I'm too poor to climb

Speaking of big... I followed a guy up Open Book this weekend. So awesome! I was so beat up though. We did not have any big cams so he just ran it out. pretty awesome. Did I mention it was Awesome?

Open Book IS awesome!!!!

Get a second job in your off season...even if its serving tables, you can make a few hundred a week...do that for 3 months, boom, you have a rack...

Stop making excuses and get it done.

Ima Fred Knot wrote:50 years ago it seemed climbing was reserved for the indigent and homeless. Nomadic loners that ate from trash cans and made their own gear from engine blocks... When did climbing become a pastime for the rich?

Indigent and homeless still climb and dumpster diving is alive and well (better quality and more abundant thanks to the wastefulness of today's consumerist society). Like Garrett said stop making excuses, cancel your cable, Netflix and stop your afternoon latte addiction.

i think people have an overly romantic view of the past. sure, there were the beckey/kor/bjornstadt types (not financially well off), but there were also the ellingwood/hillary/gill/rob slater/etc types who had good jobs, or came from well to do backgrounds.

in terms of running it out, same thing. most the time people ran it out on easy ground, same as now. sure, there were a few who were really bold, but again - same as now. i think we just tend to notice things more because there are more people out there climbing these days. whatever catches our attention, for whatever reason, is what we tend to focus or dwell on.

hitchhike to a bouldering area

wrote:Fred I think folks today are just more scared. You know back in the day runouts were the norm. You did not have to buy much gear because you were just gonna run it out. Thats my theory, now I need doubles and some triples because I am scared if my feet get above my last piece.

I think you are half right. I bet if the gear was available back in the day, people would have paid an arm and a leg for it. It just didn't exist. I also think more people above and beyond the clinically insane would have gotten into climbing.

Oh, gotta go, my double cliff cabana just arrived!

back in my day we walked through snow and 100 degree heat to our 5th jobs in order to pay our way through college in the most dangerous neighborhood ever

Ima Fred Knot wrote:50 years ago it seemed climbing was reserved for the indigent and homeless. Nomadic loners that ate from trash cans and made their own gear from engine blocks. The rich and fabulous were a rarity in the climbing world (save a David Lee Roth here or there). Fast forward to the future, now there is more climbing gear than ever and everything is state of the art and the average climber is well-educated and financial stable. I remember when I first started climbing I couldn’t even afford a rack and when I was able to scrape the cash I bought the cheapest rack I could find (best decision I ever made). Nowadays a beginner would need to pony up nearly $1k just to get started climbing trad. There are many climbers from different eras out there in MP-land, I ask you... When did climbing become a pastime for the rich?

Says the person typing on a computer. What happened? folks like Chouinard and Robinson and others realized that people wanted to do this, and started charging enough to pay the bills with it.

The "high" cost of climbing is a direct result of the economy of scale that has made 5.12 fairly cheap in terms of time investment. Climbing is not a rich person's game compared to say heliskiing or sky diving.

2 year revival of pointless, troll-heavy thread. Sigh...

For anyone plodding through this however, let me correct Tony B's point - dual pattern ropes were around in the mid-late 70's.

Yup kind of pointless, but avoiding work. In 1990: Forged Friend-$45; 2nd Generation Camalot-$52; WC Rocks-$6.50 to $10; crappy 50m BW 10.5 rope-$110; Asolo Runout shoes-$120. Add inflation=gear cheaper today than then.

Sure it might be cheaper per cam now but the OP compared now verses 50 years ago (pre-cam days). Even compared to the 90s your average climber is richer now than then. I bet if you tallied the money you spend on climbing it might surprise you how much you actual pay to play. I'm sure there are some who only top rope at a local crag but those people are not real climbers. Real climbers travel and explore new places, hone their craft on different rock mediums. That takes money, time not working, and continual gear replacement. Rich man's game for sure.

Ima Fred Knot wrote:50 years ago it seemed climbing was reserved for the indigent and homeless. Nomadic loners that ate from trash cans and made their own gear from engine blocks. The rich and fabulous were a rarity in the climbing world (save a David Lee Roth here or there). Fast forward to the future, now there is more climbing gear than ever and everything is state of the art and the average climber is well-educated and financial stable. I remember when I first started climbing I couldn’t even afford a rack and when I was able to scrape the cash I bought the cheapest rack I could find (best decision I ever made). Nowadays a beginner would need to pony up nearly $1k just to get started climbing trad. There are many climbers from different eras out there in MP-land, I ask you... When did climbing become a pastime for the rich?

