21–30 of 95 posts
Has anyone else found that people who are really into rock climbing always feel the need to bring climbing up?
I was skeptical at first on these freshly new shoes vendors, but when I tried out their products, it's on-par quality with the existing vendors. Even more, often time, these newcomers has far durable product than the traditional vendors.
My guess is, traditional vendors aimed for the too high end product and losing the durability. They aimed for the high friction and more natural naked foot feeling, resulting their sole ever softer rubber and thinner. Usual climbing shoes sole has 4mm thick. But these high end product go as thin as 2.5mm.
If your weight isn't less than 50kg, you'll wear it out in 3 month.
My other complaint for a particular famous Italian climbing shoes vendor is, that they don't use strong glue. Perhaps, Italia is less humid than Japan so their glue doesn't need to be that strong, but this particular Italian-made shoes has serious issues on their glue so the shoes start to disassemble itself before the sole wear out.
Has anyone else found that people who are really into rock climbing always feel the need to bring climbing up?
Take shoes. Here's what the brand new Scarpa Instinct looked like nine years ago:
https://www.climbing.com/gear/new-and-notable-scarpa-instinc...
Notice the tiny scrap of rubber they stuck on to the top of the thing. That was revolutionary at the time. Today, that rubber takes over the whole upper surface of the shoe. Here's a pair of mine in action last year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcN3WETCDzM
Trust me, I tried that problem quite a bit harder back before rubber-topped shoes came into vogue, and there was no holding that toe hook. The method of the day was to use your heel, which was, well, harder.
If you check out the shoe range of just that one company, you'll find that this is like their fifth most technical shoe. Kept around because old timers like me still like them.
"And to return to Alex Honnold, perhaps the most important lesson a free-market loving economist should draw is that sometimes people will do extraordinary things without the motivation of money." My dad likes to visit the same coffee shop every morning, where he sees more or less the same people. He likes to show his friends pictures of his son on big routes in Yosemite or the Andes, preferring the ones with danglin…
> sometimes people will do extraordinary things without the motivation of money Spending money and doing things will always be more fun than earning money. People earn money to spend it on pursuits like rock climbing, even if climbing the rock itself is free, buying the equipment and taking time off to climb it costs money, so those extraordinary things were done thanks to an earlier motivation to make money.
While you're right that making money helps people live an easier life more able to do extraordinary things, climbing culture exemplifies those extraordinary things are possible without it. Much of the development of modern climbing was done with almost no money.
Read Steve Roper's "Camp 4".
Has anyone else found that people who are really into rock climbing always feel the need to bring climbing up?
It still amazes me how climbing gear continues to find ways to improve every year. The pads I land on and the shoes I climb in today are undeniably better than the ones I was using just five years ago. Take shoes. Here's what the brand new Scarpa Instinct looked like nine years ago: https://www.climbing.com/gear/new-and-notable-scarpa-instinc... Notice the tiny scrap of rubber they stuck on to the top of the thing. T…
That's a beautiful line!
"And to return to Alex Honnold, perhaps the most important lesson a free-market loving economist should draw is that sometimes people will do extraordinary things without the motivation of money." My dad likes to visit the same coffee shop every morning, where he sees more or less the same people. He likes to show his friends pictures of his son on big routes in Yosemite or the Andes, preferring the ones with danglin…
Has anyone else found that people who are really into rock climbing always feel the need to bring climbing up?
People like talking about things they are passionate about. For better or worse, climbing is the new "Tech Basic" thing to do, where lots of people in tech are recently getting into it, and therefore excited about it. It's a natural consequence, and a fact of human existence. People talk about their pets a lot because they spend a lot of time and energy with their pets. Same for kids. Same for programmers (who do it…
The reward after doing a tough route is just incredible.