Booty Rules!

(Thanks to Tradmanclimbs via Supertopo)
The Booty Rulze as I was taught them about 1982.

#1 Any gear that you leave on a climb due to lack of skill, persistance or sack is booty once you give up on retrieveing it and leave the crag for the day. You get a 12hr reprive if you announce your intentions to recover your gear but you do need to be at the base of the cliff at first light. Get drunk and sleep in will result in your gear becomming booty.

#2. Gear left due to inclemant weather or conditions is booty as a lack of skill was involved in the decisions that you made. You were not fast and strong enough to beat the weather or you made a poor decision regarding the weather or conditions.The mtn beat you and therefore your gear becomes booty.

#3 Any gear left in a rescue or accident resulting in real (not imagined) injury is not booty and shall be left at Rock and snow/IME, the Mountainere etc. to be returned to the proper partys involved. The booty game is supposed to be fun. once someone gets really hurt it is not fun anymore.

#4 If you lose booty do not be a whiny little bitch about it. Asking for your booty to be returned is very bad karma and results in a huge loss of face. If the booty hounds offer to return your lost booty and you accept you lose major face. The proper response is. " No,You keep it, you guys earned it." If they offer to return the booty and you refuse and offer to let them keep the booty and they then, insist that, "No you go ahead and take it back we have pleanty of gear." You may then accept the return of your booty gear. You will still lose some face but not too bad. At this point you need to offer them a libation to ease the shame.

The current trend of not even attempting to recover your own lost gear and headding straight home to whine and cry on the internet demanding the return of your lost booty is absolutly pathetic and shamefull!

I think #2 somewhat depends on how much gear we're talking about. 2 nuts? 1 cam and a couple of spare ovals? Yeah, that's booty.

But half a dozen cams and a bunch of slings that someone needed in order to safely bail from a route? I think a bit more of a grace period is in order.

^same applies at #1: You get a 12hr reprive if you announce your intentions to recover your gear but you do need to be at the base of the cliff at first light. Get drunk and sleep in will result in your gear becomming booty.

SavageMarmot wrote:(Thanks to Tradmanclimbs via Supertopo)

Who the hell is he? What has he ever accomplished that makes his opinion matter? Dude has been stuck in his 1982 ethics like things hadn't evolved from before he started the game & things haven't evolved since. It's comically pathetic to see him argue ethics on taco with real climbing legends.

It's booty if you don't know who owns the gear - that's my simple rule. Otherwise, it's called stealing.

But, your rule #4 has a lot of merit:

SavageMarmot wrote:#4 If you lose booty do not be a whiny little bitch about it. Asking for your booty to be returned is very bad karma and results in a huge loss of face. If the booty hounds offer to return your lost booty and you accept you lose major face. The proper response is. " No,You keep it, you guys earned it." If they offer to return the booty and you refuse and offer to let them keep the booty and they then, insist that, "No you go ahead and take it back we have pleanty of gear." You may then accept the return of your booty gear. You will still lose some face but not too bad. At this point you need to offer them a libation to ease the shame. The current trend of not even attempting to recover your own lost gear and headding straight home to whine and cry on the internet demanding the return of your lost booty is absolutly pathetic and shamefull!

Climbing seems to be the only sport where lost equipment is considered fair for the taking. I'm not going to try to return a $5 carabiner, but definitely a cam.

What if all your gear is tagged with a name and phone number? Is it still booty?

Great rules! It seems legitimate booty has been replaced by whiners on the internet who over-stuck a cam or couldn't clean a nut and then claim days later on a climbing forum that anyone who cleans it is stealing the gear that they can't get out.

Here is a question: If there is some booty (say a stuck nut) on a route and the leader clips into it and the second (laboriously) cleans it. Who does it belong to?

I guess the same can be said for a wallet.
You know, just because something is "OK" doesn't make it right.
And people can keep "abandoned property," even if they know whose it was I guess, but should not be surprised when people like me won't let such people in their houses.
You lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.
That's just a life lesson.

Brian wrote:Great rules! It seems legitimate booty has been replaced by whiners on the internet who over-stuck a cam or couldn't clean a nut and then claim days later on a climbing forum that anyone who cleans it is stealing the gear that they can't get out.

Yes.

Pay to play. Don't want to lose your gear - don't leave it behind. Its abandoned like a piece of trash and someone was nice enough to pick it up and bring it home vs leaving it.

Brian wrote:If there is some booty (say a stuck nut) on a route and the leader clips into it and the second (laboriously) cleans it. Who does it belong to?

The second.

Matt N wrote:Don't want to lose your gear - don't leave it behind. Its abandoned like a piece of trash and someone was nice enough to pick it up and bring it home vs leaving it.

