Why we climb

Why we climb

            For the past two years, I have been climbing with a concerning frequency. Since discovering the sport in 2021 at my University gym, the OCC at UCSD, I have been climbing almost every day. Even though my hands, skin, and body suffer, I have never felt better. Before finding climbing, no other sport captivated me to the point where I made all possible attempts to go out and do it; regardless of how difficult it was. In the time I have climbed, I have not necessarily ever truly reflected on why I do it. During the 7-hour road trip back from Red Rock in Nevada my friend Joe from the climbing team said some words that really resonated with me. Joe is a really really strong climber and he told me that he stuck with climbing because he found that even bad climbing sessions are a good time. At the time, I really felt that, because I went to Red Rock with a minor lumbrical injury that I sustained the week before at climbing practice. Even though I felt weak and couldn’t really climb the things my friends were getting on, I still felt really happy. Thinking back to those moments has made me reflect on why I actually climb, because after some pondering I realized that it is not necessarily intuitive to do this sport, and so in this blog post I will break down why I think people do the sport that I hold so dear in my heart.

Me climbing in Red Rock

Motivation:

            I will start off by saying a few words about why I decided to talk about reasons for climbing. In recent months my climbing progress has been phenomenal. I have only been climbing for a couple of years and I have been able to climb up to 7a in both bouldering (v6/v7) and lead climbing (5.11d/5.12a). This has been an incredible journey but every now and then I find myself having weeks where the gravity feels like it is just higher for me. Weeks where everyone besides me sends their projects and I struggle with 6a climbs. I know progress is never linear but weeks like those truly make me feel miserable and sometimes make me question how much I actually enjoy the sport. I think everyone has such weeks to some extent within any sport so I don’t really put much emphasis on them and just "thug it out" until I feel strong again. Recently I had one of those weeks and I have been thinking about why I do this to myself. Don't get me wrong, this introspection only strengthened my will to climb but while in a sad state caused by my underperformance in climbing, I realized that it's a really tough sport that, in many ways, is not desirable. Because of this, I wanted to share some thoughts on why it might not be desirable and why so many people still love it.

Climbing in November

Why it's not intuitive to climb:

            Climbing sucks. It is a really hard sport where achievement is determined not by an objective measure but by a subjective rating given to routes by a very specific and unrepresentative group of people. Not only that, it is stinky, painful, dangerous, and often defeating. One might look at a sport like this and say: why do people do this to themselves? We go climb in areas that are considered sandbagged or where the given grades of climbs are a lot higher than what tends to be the local convention. We climb even though the grades are almost always given to climbs by men and not adjusted for differences in gender and body build (I highly recommend the Instagram series diving into the issues of gender and climbing grades explored by the avid climber and professor of philosophy @kimbroughclimbs on Instagram, he talks about this with much more clarity). We put on really stinky shoes that are 2-3 sizes too small in the pursuit of better performance. Rocks fall on us, we fall onto rocks, scrape our shins, bruise our knees, cut our fingers, break our nails, and cause ourselves other bodily ailments, and for what? To take a picture for Instagram? Top out on a rock? It seems like the reward, and more specifically the tangible reward, is quite small for the amount of risk and danger we take on. This is why it is not intuitive to climb. Humans were not designed by nature to be that high up on mountain faces. There is an inherent fear that every single person feels when they climb. It is the fear of death from falling and no matter who you are it takes time to overcome. After overcoming this fear it is honestly very enjoyable to feel the thrill of being high up and defying this natural instinct, but as an evolutionary trait of humans, we are not supposed to be on cliff faces and therefore there is a fundamental fear that we experience when we rock climb. For all of the reasons outlined above it is not intuitive that we climb, and yet we do. So why is that?

Too hot to climb in Santee

Trust:

            One of the most important aspects of climbing is the fundamental necessity of trust. As with any alpine adventure sport, climbing requires two to tango. At the very least you are with one other climber to practice the sport with adequate safety precautions. Whether that is multi-pitch leading or just weekend warrior bouldering you always should have a belay or a spotter. I think this aspect of the sport injects an element of trustworthiness into the people you meet while doing it. Of course, there are exceptions with belayers whom you would not trust to save you from falling to death, but the prior belief climbers tend to have about other climbers is that they won’t kill you. While this might seem like a trivial assumption that should be made about everyone, and not just climbers, it is not and I urge anyone reading to truly think about the trust you place in people. It is unlikely that you credit many positive emotions toward the people you meet on the street, the primary prior assumption being that you should not trust them. Kids are taught stranger danger for a reason, this lack of trust is maintained in the human psyche and very few communities overcome it and welcome outsiders with loving arms to the extent climbing does. Whenever you get onto a wall you need to know that the person you are climbing with knows all the necessary measures to stop you from falling. This means that when you go climbing you cannot be deceptive because you won’t come far. The more you deceive the fewer people will climb with you. This element of trust creates an incredible community within climbing of very nice people and people who you can rely on.

