UKC

Hello!

As part of my dissertation research, I am looking for climbers who participate in sport and/or trad to answer a few questions. The survey takes less than 10 minutes to complete, and more details can be found on the survey link.

http://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/4OTLY/

This topic is really important to me, and any answers would be really appreciated. If you have any questions, pop a comment on this post (or message me) and I will get back to you.

Thank you!

Your scoring pages don't work on my tablet (android 5).

The questions are broken. I don't sport climb and unless I fill in those questions the next question won't come up.

Well, I filled it in but you're missing the elephant in the room: driving (and/or flying) to the crag. This must be the biggest evironmental impact of climbing by far. And my perception is that people's habits have worsened significantly in this regard. Back in the 80s & 90s I recall mostly driving out on a Friday evening with a full carload of people (usually mine, as I had a large company car at the time).

These days I'm much more likely to be going out alone to meet somebody at the crag, or at most going with just my climbing partner, Which might just be changes in my personal circumstances & circle of climbing partners, but I have the impression it's more general. And not good.

Sorry, I tried but I can't stand those forms where you have fiddle about ranking a long list of things you just don't care about at all. As far as I'm concerned the only real difference between the impact of the two is the amount of clanking, jangling and shouting associated with trad and the tendency for it to put you in wilder places where things live. That and I used to drive a bit further in a faster car for trad.

jk

As you say. We were discussing on another forum about the "eco" impact of Dyneema (specifically replacing C4 UltraLight slings). The idea that driving the first 10 miles to the crag destroyed any benefit wasn´t what the guy actually wanted to hear. The same goes for recycled PET bottle fleeces and the rest of the junk, it´s that Emirates flight at 4.10 that goes straight over my house that´s doing the damage (amongst the rest of the stuff).

Yes, hot rock trips are probably the means through which sport climbing has a greater impact, other than the bolts of course.

Done!

Agree with the above this survey is a bit weird, and seems to specifically focus on mostly (very) minor issues and ignore very big 'elephants in the room'

Done.

Done, good luck with your studies

The survey is broken - I couldn't get past the list the damage in order page as it ignored any ranking I made and just reverted to 1-10!

Not the best thing, however I suspect that more climbers travelling solo to venues, particularly in Vans has at least as much impact on climate changing gases.
A group in shared transport with tents is preferable in CO2 terms, to 10 T4s living the dream.

Tent aversion is definitely on the rise, true. At least where I live it's definitely related to basic, simple cheap campsites being essentially extinct in touristy parts of the Alps. Still plenty in the Frankenjura though.

That was my first throught too, it's getting to the crag which makes the difference, both the driving all over the country every weekend and to a smaller more localised degree things like footpath erosion etc. Once you're on the rock the damage is minimal and the traditional/ sport difference insignificant.

Apologies for that, I've tried to fix it!

Sorry about that, I've been trying to fix this! Thank you for the feedback.

In reply to AlanLittle:

Thank you for your feedback, I will definitely take this into consideration. I have looked into the pollution side of climbing (regarding transport methods) for my research, and so I appreciate you backing this up for me!

It has been hard to narrow down the worst environmental impacts specific to climbing, and so this questionnaire was mostly relating to physical impacts around the crags and seeing if there are specific differences between trad and sport.

Thank you for your time!