Rock Climbing

Once a chic pursuit for wealthy youth and adventurous others, by the 1990s rock climbing had come to embody a path toward greater self-fulfillment for the average person. Embraced by corporations and schools, rock climbing and the rope skills associated with it became tools to improve corporate teamwork and boost self-esteem in "atrisk" school children. While an international audience could watch extremely skilled athletes scale difficult, dangerous rock faces in televised competitions, rock climbing was available to almost anyone. For the average person, the physical challenges offered by rock climbing were overshadowed by the mental strength participants could gain by learning the sport's skills even if they never stepped foot on an actual mountain top.

Essentially a subset of mountaineering, especially during the early part of the twentieth century, rock climbing involves scaling rock faces ranging in height from tens to thousands of feet and in environments ranging from Southern California seawalls to Alaskan mountain faces. Mountain climbing became a popular sport among the British gentry during the nineteenth century, with most expeditions operating under the guise of scientific study. Yet, not until the 1920s did people begin to climb rock faces simply for the sake of the climbing experience. Over the course of the twentieth century, rock climbing grew into a multifaceted sport that encompassed recreational climbing on crags and cliffs worldwide, extremely difficult mountaineering routes, competitive sport climbing with an international television audience, and afternoons at the gym.

The sport of rock climbing has numerous subsets, all defined by the type of activity in which a climber engages; a rock climber may engage in all or only one of these specific areas of the sport. The simplest form of rock climbing is known as bouldering, in which climbers work out "problems" in scaling or traversing boulders or small cliffs without protective ropes. Bouldering is generally considered as training for climbing larger and more committing rock faces, though some climbers, most notably John Gill, have focused solely on this often extremely difficult kind of climbing. Crag climbing consists of climbing rock faces anywhere from seventy-five (considered a half of a standard climbing rope length) to one thousand or more feet. Usually, climbing routes on crags takes no more than a single day to climb. Routes that take longer than a day become considered "big wall" climbs. These are climbs in which climbers often spend multiple days on a rock face or may drop to the ground at night before climbing back up fixed ropes to the day's earlier high point. During the 1980s, sport climbing, a type of crag climbing prevalent in France that involved extremely safe pre-placed rope anchors on relatively short climbs, became popular on crags worldwide. This new climbing, with a focus almost exclusively on difficult gymnastic moves to gain the top, led into the sport of competitive climbing that moved off of natural rock walls and into gyms or prefabricated outdoor walls with resin "holds." In this arena, climbers were judged on speed, style, and the highest point reached on any given route (climbing routes here became defined by which resin holds a climber may or may not use.) Climbers who focused on bouldering, crag climbing, or big wall climbing tended to group together, forwarding self-images of adventurers, social outcasts, or heroes, while sport climbers were seen as athletes; sport climbing's competitive nature differed sharply from the recreational enthusiasm of weekend rock-jocks or devoted big wall mountaineers.

Recreational climbing was generally seen as an outdoor activity more akin to hiking, backpacking, or non-technical mountain climbing. Schools devoted to teaching outdoor skills appeared throughout the twentieth century. The two largest and most popular schools were Outward Bound, which started in Wales in 1941 to train young sailors to survive in a lifeboat during World War II, and the National Outdoor Leadership School, which opened in Wyoming in 1965 and focused on leadership training and wilderness skills. During the latter quarter of the century, attending these schools became a rite of passage for certain groups of generally affluent teenagers (and occasionally their parents during a mid-life search for meaning or adventure). While rock climbing was not the singular focus of these programs, it was a central skill that students learned not only as a wilderness activity, but as a tool toward personal growth and maturity.

By the 1980s, as the popularity of the sport spread and the growth of sport climbing made climbing safer and more accessible to more people, rock climbing became not simply a recreational activity (or a competitive sport), but an avenue toward self-fulfillment. With the increasing development of indoor artificial facilities during the 1990s, a rhetoric of "facing one's fears" and increasing one's "mental fitness" appeared to make climbing popular for mental well being, rather than for recreational purposes. As an offshoot of rock climbing (mixed with specific kinds of military training), ropes courses in which teams work to get groups or individuals through various climbing oriented tasks (rope climbing, falls, beam walking, etc.) became popular in the 1980s. These courses were not training grounds for future climbing activities, but rather focused on self-improvement and teamwork for its participants. These courses were especially popular among corporations who sent groups of management personnel there to learn skills they could apply to the contemporary corporate culture, particularly the teamwork approach of Total Quality Management. Also, both ropes courses and rock climbing activities became popular as self-empowerment tools for people working with "at risk" poor, inner-city youths who had little experience beyond urban centers. By the end of the century, rock climbing had become not only a form of recreation or sport, but a personal empowerment tool.

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