The second photo is of good friends of mine. The woman reading the book is the mother of the boy who comes over to the house to read Lord of the Rings with me.
Quote from: ergophobe on May 16, 2025, 12:36:42 AMThe second photo is of good friends of mine. The woman reading the book is the mother of the boy who comes over to the house to read Lord of the Rings with me.
That's pretty wild. Honestly, I've always hoped my kids would not get too into mountain climbing. My oldest was doing the indoor simulation for a while and was getting pretty good. It would definitely keep me up at night if I knew someone I loved was scaling cliffs like that.
>> You gotta reeeeeeeeally trust your equipment!
Well... that is not the time you have to really trust your equipment. The forces generated by hanging in one place are minimal.
First, a little physics primer. "Pounds" are weird, because they are both mass, that can be converted to kilograms and force that can be converted to newtons. There is no metric unit that is equivalent to the pound. In climbing, we only care about force, not mass.
So no climbing equipment is rated in terms of pounds or kilograms. All gear is rated in terms of kilonewtons. At standard gravity, 1000 Newtons or one kN is equivalent to 224 pounds which is also equivalent to 101.65 kg. But on the moon, one pound is still 101.65 kg, but it is only 165 Newtons.
So when I am hanging statically from an anchor point, I'm only generating about 0.6 kN.
Every carabiner, to be UIAA approved, must be able to withstand a force of at least 20kN or, roughly 4500 pounds (considered as force, not mass).
The thing that confuses non-climbers is how ropes are rated. They often want to know how many kilograms a rope is rated for. Since all we care about is force, there is no rating for mass.
But the part that really really confuses them is that ropes are not rated to meet a
minimum force like carabiners, they are rated to meet a
maximum force. A rope must be designed to allow a
maximum force of 12kN.
Why? Because you can design a very strong rope, but if it generates very high forces, that ultimately is the same as hitting the ground. This is the part of Superman movies that has always driven me crazy. Catching someone just before hitting the ground and stopping them instantly is the same as hitting the ground dammit!!!
If you have a static connection (think a steel cable or a kevlar cable) even a very short fall can generate forces greater than 20kN and break your carabiner or other gear. A fall as short as 2 meters on a fully static connection can break that carabiner rated for 20kN. As a general rule, it is worse to fall from 5 meters above the belay with nothing in (a "factor 2 fall" because the fall distance is 2X the amount of rope) than to fall 20 meters near the end of a 60m pitch (which is a fall factor of 0.333). In terms of shock to the belay system and the body, that 20m fall is much less violent than the 10m fall.
So... the time when you "You gotta reeeeeeeeally trust your equipment!" is not when you are hanging there and not when you take a big fall high up, it's when you take a short fall close to the belay or, even worse, close to the ground.
So for most experienced climbers, sitting in the portaledge reading like they are doing is just a casual and enjoyable day. The scariest moments are when you are 10 meters up, have one good piece in and everything depends on that piece.
QuoteI've always hoped my kids would not get too into mountain climbing.
I've thought about this a lot. In general terms, I would say that climbing encourages an active life outdoors, which has a lot of benefits. It's a little different than other sports I do like skiing and running. I don't really need to be very fit to run a particular trail. I mostly just go faster as I get fitter. That's roughly true for skiing once you progress past a beginner level. But with climbing, each incremental increase in ability opens new terrain, which is why some people get utterly obsessed. But for those who are not obsessed, it does encourage a certain baseline fitness.
On a more persona level, my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I fell in with a crowd that was pretty heavy into partying - just pot and alcohol at that point, but of the seven of us, four went on to early deaths or jail terms. I was just in the group and doing the relatively mundane getting stoned in the woods behind the school in the morning.
My climbing partners were mostly older though (in their 30s in a few cases). I didn't have a car or a license. I was dependent on them and they simply would not tolerate a kid who was out until 2am or even midnight and wasn't sharp when they picked me up at 5am for a big day.
That was the main reason I dropped the group of stoner friends. I wanted to be able to perform in the mountains and it just wasn't compatible with their lifestyle. That may have saved my life.
Similarly, I have a younger friend (I think he's 32 now) - alcoholic father who died in his early 50s, mother who is not very together, but kept them on their feet, albeit with food insecurity. He somehow discovered the climbing gym in high school. He would save for 3 weeks for a day pass and then arrive at the gym when the doors opened and stay until they closed. Some older climbers in their 30s and 40s noticed him and said, "Hey kid, you should come to the mountains with us." They paid for everything and took him outdoor climbing. From there he ended up meeting some of the main mentors of his life (including yours truly, he always says) and now is living a life so much beyond what you would expect from a kid with his background - great wife, both super active, two kids, a house in the Bay Area, well ahead on his retirement savings and all that without a college degree.
Anyway, all that to say that no decision takes place in isolation. If I die climbing on Monday, I would still say that it has given me way way way more than it has taken.