Climbing purists question 'from-the-route' social media

ALEX LOWTHER

The New York Times News Service

Published Friday, Dec. 09, 2011 7:58PM EST

Last updated Friday, Dec. 09, 2011 8:15PM EST

Last month the climber Tommy Caldwell lived on a nylon ledge hung 365 metres up El Capitan, the massive sweep of granite that stands sentinel over Yosemite Valley, for more than two weeks.

One of the world?s best all-around rock climbers, he slept on the ledge, cooked on the ledge and went to the bathroom into a receptacle hanging below the ledge. And at the top of this solitary, silent sport, he was being watched by thousands of spectators around the world.

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From Singapore: ?Inspirational, Tommy! Well done!? From Poland: ?Smiles from Krakow. Keep pressing!!!? From Slovakia: ?Go, Tommy, go!!!?

Mr. Caldwell updated his progress on Facebook using his iPhone, which he charged with portable solar panels on the wall. His fans, more than 4,000 of whom he accumulated during his climb, could follow along in real time with commentary from the climber himself. No need to wait days, weeks or months for a print article or video.

The Dawn Wall, as Mr. Caldwell?s project is known, is the latest example of what has become an increasingly accepted practice among professional climbers and the wider climbing community: from-the-route social media. Observers enjoy it, sponsors encourage it and climbers get to share what is inherently a selfish pursuit.

But a vocal minority questions what happens to a sport whose ideals of purity are traditionally based on adventure, commitment, self-sufficiency and individual achievement when online interaction happens instantly.

?In the last six years, more climbers have started engaging in almost-live updates from the mountains,? said Katie Ives, the editor of Alpinist magazine. She worries that ?instead of actually having the experience be the important part, it?s the representation of the experience that becomes the important part ? something is lost.?

David Roberts, a writer and climber, said from-the-route media ?introduces a fatal self-consciousness? to a climb. It removes the ?blissful sense of being alone out there.?

On his recent climb on El Capitan, Mr. Caldwell battled fatigue and the impending winter on what will be considered the hardest big-wall free climb in the world (free as in free of aid; he used a rope and protection in case of falls, but only his hands and feet to go up). Driving home to Estes Park, Colo., Mr. Caldwell, 33, said the route did feel different from others.

?It felt like there were a lot of people watching our progress, like a football game,? Mr. Caldwell said. ?Usually when I climb it?s just me and my partner. It?s a very solitary thing.?

?This is a whole new world,? he added.

As soon as mountaineering was considered a recreational activity, climbers were reporting their feats in one form or another. In 1336, the wandering Italian poet Petrarch wrote an account of his long walk up Mont Ventoux in France. By 1953, sponsors of expeditions wanted news quickly. On the first ascent of Mount Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a reporter was on the expedition, eager to report success to the Crown, which wanted the update ? that a subject of the British Empire had conquered the highest summit in the world ? before Queen Elizabeth?s coronation.

By the late 1990s, satellite linkups and the Internet had shrunk the possible interval between an event and coverage of it to virtually nothing. In 1999, on an expedition that made the first ascent of the northwest face of Pakistan?s Great Trango Tower, an unseen line was crossed. A highly visible, remote objective matched with a reported sponsorship budget of $50,000, a full camera crew and daily Web updates from the climbers on the wall (via an elaborate system involving a satellite linkup from base camp) drew the ire of the wider climbing community.

Mark Synnott, one of three climbers on the expedition, said he came away from the experience conflicted. ?It was a necessary evil,? he said of all the media. But without the computers and cameras there would not have been an expedition, and without the expedition there would have been no new cutting edge route on the tower.

Before an injury forced him off the wall, Kevin Jorgeson, 27, was Mr. Caldwell?s partner on the El Capitan route. He began posting updates from the route via Twitter in 2010. Mr. Caldwell was skeptical at first, but came around.

Last year, facing a large snowstorm, Mr. Caldwell and Mr. Jorgeson posed a question to a message board on a climbing website, to see if their hanging camp would be bombarded by falling ice after the storm cleared, making it too dangerous to stay. Out of hundreds of responses, a few people with experience on the wall after a storm explained that their camp was unprotected from above and would be showered with dangerous chunks of ice.

They retreated the next day.

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