Bouldering and Skateboarding . . . Rating Scales . . .  

Not long ago I remarked in an interview that I hoped bouldering wouldn't become skateboarding . I was referring to what appeared to me to be the largely juvenile nature of the latter, while contemplating and celebrating the persistence, well into their forties and beyond, of a small band of superb boulderers I've known for years. I am now aware that many skateboarders are older than I thought. And the in-your-face sort of antics some of them pull probably don't differ that much from what one can find in the bouldering community.

In addition, I've been informed by an intelligent and reliable source that, in fact, in some quarters, youth bouldering is in worse kinaesthetic shape than skateboarding. At least in skateboarding the participants attempt new tricks and talk specifically of those moves - as in gymnastics - and of the urban backdrops upon which they are performed. They also appear to have a high regard for style . Now these attitudes certainly exist among many young boulderers, but there also are comments like "I need to do an easy V6!" instead of "I want to master this sequence of moves!" A boulder route is sometimes seen as merely the representative of a class of the V-scale.

I'm not saying this behavior is particularly common - but it does occur often enough that I find it philosophically annoying. As an old timer I still think in terms of the "golden age" of American Bouldering - the 1950s through the 1960s. The seeds of bouldering then emanated from the perplexities manifested by chaotic sculptures of living rock, and not from some questionable numerical scale. Exploration was a significant part of the experience. Competitive bouldering sessions were very informal and centered on personal challenges among the participants, and numbers or ratings were rarely mentioned. We learned our skills through exploratory climbing efforts and some auxilliary training, and did not perceive the act of bouldering as having a graded structure.

Formal learning processes in general evaluate and approve in increments. As long as the value of bouldering is seen as a continuum of acquired skills and not as an unregulated adventure numbers may have more substance than the actual rock.
On the other hand, difficulty standards were considerably lower when I was in my prime than they are now. Currently, if a climber wants to reach his limits, he probably does need to follow a systematic bouldering regimen structured with a grading system. I don't think I would be interested in doing that if I were a young man, for it would not produce the unanticipated rewards of exploration that attracted me in the first place. Part of the pleasure of classical bouldering was to contend with the unexpected.

What do you think? E-mail me your comments.