Community is a nebulous term. It's a "thing" we all engage with, but each define in a way that is subjective to our own experience. For a new climber in the gym, community might mean the regulars that he/she sessions with every Tuesday night. For the climber living in their van the last decade, community likely has more to do with the network of friends/partners acquired by climbing over the years. For many of us that live on the road, community is subject to change according to the area we are presently in. There is a community for everything. A sport climbing community, a bouldering community, competition community, vanlife, vegan, southeast, northeast, front range, SoCal, blah blah blah. These communities change, grow, and fade. But our identities as climbers are tied to the communities we belong to, and our relationships with these communities are also subject to change, grow, and fade.
Community is generally regarded with a positive connotation. How many times have we uttered or heard the words "sense of community", "the community really showed up", "community is everything". I've heard iterations of these for as long as I've been climbing, but rarely hear the flip side. And this begs the question - is EVERY community unanimously uplifting, welcoming, and/or generally supportive?
Consider our perspective. I suspect most climbers log more hours scrolling social media than log time at the gym or crag. Whether we realize it or not, our sense of community is far more developed by media consumption than by firsthand engagement. The result is a distorion of what it means for the community to "show up". Reposts, double-taps, and hashtags are not signs of solidarity. I don't mean to deny the connections that can be made on social media, but we should consider the repercussions of platforms engineered to monopolize our attention.
As far as climbing goes, the first community I was ever part of was "The Rock Room" community. It was a grungy gym characterized by short walls, polished holds, horrible hours, and match-hands-match-feet style setting. I knew nothing better, nor did I need anything better - I loved it so dearly. Climbing didn't define me at the time, nor did it define anyone that frequented The Rock Room (I'm fairly certain), but several of us have since gone on to center our lives around climbing. That's a hell of an influence for a facility that was open 9 hours a week and catered towards summer campers moreso than athletes.
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| The Rock Room |
As I progressed, I visited more and more areas - Chattanooga, Sand Rock, and Little River Canyon most often. As I broke into 5.12 and began frequenting "harder" crags, I started noticing regulars. However, I was always the outsider. I was from Rome, GA, and by the time I was climbing 5.12 consistently and 5.13 here and there, I was a student at Young Harris College, nearly 3 hours from any of these areas. When I showed up at a crag, I was CRAZY psyched. I had a million questions in my head for all of the locals and especially the individuals that were climbing harder than me - it was from them that I figured I had the most to learn. I usually tried to eek out some small talk or ask a generic question about a route or crag. Most often, I was given a quick and dismissive answer. The classic "cold shoulder". I desperately wanted to lose the label of "outsider", but I didn't want to be a poser. There was always a "tryout" mentality lurking in my mind - how to I get on their team? I wanted to earn my stripes. I wanted to show my worth.
And sure enough, after a couple of years, I was no longer getting the cold shoulder. What bothered me about this was that the only thing to change between these couple of years was my ticklist. The moment I was climbing as hard or harder than the "gatekeepers", I no longer received the cold shoulder. My questions were answered - I was told about "secret" crags, cruxes were described as more than just "soft", and people actually cared to answer "what have you been up to".
A story comes to mind here: This fall I was living at Miguel's Pizza, and climbing full time in the Red River Gorge. I had been visiting this place for 7 years at this point, and one of the routes I was interested in checking out was a 14a called "The Tube". There's a great video of Adam Taylor doing the FA on YouTube, and I'd seen several pics of some pros repeating it. Point is - it wasn't a secret. One night as I was asking for directions, someone said, "oh so and so would know where it's at, let me find him". So I meet this blonde kid, and he says something like, "Yeah well the access is weird for The Tube, you probably shouldn't be going there if you're not actually gonna do it, ya know?" In that moment, all of the beef and sour vibes that peppered my upbringing as a SE climber rushed back, and I rolled my eyes. I was pretty irked. At this point, I was confident enough in both my climbing and in my place in the community to know I didn't need to prove myself in exchange for directions.
Ultimately, me and this punk are great friends now, despite this first encounter. But I'll always give him a hard time about this exchange, even if he gives a mean bluepoint ;)
This was a pretty specific story, but here are a few common questions I found myself asking more experienced/stronger climbers when I was more novice at these "harder" crags. I've paired them with their respective answers, as I most commonly heard.
"How is that route? It looks sick!"
>"Oh yeah it's really not too bad, felt more like *gives lower grade* than *gives consensus grade*."
"Oh I've heard of that crag, what's it like?"
>"Oh it's awesome, really great routes. Probably one of the best in the area. You should probably climb here though, people are picky about who gets to go there."
"You've climbed out west?! How is it?"
>"I've climbed that western choss! It's funny, I think climbers out west avoid the south because our grades are too honest and they just bitch about the weather"
"Isn't that crux so so cool?"
>"It felt so chill, I actually didn't find it too hard."
These answers are twofold. They vaguely answer the question on the front end, and then digress to make some statement that qualifies the person rather than the answer they just gave. It took me a long time to recognize what was happening, and I'm really not sure if people know what they are doing when they make these remarks. In their digression, they are saying "I know things you don't/I've done things you can't". Essentially, they want you to know "I am smarter/better/stronger than you".
Here's the thing, I know you are. That's why I asked the question, dude. Can you imagine if every time a student asked a teacher a question, they responded with, "oh that problem? I actually learned that when I was younger, and I didn't struggle very much." Obviously. That's why we are asking you...
Professional climbers rarely come to the deep south, and those that have don't often return. Locals like to speculate its because our climbing is sooooo sandbagged and they can't handle a little humidity. I'm not going to deny that our conditions are fickle at times (certainly would never encourage anyone to come in the summer), but are we really so naïve as to think a sandbagged 13d is stopping professionals from coming here? It's because they aren't welcomed. The sport's elite are treated with the same "outsider" treatment as I had as a novice. Not to mention a major reason we don't have routes worth their time is because they get chipped down to our level. Hence the 14- plateau.
Chris Sharma, Jonathan Siegrist, Alex Megos, Joe Kinder - they've been to our crags and boulders. Years ago, Sharma was at HP40 trying the classic V11, God Module. He tried for a bit with his pad, and a crowd of others watched from a distance as he struggled in the Alabama heat. They all watched, yet offered no encouragement, no pads, and no spot. Given the stale vibe, Chris left - and the conclusion these onlookers drew and passed on was that the legendary Chris Sharma couldn't do "their" boulder. Obviously he could, but who would want to put the time in given the scenario? Maybe if the holds had been half as cold as their shoulders...
Ok, gripe complete. I think.
Despite these experiences, I consider this community family. Family isn't perfect, and neither am I. Much of what I've said may be a dramatization of what is most often casual conversation. And of course, to be complaining about climbing at all is quite a silly privilege. I much prefer expressing gratitude than voicing criticism. To this end, I must acknowledge that my deepest friendships, experiences, and climbs have resulted from my time there. My home is more or less on the road year round now, but I feel most at home waking up to some humidity, the sound of a train on Lookout Mountain, and that first glance down at my throbbing tips wondering how much skin I'm going to lose again today.
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