STARTING HOLD - #30 > PHOTO ANNUAL 2009

THE ART OF EXPERIENCE

Why photography is important for climbing

Talking about climbing can be damned frustrating — those pesky non-climbers just don’t seem to get it. Our parents call our life’s passion a “hobby” and beg us to wear helmets and stay low to the ground — they’d prefer not to know the details. Strangers, the polite ones, anyway, just nod and smile as we relate our tales of whippers, slopers, and sending temps.

Maybe the problem is most people never interact with the natural world the way we do. Our game brings us to postcard-perfect places and puts us in direct, sometimes painful physical contact with rocks. We let rock wear away our skin and draw blood; we repeatedly put ourselves high above the ground, in gravity’s hands and harm’s way. And to someone who sits at a desk all day and watches TV all night, it’s hard as hell to relate.

It can even be hard to share our thoughts with one another. The experience of a climb, no matter how “spiritual,” “sick,” or “rad,” dissipates soon after the climb is done. This is why climbing conversation so often boils down to Beta, grades, and gear — they’re the only hard facts to hang your hat on. Sit in on a post-cragging bonfire gathering and you’ll see climbers waving their arms around in an effort to recreate what they felt/did out there on the rocks. It’s frustrating, but if you’re a climber you understand it’s the ineffable that’s most worth sharing. Which is why photography is so important, and why we love the Photo Annual.

As you may have heard, a picture is worth a thousand words. Very disheartening for us writers, but true in a way. A photo — a good photo — comes about as close as anything can to recreating the climbing experience. A friend of mine visiting the office the other day opened a back issue of UC. “I love this picture,” he said, pointing to a bouldering shot taken in the snowy woods of upstate New York. “It reminds me of home.” I’m not sure what he meant by that (he’s from Virginia) but the point remains: that photo took him to another place and time. Good photos have that power — they can bypass intellect and go straight to the experiential centers of the brain: to see a sloper’s texture is to feel it beneath your tips; to see a climber just casting off on a long fall is to feel your stomach rise up into your throat; to see that golden, just-before-sunset light on a vertical sandstone face is to relive those rare moments when all seemed right with the world.

In talking to climbing photographers, I’ve found this aspect of photography is often why they started shooting. The climbing experience was so rich, life altering, and hard to convey that they longed to make it concrete and give it back to the world. Here in UC’s 2009 Photo Annual, you’ll find enough photos brimming with experience to help even the most gravitationally challenged flatlander “get it” . . . and maybe even get him or her thinking about a road trip.