In reply to Bruce Hooker:
> (In reply to caver)
There we go, carefully select bits of a post and get twisting..
> For you to talk of "bile" is quite something!
Feel free to point out where in any of my postings I have pour bile on the diverse members of our climbing community. Where as in your case....
> It's descriptive, climbing is for the open air, climbing walls are really just gyms. IMO they inculk a very limited, technical but timid attitude - how many threads are started on ukc by wall bred climbers asking how they should go about leading "outdoors" as if this was something really scary and dangerous? When climbing walls didn't exist you just started outdoors, no problem, no hangups.
'Climbing is for the open air' .. so elitist. 'climbing walls are just gyms' .. how dismissive. 'limited technical but timid' .. trivializing the fantastic achievements of many climbers who started in walls, still climb in walls but also climb outside and are pushing the current limits. People weren't scared and timid because they started climbing outdoors.. what coloured lenses are you wearing?
> The second side effect is that when people do "go outdoors" often they look for the same security at a high level of technical difficulty as they had indoors, hence bolted climbing. You say there hasn't been a "wave of bolting" yet in the 70s there were no bolts at all, they have all been drilled since, which is quite a wave given the importance of "sport" climbing... thank you BMC. If all indoor walls disappeared tomorrow it wouldn't harm climbing at all.
You have little idea of climbing history; or have chosen a blinkered view. Sports climbing was built partially on the massive amount of fixed gear found in local crags across Europe, Alpinists practiced pulling on pegs to overcome difficult moves and speed their ascents. Red pointing utilised this existing gear to protect free ascents. So your beloved 'classic style' of climbing is responsible for developing fixed gear.
Bolts have been drill since the sixties (possibly the fifties)but it was only later that the technology started to meet the requirements. Even now the ratio of trad protected routes to bolted routes makes it hardly a wave. Describing it as a ripple would be generous.
'Thank you BMC'... you think the BMC is responsible. For what. Recognising that climbing is a vibrant, still developing activity.
'If all the walls disappeared tomorrow it wouldn't harm climbing at all' .. you just can't accept that someone who chooses to climb in a wall two or three times a week can be a climber.
> I think you'll find it was the other way around, athletes used chalk long before climbers. There's no need for it on crags or boulders either, it pollutes them.
And your point..ah yes twisty turn and avoid the unpalatable truth. It was your 'only true climbers' from the outdoors who introduced chalk. Where it originated from is an irrelevant point.
> No, but "super-men and super-women" would have been too clumsy, besides which I haven't noticed that women are as muscle bound as men... it's more of a male, macho thing IMO.
If you prefer the male macho thing then that's your prerogative; but it has really narrowed your view on the climbing world.
>
> I'm not, but what would a caver know about all this anyway?
As usual..finish with an insult. How could a caver know about any of this...