When did climbing become recognizably modern?

You're still wrong because you don't know the history of rock climbing in the USA.

Climbers in the 60's were just as strong, if not stronger at chimneys, they just didn't have the tools we have now and the lack of ethical contraints to climb as we choose putting bolts wherever we want. Herman Buhl (solo FA Nanga Parbat) was famous for one finger pull-ups in the 50's. The dudes in Dresden were putting up 5.12 in the early 60's iirc. Gill was as well.

5.12 slabs were put up in the 70's with EBs. Harder slabs are almost never put up today ground up. In that sense slab climbing difficulty standards have regressed. Sticky rubber matters less the harder it gets where edging becomes a thing.

The Camp 4 Bouldering circuit was a thing in the 60's. Destination bouldering areas like Horsetooth Reservoir were a thing in the 60's. Bouldering just wasn't the hype. Other than your **cough** large pads the sport hasn't changed a bit. :) Sorry, I call them maxi-pads ever since I saw Vitaly stack 3 of them at the base of Blue Suede Shoes.

The thing you keep hanging up on is that gear improved but "sport climbing" really, cragging rather than climbing having to be about summits, has been around since the 20's in England, the 30's here. Its just better protected now.

"Modern" test piece thin cracks were being put up the 60's...it was a revolution then as something like that was just nailed before. This is when the one pitch cutting edge routes and free climbing as an end to itself became more commonplace rather than just getting up things.

The rest is just better toys and the relaxing of ethics.

When was the first time climbing today looked like it does today? Right after Jardine invented the Cam and they started rap bolting limestone in France and Smith Rocks in the early 80's. Tiny refinements since then. But this is not "modern" in the technical definition of the word.

I don't think you know what "modern" is and maybe should take a college course on "Modernism". Its not a word that just applies to what you think is currently hip. Its an entire world view and is centuries old.

The Vulgarians of the 60's could also show the bluetooth 420 bois how to party too. Honestly, the "rebel" side of climbing is incredibly tame now.

Modern climbing was born in 1977 with the FA of Phoenix 5.13a. The SLCD was a major equipment breakthrough. And being willing to work the moves until a clean redpoint could be made was a style change that allowed harder lines to be put up.

There were a couple more big changes, rap bolted sport routes in the US and sticky rubber in the mid 80s. But nothing as paradigm changing as Ray Jardine IMO. I'd agree around 1993 is when modern climbing had matured to the point that it's similar to today.

Glowering wrote: Modern climbing was born in 1977 with the FA of Phoenix 5.13a. The SLCD was a major equipment breakthrough. And being willing to work the moves until a clean redpoint could be made was a style change that allowed harder lines to be put up.

There were a couple more big changes, rap bolted sport routes in the US and sticky rubber in the mid 80s. But nothing as paradigm changing as Ray Jardine IMO. I'd agree around 1993 is when modern climbing had matured to the point that it's similar to today.

Replace that with "climbing in its current form" was invented with the FA of the Phoenix with cams and you'll get no argument from me.

Its the "modern" part that my liberal arts education has trouble with (minored in Latin American Studies).

:)

I would think that no one is confusion the term, "modern" meaning, "relating to the current times" with "Modernism" which is a cultural movement.

hillbilly hijinks, would you call current climbing a Modernism movement? Post Modern? Post Historical? This BFA card-carrying member would like to know.   

duncan... wrote:

The next most significant is the growth of indoor bouldering. The Climbing Works in Sheffield, the first really big bouldering-only gym opened in 2006. It has been the template for 100s of others. 

Not sure that holds up. The Front opened in SLC in the late 90s (it was originally a bouldering only gym) and, while not gigantic by today's standards, would still be the largest bouldering gym in almost any city in America outside of CO/UT/TX/WA. The Spot opened in Boulder in 2002. I'm sure there are other examples. Totally agree that the growth of indoor bouldering is a massive part of the "modernization" of climbing, but I think it began much earlier than you're thinking.

Interesting discussion!  A fascinating fact in terms of women's climbing is that Catherine Destivelle was only the third woman to climb 7a in 1982. A pretty mundane grade for today's standards achievable for average Janes and Joes with enough dedication . In 1985 she was the first woman to climb 7c+/8a, having really pushed the grade.

