Are You a Social Contortionist?

In other words, have you ever choked on your own foot? Or visually inspected the inside of your own ass?

This past week, I’ve been introduced to three such brilliant contributors to mankind, two in person, the third online.

The first two were at Lake Louise on the weekend, fresh off their hard core, painfully slow ascents of trade routes in the Bugs, and showin’ the rest of us punters how their bad asses roll. While surrounded by two Rockies alpine first ascentionists and three 5.13 sport climbers, they passively aggressively espoused their crack climbing radness with asinine comments like, “But those aren’t cracks [at the Amphitheatre]. Come on.”

And then they sent Pub Night (5.6) while only putting in 15 pieces of gear. What made it even more hard core was that they were fat.

In between over-racking for easy climbs, comments similar to the following were made:

• “Never sport climbed, never toproped” said smugly. Trust me, Einstein, we could tell.
• “Sonnie… Timmy… Marc”, referring to good climbers, clumsily implying camaraderie, while they’ve likely only drooled on their shoes after slideshows.

I was introduced to the third social contortionist in an online forum. While engaged in a forum-exchange with Raphael Slawinski, the third hardcore moron said, “In my vast experience with nasty rock…” and “My tolerance for objective risk always seems to be a bit more than any of my Canadian partners over the past 7 years……..I can’t think of any of my hardened desert tower friends…”

I was a beginner too. It’s an important phase.

But PLEASE. If you are still working through the rubber on your first pair of rock shoes… or if you find that some of your rad trad cams still have paint on them… or if you’re just back from your first multi-pitch camping trip… do not delude yourself into thinking sending 5.6 gear at a sport crag — or backing off a huge flake that most climb past — makes you cool.

“‘Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Would you like a little gravy with that ankle?