First of all I never started this conversation in the first place. It just escalated from a few people asking questions on my blog. In my opinion, internet is not the proper forum for this type of conversation.
Chris's point of view is very understandable and although I am against red-tagging, I respected his wish. My intention is not to wage war with anyone or make anyone feel bad, I just want to climb and have fun.
FRFM was definitely not the only route I wanted to try in Spain, but after seeing it in Progression, it was the main motivation for me, simply because it was one of the three routes in Spain that I had seen video of and it looked really cool. There was no mention of it being closed in the video, because it wasn't.
Maybe I don't know enough about sport climbing etiquette, but I just couldn't image FRFM possibly being red-tagged. When I arrived in Spain, Dave Graham told me he had been working on it with Chris, so that also meant it must be open. Before I ever got on it, Chris asked me to give him a change on it, so I did.
Later on I found it extremely weird standing there on the ground, watching Dave Graham and Dani Andrada trying FRFM, when I wasn't allowed to. I totally understand when Chris says he doesn't want to turn it into a contest to see who does it first, but I surely felt left out standing there below the route, watching others trying it. I don't think it's cool to be separating people like that, who's allowed to try it and who's not.
In conclusion, if FRFM wasn't a very well known project that's had a lot of media coverage, I would not have felt like I had a right to try it. If there would have been a single mention in Progression, or anywhere else for that matter, that it's closed, it would have been enough for me. I don't have Chris's phone number or any way to contact him, so I had to travel all the way to Spain to find out that it's closed (and only closed for me, seems like).
This was not the end of the world for me and there's so much good climbing in Catalunya, that you're never going to run out of routes to try.
- Nalle
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