In 1988 she did the fourth female pure 8a.

I only looked this up now and have no further facts to back this up, but it seems like one could argue, at least re women's climbing, that modern climbing came about somewhere around 1985.

Chris Stocking wrote:

Not sure that holds up. The Front opened in SLC in the late 90s (it was originally a bouldering only gym) and, while not gigantic by today's standards, would still be the largest bouldering gym in almost any city in America outside of CO/UT/TX/WA. The Spot opened in Boulder in 2002. I'm sure there are other examples. Totally agree that the growth of indoor bouldering is a massive part of the "modernization" of climbing, but I think it began much earlier than you're thinking.

The Climbing Works was emphatically not the first bouldering gym. Two UK examples: the Leeds University wall, pivotal to the rise in climbing standards in the north of England in the 70s, opened in 1964. Mile End (London), opened in the mid 1980s and was recognisably a dedicated bouldering centre in the modern idiom when I started going there in the early 90s. I’m sure they have equivalents in other countries.

The Climbing Works seems to have been the first of the mega bouldering centres, its runaway success has inspired hundreds of similar places worldwide, and - like it or not - these represent climbing for the majority of modern ‘climbers’. This was the only significant development I could think of since 1993 and I had to use a little sleight-of-hand to add anything to the very well-made original post.

hillbilly hijinks seems to be downplaying the "relaxation of ethics" but I think it has fundamentally changed the nature of the sport. No, people are for the most part not crimping harder or using fundamentally different gear than 40 years ago, but I'd argue that the change in attitude towards risk and accessibility represents a sea change.

Ethics that demanded a ground-up, no hangdog approach to climbing, combined with a lack of cams or rap bolting, meant that people either had to be willing to risk grievous bodily harm fairly regularly or have no chance of making a name for themselves in the sport. People climbed hard moves, but hard climbers were pretty much universally also very bold climbers. The mid 80s to early 90s brought in a new form of climbing which viewed pure difficulty as most worthy of praise, with big risks and the taboo against hangdogging seen as an unnecessary hindrance to athletic performance. Some top climbers adapted to the new paradigm, like Lynn Hill or Ron Kauk (speaking for the US only now), while others faded into relative obscurity.

The result has been that climbing now attracts a very different average personality type today than it did 40 years ago. Many people enter the sport and thrive who would have been turned off by the attitudes and requirements needed to succeed in the Golden Age. In my mind this is mostly a good thing, as bold climbing is of course alive and well, but there is now a new and much larger population that enjoys movement over stone without the attendant mind games of wriggling up a wide crack or steep slab with no pro.

hillbilly hijinks wrote: Replace that with "climbing in its current form" was invented with the FA of the Phoenix with cams and you'll get no argument from me.

As a die-hard trad. climber who was inspired to visit the US in 1981 by such tales of power, I’m sorry to disagree. Working routes before redpointing them was developed and codified by Germans (redpoint = rotpunkt) and French well before Jardine.

Bringing cams to market was important for trad. climbing but as this is no longer the dominant form you could say they were an evolutionary dead-end as far as modern climbing is concerned.

Ryan Pfleger wrote:
The 4 minute mile was broken in 1954. I can't come close to running a sub 4 mile. Also in 1954, Half Dome was thwarting attempts to climb the RNWF, not being successfully climbed until 1957. I've never been up the RNWF, but I'm pretty sure I am capable of getting up it. And the test route free climbs of the 50s and even 60s are being regularly climbed (as warmups) even by talentless hacks like myself.

Not yo say you're not a talentless hack , but when you think about it, with all of the options and opportunities for individuals these days, I'd say that the people who choose climbing, and who make if past the first year or two, are pretty similar to the hardcore elites of the past. They usually have a particular build, are fit, are motivated, etc. If the average 12 climber of today showed up at Camp 4 back in the day, they'd be accepted into the tribe for sure. I think the bar has been moved forward, just like most sports. The best High school/College basketball players today could dominate the NBA guys from the 50's and 60's.

Tim Dolan wrote:He said he had only ever climbed inside.  Right then I knew it was a whole new world!  

This.

