Forums about climbing

Posted by on December 24th, 2021  •  0 Comments

I’ve been off Facebook for a few months now. My account isn’t dead, it’s suspended…like a leave of absence. I shut it down after they were called before congress by a whistleblower. She said they were choosing profit over kindness.

In addition to this blog I’ve long been a fan of online forums about climbing. It used to be, and still can be, a way to meet climbing partners. We also share stories about our trips, discuss what gear is good or bad, read news stories of concern to climbers.

There have been many forums over the years. The first one I hung out at was cascadeclimbers.com, and that was back at the start of this century. There have been others, but the most current one is mountainproject.com. It has turned into a multipurpose website. You can also download it onto your phone and it functions as a gps enabled guidebook, no cell service required.

It’s a very robust app. You can make comments on a route while you are climbing that later get uploaded to the cloud. There is a tick list function for how well and when you have climbed something, and all that gets uploaded and shared.

As with most online forums there are a lot of angry keyboard warriors, but there are also kind and generous souls looking for like minded people to have a discussion about matters of consequence.

Recently there was a 12 page thread where the original poster (OP) asked a sincere question about whether climbing wrecked marriages. His marriage was failing so the post was written from the heart and many people responded in kind. I read about 8 pages before deciding to offer my viewpoint.

Before I get into my online response, I do sometimes wonder how rare it is that we both come from families where divorce is so rare. All 4 children of my grandma had lifetime marriages, as did she, and her parents. Of my 13 cousins, there have been 3 that have been divorced. The rest have lifetime marriages…well, at least so far, but we are all in our 60s. My brothers kids, and my kids seem normal and happily married. My sister’s kids have just started getting married.

So what is it? Is there a thread of relationship integrity that flows down through the family? Some super gene that makes us kinder than the average Joe? I’m certainly not perfect. I can get moody and mean for no reason whatsoever. Sue is usually the only one that sees it. I think/hope she has learned to live with my occasional bursts of rudeness.

I guess you could say, like any married couple, we have arguments occasionally…probably mostly because I’m being a d$ck. Like I say, not a perfect human being. Still, 90 percent of the time we get a long quite well and see eye to eye. We have different passions, but also many in common. I don’t want to hex myself by saying this…but at times it even seems the romance is still alive…well, maybe that’s going too far.

I could link to the post directly…but you can find it easily enough if you are curious.

I put a couple hours into crafting a carefully worded response. I’m posting it here to be sure it gets preserved. I have total control over this website…whereas mountainproject may or may not stand the test of time. Here  are the words from my post:

//////*****//////

Sorry to hear about the relationship challenges. I’m no marriage counselor, but I did marry my best climbing partner in 1979…and we’re still climbing together…with two grandkids now.

Having a significant other who climbs is the gold standard. Nothing beats seeing those warm eyes looking at you from the other side of the ledge. I’ve got some great climbing buddies, but it’s not the same as ‘friends with benefits’.

I remember a time about 7 years in when I was not real happy in our marriage. She was perfect: smart,  fit, strong, funny, a perfect climber babe…but something was off kilter in my head. For some dumb reason I was ready to bail. But Thursday rolled around and I was like: “Dang, I need a partner this weekend. Maybe I can put up with her for a few more days.”

On Saturday we were half way up a multipitch route, sitting on a fat ledge and not saying much. I was racking for the next pitch and happened to look over at her. Something clicked into place in my brain and I realized I was on a ledge with a very beautiful woman…and she was my woman. Climbing basically saved my marriage, over and over.

Things got harder for us when we had kids. But we were lucky to have my mom and dad nearby. They’d come on our climbing trips to babysit in the campsite. Both sets of parents were always happy to babysit for day trips. She and I would climb all day…then come back to the kids.

We had a few partners (team of 3) who could tolerate children and  managed to still take our long climbing road trips together. I knew one guy who paid his 17 year old baby sitter to come to Yosemite for a week in the station wagon so he and his wife could still climb together.

When the kids were toddlers I cut back on climbing and did a lot of windsurfing. It was almost as fun, and didn’t require a partner. The kids liked playing on the beach…and she and I could take turns sailing.

When the kids were older, we would do compromise trips where we would climb at Smith for 4 days. The kids would play at the base of the cliff, chasing lizards and stuff. Then we’d  head out to the coast. She and the kids hiked or played in the surf while I painted landscapes. We each got what we wanted…and we were together as a family.

Now that we are in our sixties, she’s cut back on hard climbing due to some back and hand problems. Poor old body is wearing out. But she still cruises 5.9 friction and loves jtree.

I still love the dirtbag life style and take several 3 week road trips each year, plus a lot of weekends. She often flies in to join me for the last week. Again, it seems that marriage is about compromise.

She loves puttering around the yard, doing her fitness walks, and helping to babysit our two grandkids. That’s sort of a family tradition at this point. But she starts to miss me after a few weeks…as I do her.

So that’s my story. I have no easy answers…other than that climbing didn’t hurt my marriage, it saved it.

/////*** A few people thanked me for writing, they were very kind. I responded as shown below **//////

To those who commented, thanks. I’ve been incredibly lucky. I sometimes wonder if it helped that my parents, and grandparents all had lifetime marriages. My wife’s family is the same way. We may have absorbed some relationship skills growing up?

Not to say you can’t learn that stuff elsewhere, from books, therapy, life…hell, I don’t know. It’s been sad watching so many marriages fall apart around us. We often know both people. And they’re usually both super smart and kind…good climbers too. Divorce seems to be the norm, and often for the best. We’ve seen many people hook up with new partners and be stronger than ever.

I didn’t mention that we also backcountry ski together, since day one. So we have both a summer and a winter sport we love to do together. She loves to hike, which I find pointless, but she’ll lure me with the promise of a good view, so I bring my easel. It’s something else we can do together.

See you out there climbing!

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