UCSD Climbing Team Community

Challenge:

            While this aspect might not necessarily be an element unique to climbing it is one that is very prominent. Climbers seek to challenge themselves. From experience, you are quite unlikely to meet a climber who does not attempt to climb at their red point (highest do-able grade) at least once a week while climbing. Whatever it may be, there is an inherent characteristic to the sport that drives us to improve at any cost. Unlike other sports, however, accomplishment does not stem from competition but from the "difficulty" of the rock that you are climbing (difficulty being hard to describe). This allows climbers to improve on their own time and outside of an established institution whose goals are often incongruent with those of the athlete.  This means that regardless of what grades you climb you can always improve, and more importantly you can do it on your own time without any pressures of an established system. This makes the challenge of climbing self-induced, coming from internal motivations rather than external actors. This is quite cool and definitely one of the reasons people like climbing; because progress is not intimidating and it is attainable to all levels.

A climb I did not finish

Movement:

            I know what you are thinking: Well duh. And yes, this is an obvious statement, every sport requires movement but here I propose that climbing best works with the idea of the research of movement within nature. Let me explain. Many sports create limitations on how the body can move in order to create game rules that are consistent across cultures. Take soccer as an example: in soccer (football) you are not able to use your arms to manipulate the ball without a penalty in the game. While in competition climbing there are rules as well, they are much less limiting in terms of how the body can move, if anything competition route setting incentivizes creativity of movement, often creating completely new movements that are necessary to complete the climbs. This is especially prominent in outdoor climbing where there really are no rules about how you should climb rocks. Again, there are conventions through which standards are established to determine what constitutes climbing a rock but they are incredibly loose and often do not actually matter that much unless you are at the highest point in climbing. Since there are almost no rules in climbing about how you can move and interact with the rock, the sport allows for all affordances possible within your body. This basically just means that you may move your body however you like in order to get up the rock. This allows for an incredible amount of creativity and an aspect that I call the research of movement. I believe this aspect is prominent in many freestyle sports such as skateboarding, dance, parkour, or snowboarding. In these sports, the objective is to move your body in creative ways and therefore, since each of these sports conceptions, people have been thinking about novel ways in which they can move to achieve something. Many sports, especially those that require boards, carry their own affordances and ways in which people can and do move, but in less restrictive disciplines like dancing, parkour, and climbing, where the instrument of the sport is the human body, the limitations of what movements can be produced are dependent on each athletes body, and their own unique style. This causes completely unheard-of movements being seen every year at competitions, in the gyms, and outside stirring up a lot of excitement and causing inspired athletes to think of ways to replicate these movements. This freedom of movement combined with the innovative spirit of the athletes causes the sport to be fresh and improved upon every year!

Belaying my friend Nate at Mt. Woodson

Nature:

            Climbing is a fundamentally natural sport. Though many old-heads might argue that climbing today either in the gyms or to some extent even outside is no longer natural due to how much gear and gyms have changed, the sport is deeply trenched in natural beauty. Whether you are simulating rock faces where there are none or where the weather does not allow for it year-round, you are still practicing movements that are based upon the movements necessary to climb rocks in nature. Climbing forces you to go outside, which is great because if it wasn't for climbing a lot of the Bay Area tech bros in Patagonia puffer vests would have never seen the light of day. All jokes aside it is fundamentally important for humans to be outside and to be outside in nature. However much we might not believe it, we are still animals and we need to see sunshine and feel nature around us. This natural aspect of climbing makes those who practice it, more happy because of it.

Me doing the 5.10b crack on the beautiful 90ft wall in Tahoe (Shoutout Annie :D)

            Climbing can be seen as a paradox: it's a physically grueling, fear-inducing sport that doesn’t promise tangible rewards, yet the climbing community continually grows. I believe the reasons lie in the unique characteristics this sport molds into its enthusiasts - trust, challenge, fluid movement, and the inherent love for nature. Despite the aches, the occasional discouragement, and the challenges, climbing remains a rewarding endeavor that offers more than just a physical workout - it revives the primal instincts within us and allows us to grow as individuals and foster community. As climbers, we embrace this bittersweet sport, finding joy not just in reaching the top, but also in every pull and push along the way. As hard as it is to define, the reason we climb, invariably, lies in its ability to overcome inherent risks and battle invigorating challenges, and it's this difficulty, strangely enough, that makes us understand why we choose to climb.