It rattles my mind the amount of climbers who are gym only today. These people climbing 5x, 10x, 15x stronger than me?!?! If you say the word Trad they deify you but never get after it themselves. Year after year they mention “going to get to Rumney this year” only for you to hear about it falling through. You offer them mentorship but there’s no follow up. Do they not conceive the wonderful amazing world (that they’ve already bought into) that awaits them... Honestly breaks my heart, wish I climbed as strong as some of these youngins.

Glowering wrote: Modern climbing was born in 1977 with the FA of Phoenix 5.13a. The SLCD was a major equipment breakthrough. And being willing to work the moves until a clean redpoint could be made was a style change that allowed harder lines to be put up.

So it was born but what they were doing would have been completely unrecognizable to the .999 of climbers. 

I'll give some credit to the climbing media. Masters of Stone 2 came out in 1993. Because of the films in addition to print media it became easier for all climbers to speak the same language with regards to climbing and the culture in the same way regional accents are almost extinct now.

Long Ranger wrote: I would think that no one is confusion the term, "modern" meaning, "relating to the current times" with "Modernism" which is a cultural movement.

hillbilly hijinks, would you call current climbing a Modernism movement? Post Modern? Post Historical? This BFA card-carrying member would like to know.   

When does the modern era begin? In recreation in begins in the 19th Century with the ie gentleman climbers.

"Modernism" in cultural studies dates to the beginning of the Colonial period ie early 16th century.

Popularly, "modern" applies to the soup du jour or apparently Sharma (lol) which doesnt make it an accurate usage.

A couple points.

• I'm American and my knowledge is American-centric. So I know red pointing came from Germany, but I tend to think of when things happened in the US.
• Of course this is all opinions and speculation
• Ethics did not relax (actions affecting other climbers). Style relaxed (e.g. working a route instead of lowering and pulling the rope for each attempt). If anything ethics improved moving from pins to nuts and cams. My understanding is Jardine took grief for chipping the traverse on the Nose which was an ethical issue (combined with some undeserved grief for style choices IMO, which I think was at least partially jealousy motivated).
• Is sport climbing or bouldering (not trad) the "dominant form" of climbing today? It seems like the most well known climbing achievements lately (in the US at least) Free Rider free solo, and the Dawn Wall free climb are more trad than sport. In Yosemite there are more people trad climbing than sport climbing (one of the most popular climbing destinations and has a lot of great sport and trad climbs). Sport may be the most popular in terms of number of people doing it, but I wouldn't say it's the "dominant form".
  • It seems climbing has diversified. You have trad, sport, aid, bouldering, etc. Different people will always be into the different forms to different degrees.

Notable stuff in my little pond... from my perspective...;

First home woodie: 1984 Frank Abel and Bob Murray.  Unique enough that there was an article about it in Climbing mag.
To Bolt Or Not To Be is FAed: 1986... seemed weird to me
Beaver Wall chopped: 1988? I fully supported the action. Sport climbing and rap bolting seemed dumb.
First really noticed sport routes in Tucson: 1990.  Did a few, kind of liked them.
First roadtrip with no trad gear: 1991 City of Rock
First climbed with females that could match or outclimb me: 1991
First bought a harness with actual gear loops: 1991
First saw those little sewn slings made expressly for sport climbing: 1991
Bought those silly tiny biners with super short nylon dogbones: 1991
First saw a Grigri: around 1991 I think.
First climbing gym in Tucson: 1992
Started thinking about projecting harder sport routes: 1993

So yeah, early 90s seemed to be a big change.  My climbing gear choices are different now, but the changes are evolutionary.

90's was a big change **for you**.

Long Ranger wrote: I would think that no one is confusion the term, "modern" meaning, "relating to the current times" with "Modernism" which is a cultural movement.

hillbilly hijinks, would you call current climbing a Modernism movement? Post Modern? Post Historical? This BFA card-carrying member would like to know.   

Climbing is Modernism personified.

Bouldering is Post-Modern.

Gill was a performance artist.

hillbilly hijinks wrote: You're still wrong because you don't know the history of rock climbing in the USA.

Climbers in the 60's were just as strong, if not stronger at chimneys, they just didn't have the tools we have now and the lack of ethical contraints to climb as we choose putting bolts wherever we want. Herman Buhl (solo FA Nanga Parbat) was famous for one finger pull-ups in the 50's. The dudes in Dresden were putting up 5.12 in the early 60's iirc. Gill was as well.

