer G2C classes that are affordable, hosted in the gym, and actually prepare climbers for climbing outdoors that go over basics like what clothes to wear, what items to bring, crag etiquette, etc.. 

Those that take classes are absolutely ahead of the game, but the bar is in hell and I've seen many class graduates absolutely be shit shows at crags. 

Climbing Weasel wrote:

Gatekeeping crags is silly. 

Disagree. There are many valid reasons to keep quiet about crags in development or with access issues beyond the old trope of "the fragile ego of the white man FAist hoarding public land" (which is justifiably a good target to bash in many contexts, and sometimes this one, I'd agree) But I'd agree it is a chicken and the egg situation where if you don't know anbout the crag, you also won't know about the reasoning to keep it quiet, so it's understandable to complain about gate keeping.

Zinc coated bolts are never a good idea.

Magnetrons should be brought back.

Day flash only counts if done naked.

Everyone should do a birthday challenge.

Gates in is just a sport climber thing.

Throwing a fit when you don’t send is childish and obnoxious.

Cleaning anchors by rappelling should be taught to everyone.

Gym holds are way too big.

If you’re fiending to pass the party ahead of you, you’re probably the jerk.

bryans wrote:

Disagree. There are many valid reasons to keep quiet about crags in development or with access issues beyond the old trope of "the fragile ego of the white man FAist hoarding public land" (which is justifiably a good target to bash in many contexts, and sometimes this one, I'd agree) But I'd agree it is a chicken and the egg situation where if you don't know anbout the crag, you also won't know about the reasoning to keep it quiet, so it's understandable to complain about gate keeping.

Hot takes

Botty McBotFace wrote:

If you are aggressive about land acknowledgements, but still climb in the area, you're just a virtue signaling hypocrite 

Disagree. With the caveat that being aggressive about anything is a turn-off, I'm not sure what being aggressive about land acknowledgements entails, unless you mean that having them or stating them is inherently aggressive. 

Land acknowledgements are meant as a reminder of the original inhabitants and as an entreaty to act with humility in the face of that history. That is not necessarily inconsistent with climbing on said land, unless the local indigenous community has a stated policy to limit climbing (like on Navajolands). Otherwise just tread lightly.  

Cosmic Hotdog wrote:

If you leave a top rope hanging unused for more than 10 minutes when there are other people at the wall, you are rude and in the wrong.

Offering to let others TR on your rope when they ask if you're still climbing that route doesn't make it magically ok. This is not the generous offer you think it is. You're still in the wrong.

I'm never there to top rope, and certainly not on your gear/anchor that I don't know and don't trust. If the route is not about to be climbed immediately after somebody asks if it's in use, pull the rope.

oh damn, you must be the person who flipped their shit when you showed up at the previously empty wall, immediately started being confrontational, and then based on nothing called us racists before storming off! anyway, point taken. 

my hot take: 

climbing takes too much time and we should normalize short focused sessions spent climbing instead of spending half the day twiddling our thumbs at the base of the wall.
or alternatively, "most climbers are lazily inefficient unless they're doing a big wall." 

(props to my partner who will get on your ass if we're in a group bigger than 2 and he asks you: "why aren't you harnessed and shoed up yet? the climber is almost at the anchors.")

As I've been saying for years:

SQUAMISH IS AN OVERLY VEGETATED RAIN FOREST - and the vegetation is winning! 

Almost any face climb that doesn't get a crap ton of regular ascents will moss right back up in a few seasons. Even some face climbs that do get regular ascents still moss up everywhere but where the critical holds are. Some crags are getting noticeably overgrown. Their photos in the recent 2020 guidebook show them as having been scrubbed pristine, but now they are half to completely mossed over. It doesn't matter that a crack climb gets hundreds of ascents a season, over the fall and winter the vegetation from above will rain organic debris on it, filling up the crack in time for the first person to climb it in the spring to have to use their nut tool to excavate the crack as they climb.

It has the shortest climbing season of any major international climbing destination. (Seriously, I tried to think of any major international "climbing" destination, as in people from around the world get on a plane to climb there, that has a shorter season than Squamish and the next contender I came up with is Patagonia - and that's not even the same type of climbing!) This is where some locals pipe in and say how they climb in Squamish over 150 days a year because they know that the exposed friction slabs dry out within hours, but do you really want to be doing the same dozen friction slabs over and over and over and over again? I think the reason why more people don't realize this is that most non-locals will visit in July or August when you are less likely to be rained out. They have a good time climbing there and leave with a positive impression of Squamish climbing. Whereas locals living in the area know that for a solid 6-7 months in Squamish the number of days where the rock is wet outnumber days were the rock is dry. And then there's another 3-4 months where it's iffy for getting dry rock.

As for the climbing itself:

The cracks are too often flaring, irregular, or awkward. A lot of those so-call "cracks" wouldn't even be cracks if it weren't for decades of piton pounding and removing. You rarely get the nice splitter cracks that make for metres upon metres of great jamming like you do on desert sandstone or on basalt. Much of the granite is glacier polished.

Maybe if I climbed 5.11 trad or harder, and, maybe if I were better at friction slab climbing and better at being able to use the smeary features that proliferate granite domes I might appreciate Squamish more, but even then Squamish would still be an overly vegetated rainforest with a super short climbing season.

However, I now must add that since the start of the pandemic I've been doing more sport climbing in Squamish than I have ever done in my almost 18 years of climbing... and I... like it. The vast majority of Squamish sport climbing is on rock that is far more featured.

Squamish is still an overly vegetated rainforest with a super short climbing season though.