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General Climbing Discussion

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Oz climbing news? 8-Oct-2009 At 3:07:50 PM evanbb

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On 8/10/2009 kp wrote:
>Um, hate to be the only non bitter victorian, but the teenager you are
>referring to is a pretty damn talented kid !

You don't sound too non-bitter to me. Simey and others raise a good point, and one that resonates with me. Sure, it's great that someone has climbed a hard route. Terrific. But that's their achievement. Doesn't mean anything to me at all. Climbing is an individual pursuit with individual challenges. Sure, I can be happy for him to have ticked, but it doesn't interest me even remotely. There's no drama, no intrigue, no story of human emotions. The tick can be summarised as 'someone trained a lot, mostly in gyms, then went to Nowra and ticked a well chalked and very well known route that other people think is hard.' Good for him. Nothing to me.

I agree with the general sentiment here. I like to hear stories of battlers putting themselves way out of their depth, however shallow that is; stories of getting lost, off route, scared, drunk and sand bagged. That's where the interest is for me, and forms the general thrust of the Chocky culture IMHO (another one for your research MasterOfRup). Ticking sport routes is really quite a sterile pursuit. Sure it's hard, but there's no story attached to it. I'd find it more interesting having someone recount how they ticked a hard sudoko, or changed the tyre on their car.

So, here's a shout out to all the weekend warriors; take some pics, write up some TRs and keep me happy. As said in other threads a well written TR is a thing of beauty. Lets see more of it. Then the News will be full of interesting stuff.