5.12 slabs were put up in the 70's with EBs. Harder slabs are almost never put up today ground up. In that sense slab climbing difficulty standards have regressed. Sticky rubber matters less the harder it gets where edging becomes a thing.

The Camp 4 Bouldering circuit was a thing in the 60's. Destination bouldering areas like Horsetooth Reservoir were a thing in the 60's. Bouldering just wasn't the hype. Other than your **cough** large pads the sport hasn't changed a bit. :) Sorry, I call them maxi-pads ever since I saw Vitaly stack 3 of them at the base of Blue Suede Shoes.

The thing you keep hanging up on is that gear improved but "sport climbing" really, cragging rather than climbing having to be about summits, has been around since the 20's in England, the 30's here. Its just better protected now.

"Modern" test piece thin cracks were being put up the 60's...it was a revolution then as something like that was just nailed before. This is when the one pitch cutting edge routes and free climbing as an end to itself became more commonplace rather than just getting up things.

The rest is just better toys and the relaxing of ethics.

When was the first time climbing today looked like it does today? Right after Jardine invented the Cam and they started rap bolting limestone in France and Smith Rocks in the early 80's. Tiny refinements since then. But this is not "modern" in the technical definition of the word.

I don't think you know what "modern" is and maybe should take a college course on "Modernism". Its not a word that just applies to what you think is currently hip. Its an entire world view and is centuries old.

The Vulgarians of the 60's could also show the bluetooth 420 bois how to party too. Honestly, the "rebel" side of climbing is incredibly tame now.

I ended each of my previous posts with an invitation to prove me wrong. You haven't done so. Actually, I think we agree on all of the relevant facts.

I specifically acknowledged that people were bouldering in the Valley and near Boulder. And nothing in my argument depends on grades. It's hard to deny that grades went up over time; Gill himself went from V8 to V10 between the early sixties and late 70s. But I'm much more interested in the rules climbers play by, the language we speak, and, yes, the tools we use to interact with the rock.*

You minimize these questions as "tiny refinements" and "relaxing of ethics." But it's exactly these ethical changes and technological changes that create a gulf: on one side is the early 80s and before, where practices were strange and foreign to us, and gear was rudimentary. On the other is 1993 and after, where gear hasn't changed much and the terminology and practices had coalesced to a firm point and hasn't changed much since.

Indeed, these questions-experimentation in form, rejection of tradition, the interaction of technology with lived experience-are exactly the questions that modernism is concerned with.

Of course, I was using the term in its other, fully proper, sense:"of, relating to, or characteristic of the present or the immediate past." But I think both definitions are worthy of discussion.

Perhaps the question of mutual intelligibility and whether the language we use to describe something determines its nature is more postmodern than modern. But I'll leave that to the philosophers. In any case, I think I've been clear about the question I asked.

To sum up:

• I don't think climbing was modern as long as people were pounding pins on free climbs, and that lasted into the 70s. 
• I don't think climbing was modern as long as the no-hang-dog ethic and yo-yoing were still commonly practiced, and that lasted into the 80s. 
• I don't think climbing was modern as long as there wasn't a subset of climbers who thought of themselves as boulderers, who never or rarely tied in, and who frequented bouldering-only locales and went to larger climbing areas, like the Valley, with the intention to only boulder. And I don't think that transition occurred until the 80s or early 90s, when the popularity of Hueco Tanks, pads, and the V-scale aided the divergence of bouldering as a separate, popular discipline.
• I don't think climbing was modern before the separation of free climbing into "trad" and "sport," and the naming of those disciplines, which didn't occur until the mid-80s.
• I don't think sport climbing itself was fully modern until developers let go of the idea that bolted face climbs should still have an element of boldness, which lingered into the late 80s at Smith, Rumney, and the French areas.**

I think that by 1993, all of these threads had coalesced to the point where the sport was recognizably modern. And that much less change has taken place since then. Thus modern climbing is in direct conversation with early-90s climbing in a way that it is not with climbing less than a decade prior.