There are a hundred different reasons why someone would leave a piece of gear. People are not leaving gear behind on a whim, generally.

It's not stealing, technically, to keep someone's gear, just like it isn't stealing to keep someone's lost wallet.

A mountain is an inanimate object. It doesn't beat anyone.

Perhaps you have never felt the "Freedom of the Hills"

Are all you rabid booty fiends noobs looking to flesh out a rack? Its unseemly to have an orgasm when coming across a left cam, nut, or biner.

Don't know about you, but I already have more crap than I care to carry on any climb, so more of the same doesn't really thrill me. Call me soft, but helping out a fellow climber seems to put more in the "karma" bank than berating people looking for their gear, regardless of the situation

There already is a good rule in place...."do unto others..."
I'm not saying you need to post flyers like a lost kitten, but you also don't need to criticize someone just asking. Post an example of someone being a "whiny little Bitch"?

Seems like the "rules" are stated so that its supposed to be "all in fun and with a sporting attitude" no issue with that and all fine and good. Some though seem to be a little too self-righteous (Matt N)

#5. If the owner of the bootied knows you have the gear and can kick your ass then it's not booty gear.

There already is a good rule in place...."do unto others..."

Some though seem to be a little too self-righteous (Matt N)

No, we're on the same page - golden rule. I leave gear = booty. I find gear = booty.
Its like the circle of life.

Earlier this month I overcammed a friends cam on lead. We couldn't get it out until rapping. If it didn't come out that afternoon, I fully expected to run up there at first light, hopefully freeing the cam from a colder rock or bringing something else to help. If that failed (or someone else got there first) I would have replaced his cam and not whined about it as "lost" on MP.

Pretty sure this all sounds familiar - ah yes:
mountainproject.com/v/draws…

Its as old as a retrobolting thread on supertopo. Same discussion, same opinions, nothing new learned.

Great rules; seems fair to me. If you really want some booty, there's a practically new yellow alien WAAAAY off route on the Serpentine Arete on Dragontail that my second couldn't clean (lack of skill for me perhaps - placing such a tricky piece! Or lack of skill for the second, who blew it cleaning...).

I knew right when I placed it that one - it was a damn good placement, and two - my second probably wasn't going to clean it right and it would live there in perpetuity... I wouldn't recommend looking for it though...if you find it beware of what lies above, maybe backtrack and head left ;) Waaaaaaaay off route.

As for having your name/number on the gear - I think the question is still there as to why you left all that precious gear you spent so much time labeling (lack of skill/sack, poor decision making, etc.). Being foolhardy isn't trumped by marking gear I don't think.

Climbing is about being responsible for yourself and your actions, not whining about losing gear because you are a non-hacker or made a poor choice. This isn't the gym where you get to pick up the one shoe you left because you are a space case. If you leave it, and it wasn't because someone was hurt, then all bets are off, of course with the 12 hour grace window. And depending on meteorologists is like buying lottery tickets for your retirement. Assumed risk, assumed responsibility. You place it and leave it, it's out of your hands and hopefully someone will be nice to you.

The only rule in the OP I would agree with is the first one. If the general rule becomes that you have to return stuck gear, then a lot of people are not going to take the time and aggravation to get it out if it just means they have to give it up. I know I won't.

Having that incentive (that you get to keep it if you get it out) helps keep the more popular routes from getting clogged up with unslightly, and eventually unsafe fixed crap.

If it's something that was left after a storm/for a retreat, that seems different, because there's generally not much effort involved in getting it out.

Lets discuss the whole "lost" thing.
If you are posting in the lost/found forum and you know exactly where (climb, pitch, section) you left the cam, is it really "lost"?

ITS NOT LOST IF YOU KNOW WHERE YOU LEFT IT!!!

"damn, I lost my keys by leaving them right on the table"

[Happy Friday everyone - I need to climb soon]

^^^^^Nice

It's not lost, it's been left.

Blaming weather on leaving gear is silly, IMHO. If you've made a decision to retreat and leave gear, you obviously had calculated that your life/health/comfort was of a higher value than few cams/rope/etc. If you chose to leave two-three-point beefy anchors with shiny cams and doubled up biners for each rap over a single nut or a webbing slung around a horn, you had made a conscious decision that your life/time/piece of mind was of more value than the gear left behind.

You can have your little rules from some over-the-hill Stonemaster Posing Wannabee, but I propose an additional rule:
5) If I find your punk ass using my gear that you stole off my 5.12/5.13 project (that you obviously stick clipped your way up) placed on your 5.9 project I will beat your ass all over the base of the crag.