Access and Ethics changes on the (Fanatic) climbing scene

Pierre Délas has been an influential climber on the french climbing scene for 20+ years, although just being 41-years-old. He started out by writing articles in Grimper magazine and later wrote on the internet for Kairn.com. In 2015, he started Fanatic Climbing mainly covering the french climbing scene. For 15 years he is also on the board for one of the most active climbing clubs/gyms in France (Massy) when it comes to competition climbing. Furthermore, he is interested and concerned about access and ethics in climbing and here is a great article on these subjects. (c) Sam Bié (First Pierre sent over a picture from an 8c but later commented. “I am sorry but you should not publish that picture as climbing ethics say you should only publish pictures of sent routes ;)”.

Could you please say something about your climbing background?
I started climbing in 1991 in Toulouse, southern France at 11. I was lucky, my middle school had the first indoor climbing wall in the city. I first climbed outside in 1993 and became addicted in my teenage years, at the end of the 90s. My father would bolt new routes during the week and let me bag the FAs at the weekend. I also climbed with a lot of people around Toulouse, especially some strong locals like retiring Eric Siguier, Robyn Erbesfield and Didier Raboutou. Now I’ve been living in a Paris suburb for the last 15 years but with my girlfriend, we rock climb on our numerous vacations, and I try to go to Font as often as possible between trips. My goal is to climb the hardest I can every day and outside as much as I can throughout the year. In my best years, I manage to climb approximately 150 days outside.

What are the biggest positive and negative changes on the scene over the years?
For me, the biggest positive changes are the training tools and indoor walls, the increase in level and also the many hardcore crags developed around the world. The facilities/accommodations that have appeared this past quarter of a century also give us a huge playground with a lot of King Lines everywhere. Other improvements in my view are the current marginalisation of chipped holds as well as the amount of information and content you can find about rock climbing. It’s pretty striking now compared to 2 decades ago.

The negatives changes are, again in my opinion, the lack of curiosity regarding climbing cultures and environmental impacts, which are more and more lost and ignored by the climbing world. Also, ethics is often unknown or questioned, like the use of fans in bouldering now. For me, taking care of nature and ethics, develop a curiosity about what is done in climbing should be the pillars of our practice. For example in Font using brushes and telescopic booms, cleaning our feet on mats, cleaning the boulder before leaving, taking care of the rock, having an idea of the main ethical rules such as proper stand/sit starts from the ground and not a big crashpad, not staying at carparks overnight, not lighting fires or climbing at night because it’s strictly forbidden. An example for rock climbing, buying the local guidebook when I plan a trip. I see a lot of people who don’t know or don’t care, just climbing for their own outside of all other considerations like they do when indoor training or shopping. It’s definitively not the practice I experienced at the beginning. We are now a rather large community and climbing has become an object of instant consummation with a lot of gyms, brands, gears, Olympic Games and so on.

In my opinion, we act outdoors more and more like consumers, like we climb at the gym and therefore don’t care about what’s around, local problems or restrictions, nature conversation. We just want to climb and go home having tried some routes and ticked some sends like after any training session. The result is marginalising the process and uniforming the experience. The development of social media also generates a weird thing: every climber can do their self promotion, where ‘be the hero’ replaces ‘be aware of the climbing world’. Besides with all the vlogs and videos of climbing, especially in bouldering, everyone is exposed to questionable habits, like climbing with speakers on, at night, using fans, dabs, cheating beta or without any clue, wearing kneepads at all times, which goes to show that the emphasis is squarely on the performance aspect and none of the rest. I can’t say ‘it was better in the past’, but I can clearly state that I find sportclimbing values quite different now. And I don’t exclude myself from the lot, because we have our responsibility in the content we publish as climbing media.

What can be done and how do you see the future ?
I hope for a change in the mentalities, with more consideration for the context. We should try to kickstart a new (i-e old) approach. For example, educate the younger generations more, or do more for nature. Spread more content about climbing culture/spirit and the significance of looking after nature. Who developed the place where I’m currently climbing? What was the vision here? What are the local climbing rules ? Is the area where I climb fragile? What does ‘good behaviour’ mean for a rock climber in nature? What can I do in order to minimise my impact as a climber when I climb outdoors? What about my carbon footprint? I think the future of climbing should consider these aspects first. Our rocks and our history are very important and we need to preserve our heritage as long as we can. If we don’t act all will be polished, dirty or forbidden in a few decades. It’s quite a pessimistic report, but at a time when climate change is starting to really bite, it’d be good to open our eyes and ask the right questions.