Not sure what you are talking about. The original mountaineers (people who climbed as a fools pleasure) were all well to do and highly educated. Doctors and engineers with plenty of money. Ok, not all. A few were just guides or climbers, essentially bums (i'm kidding, guides). But the biggest figures in many eras were actually people with "real" jobs, aka. productive members of society.

People think Hans Krauss or any of the legends of Scottish mountaineering were dirtbags living at the base of a cliff, think again.

I'd say perhaps you are correct, in the 60s it seems climbing did go into a hobo era but for the most part, climbing has always been a sport of the well to do, or at least the financially stable.

Of course, once you invest in a rack, rope, shoes, helmet and a way to get to the cliffs (which could include investing in a nice set of cutoffs, etc), you can quit the job and eat from a trash can and it's still just as free as always.

Who cares whether or not the physical price of climbing is cheaper now or in the 60's, The post says TOO POOR TO CLIMB , the cost is irrelevant, Homie can't make the cut ,
This forum , instead of discussing the progress of climbing , involves MP users indulging in the fact that they don't think they are rich and they still climb.
The fact is climbing is an activity for the wealthy of the world to travel and do a little bit of imperializing all over the planet. If there is a dome in some remote jungle tall enough a climber will be guaranteed to drop by and disrupt the local culture changing society, anybody follow the Everest disaster(S)

Climbers are mostly disgusting creatures taxing the planet

Try to have some class everyone

I don't understand what the big deal is here. People with more money have more disposable income to invest in hobbies and can afford more luxury in their lives. Sure. Is climbing gear expensive? Yes. Have you tried shooting as a hobby? It makes climbing look cheap. I can spend $120 dollars or more on an afternoon of rifle target practice for less time out than most climbers spend in a day. And that's not even match grade ammo. The rifle's not the expensive part (though I could buy all the gear I needed a couple times over for the cost of that rifle), it's shooting it that really gets expensive. At least with climbing once you have the gear you don't have to spend a bunch every time you use it.

Why is it more expensive than it was? Aside from marketing, probably because the gear's better. You go find gear equivalent to what climbers were using in the 60's, or make your own, it'll be cheap. It'll just be harder and more dangerous to climb. Take your pick.

Again confusing the point.
I know I know your not rich and you climb
Nevertheless wouldn't it be great to take a plane to thailand this winter to go sport climbing
Somewhere you know where the locals really get the climbers..........food, housing, entertainment,

You say you are too poor to climb but you obviously do. Therefore you are really saying to are too poor to climb all the places you'd like to with all the gear you'd like to have. Such is life :).

What happened? A lot of things for sure, but one that pops to mind?

Free climbing.

Just think about how much cheaper climbing would be if your rack consisted of a hammer, pitons, and BD Ovals.

Not to mention advancements in gear technology. My father's chocks were nuts from the hardware store with the threads ground out, and webbing looped through. You can still do that, if you want...

Or how about advancements in safety, and with them increasing "expectations" of safety? My father exclusively used the body belay, which cost whatever a two-foot-square of carpet to protect your back from burns costs. But you might get assaulted if you tried that today.

Junk yards are still full of engine blocks and car parts.

i would have to disagree that all climbers, or even most, are those kind of people. i have assembled a small but sufficient trad rack of passive gear for around $125-$150 of my own money, no aid from my parents (i just turned 18), all from working a below-minimum-wage job, thanks to a fellow climber on here that i bought most of it from. it took me about 5-6 months of saving as much as i possibly could. the only gear i didn't pay for myself was a set of 6 quickdraws and a pair of shoes and those were Channukah and birthday gifts. And the best climbers i know come from the hood and also paid for their gear by working below-minimum-wage jobs. that being said, i'm sure there are many many climbers who are more than well off and get the newest gear right when it comes out, regardless of whether or not they need it. Point being, the species of climbers that aren't spoiled or financially "well-off" has gone extinct yet.