Here are some facts you could put forward that could prove my argument wrong. You could say that, no, lots of people were showing up in the Valley or other destination areas just to boulder and not climb with ropes. You could say that, actually, people were whipping all over the place back then and that the yo-yo and hang-dog ethic was honored more in the breach than in reality; you could cite some test pieces that were put up with extensive rehearsal and repeated hangs before the send. You could say that no, actually there were densely rap-bolted climbs before the mid-80s.

In a subsequent post, I may deal with changes that have occurred since 1993 and whether they are causing a similar gulf to develop now.

*The fact that people climbed hard slab ground up in EBs in the 70s I think helps my point-the available tools were maximized and resulted in some impressive climbs. But today, those accomplishments are not fully appreciated because the focus of the sport has shifted. The technological tools-better shoes, cams, lent themselves towards steeper climbing. And the changing cultural attitudes about the acceptability of rap bolting, rehearsal, and indoor training also favored a dramatic shift away from bold, ground-up slab to safe, steep, hard climbing.
**True, my focus is on the US. I know that sport climbing came earlier to Europe but I'm less familiar with the overall history of climbing over there and the interactions between their various ethical schools-alpinism, English grit, Czech sandstone, etc to render an opinion on when it became modern in the sense I'm using the word. But if I've learned anything, it's that the Euros were always doing it better, earlier, and with laxer ethics than in the US at any given time.

hillbilly hijinks wrote:

When does the modern era begin? In recreation in begins in the 19th Century with the ie gentleman climbers.

"Modernism" in cultural studies dates to the beginning of the Colonial period ie early 16th century.

Popularly, "modern" applies to the soup du jour or apparently Sharma (lol) which doesnt make it an accurate usage.

You seem to have a very strong opinion about the definition of the term "modern", but for the sake of this discussion, the OP specifically defined what they were asking for:

To me, "recognizably modern" means that you could show up the crag that year with your current gear and take your current approach and not look out of place. Sure, your 2020 hairstyle would be silly, and your rope would be skinnier, but everything would be mutually intelligible. Your approach to a climbing day would not draw remarks or reproach. 

As you said earlier, people were climbing incredibly hard back in the 60's, and for the most part, it's gear and ethics (or perhaps style) that has changed since then. The OP is specificlaly asking at what point do you think the gear, ethics, and style shifted to where they are now? If I showed up with my modern rack and hangdogged a sport route, I'd have numerous pieces of gear (cams, grigri), and numerous techniques (hangdogging, climbing with only bolts for protection), that would be unfamiliar. At what point in time did gear, ethics, and style shift far enough that I wouldn't receive a second glance? OP is positing early 90's. Do you disagree?

1. Pounding pins to climb something is as modern as it gets set against the back drop of human history.

2. Hang-dogging was totally commonplace **everywhere** on top ropes since they were invented. It is just a style consideration to see that on lead now as pro is more reliable. Mixed free and aid was how climbing was done until the free-climbing revolution of the 60's. People claimed the FA of everything that they "climbed" but hung all over. The 60's just purified "free climbing" style for a time.

3. There were plenty of boulderers in the 60's and some exclusively so. Climbing was simply so less popular then that there is less available history. You under-estimate how developed the Camp 4 or Stoney Point circuits were at that time. Again, I see bouldering as more post modern response to the dominant modern demand for "real climbing" of big stuff.

4. Fundamentally, climbing from the get go is modern. Its a post-industrial response to pollution and world wars. Use factories for fun, not war.

5. Sport climbing is more Post modern too, imo. It was as much an ethical change (allowing way more bolts) as much as a style change (allowing safe hanging on lead).

I think in person we would have loads of agreement. In these posts we simply make errors or don't communicate clearly and thanks for taking the time for the discourse.

Keep in mind, all of the enjoyment of the outdoors is a "Modern" conception born in the 19th century. Mostly all that we do today is just a refinement of the concepts developed then.

The current "soup dujour" of style and ethics hasn't much changed since late 70's/early 80's, we simply have far more practioners due to the explosion of the gyms starting in the early 90's.

I find it particularly humorous that anyone thinks Sharma modernized climbing in any way. Chris just had stronger fingers than everyone else. As much as I like the kid he didn't invent a thing but stepped into the shoes of Le Menestrel and Tribout and Edlinger (and to a degree Alan Watts and Skinner etc).