Hey bro, do you lift, bro? What are you at? Oh me, my 1rm dead is 375, bench 275, no belt, no gloves.
Hey bro, do you do intermittent fasting? Yeah I do keto too, I use a 24-48 cleanse, I'm in ketosis for twice as long now.
Hey bro, do you climb? Just redpointed a V7, up to 5.11c's on the wall after tearing a ligament on a wicked crimpy dyno. Yeah I'll be at Hueco the next two weeks.
Hey bro, do you code? Me, I write Clojure, I've been doing functional for a few years now. Hot reloading has so upped my game.
Hey bro, do you VPN? Yeah I use a pi-hole to my own vpc, all my connections are double encrypted in a VM, non-VPN traffic blocked at the gateway. No my https proxy scrubs all the cookies and I disabled persistent state in firefox.
Hey bro, do you blockchain? Yeah I use Z-coin for my farm, just got a shipment of new GPUs, I'm almost up to 2.3 teraflops.
Hey bro, do you self-host? Yeah I run my own dns, web server, file server, email server. My smart phone and smart watch have open-source firmware, and I'm betaing an openstreetmaps app.
Hey bro, do you startup? Yeah I bootstrapped 4 companies so far, two of them got round 3 funding, one's still in stealth, one was in the black for six months. Cashed out for a cool mil, reinvested into my next project, only worked 80 hours a week for two years. My old babysitter's uncle's cousin knows a Saudi prince so I'm pivoting to capture a different market.
I used to have this tendency — initially I wasn’t aware of it — I was just passionate and talked about what I wanted to talk about. Eventually became aware of it and lived a period where I still talked about rock climbing all the time/overly much — but I was passionate and it was what I wanted to talk about.
At the time Rock climbing was also a pretty social experience for me. I derived joy from talking about it with others — and some people can talk about their passions in a way that helps others feel inspired. That’s a good thing I think.
Now I don’t do it anymore — but a part of me is sad that I don’t because it reflects a decrease in my motivation and “psyche” for rock climbing and decrease in my desire to share that “psyche” with others.
People like talking about things they are passionate about. For better or worse, climbing is the new "Tech Basic" thing to do, where lots of people in tech are recently getting into it, and therefore excited about it. It's a natural consequence, and a fact of human existence. People talk about their pets a lot because they spend a lot of time and energy with their pets. Same for kids. Same for programmers (who do it beyond work).
I hate being basic and following the crowd, but climbing is just so much fun. It is the most fun activity I've done, up there with Soccer....and easily the most fun individual activity.
The reward after doing a tough route is just incredible.
As much as my comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek, I don't mean to say you shouldn't do it because it's basic ;). I've been climbing for many many years and agree that it's extremely fun and rewarding. That doesn't change with more people enjoying it (but also stay home so I can get the good routes to myself ;) ).
It the new skiing. Or maybe sailing and golfing, to a smaller extent. A thing well-off professionals go do (and yes, not just them, same as the other things) then come back and talk about.
Agree with the other reply, my perspective from a decade of rock climbing in the US is that this is almost if not totally inverted from the truth.
Rock climbing started with quite modest pioneers and was quickly joined by a lot of impoverished people. Their stories are easily found.
Even now with an industry spawned and high dollar protective and performance equipment available, the barrier to entry is very accessible, even more so if you live near outdoor areas that don't require an admittedly increasing gym membership.
I don't think it's particularly a sport for well-off professionals at all. It just happens that most of the people we interact with in SF/SV are well-off professionals, so those are the climbers you know. If you go a different part of the country/world, you'll probably find climbers of way different demographics.
But climbing’s a lot cheaper than those things. If you’re in a midsize city you can get an unlimited gym membership for maybe $50 per month. Shoes, generously will run you $200 per year. That’s $800 per year all-in. The equipment alone, even without the travel or membership expenses, seems higher for the other hobbies listed.
But your example is only if you only boulder indoors. Costs add up quickly if you want to move outdoors and want the flexibility to do a variety of climbs.
You can easily have a couple thousand dollars in gear.
Harness $70
Belay device $20-150
Rope $150+ (possibly multiple)
Quickdraws $10-14 each, you probably want a dozen or so.
Some slings
Some carabiners
That'll get you outside and working on bolted routes.
Then you get into climbs that don't have man made bolts that you can clip into (trad climbing).
Each piece of protection at this level costs $60-80 new, and you'll probably want like 10 of them at least.
Yes and no. You can go a long time with very little gear.
I have a pretty nice trad rack, but most of the time I could get by with shoes, harness, belay device, etc. just because I'm typically climbing with other folks.
If you're learning to climb, then you really don't need the equipment beyond personal stuff at all because your partners will have it.
Like, I haven't had to use my rack for about the last 3 months just because the guy I was climbing with liked his better.
Not to mention that I have cams in my rack from the 90s... a lot of this stuff lasts a very long time and has a reasonable used market.
IME, it is way cheaper than, say, lift-serviced skiing or golfing.
It's like anything else, you could spend a lot. You could also live in your car and still afford to do this stuff.
Having gotten pretty into climbing in the past year, I'll agree that it's an easy tendency to have. Climbing requires a lot of time and dedication to see steady improvement, and as a result, I find that it's one of the main hobbies/passions for many in the sport. Most people like to bring up their strong interests in conversation, but sometimes the jargon and general narratives around climbing can definitely be off-putting to someone less invested in it.
Climbing is a bit different I think from all other sports. In running or cycling, if you are good, you are fast, if you are not so good, you are a bit slower, but you did the same track.
In climbing every boulder or route is different. And if you are not a really strong climber, you can't never ever climb for ex. "Action Direct" (you can't even leave the ground).
I don't think the companys are innovative. There are so many things you could better and safer than todays gear.
I once lost a job opportunity by passionately speaking about nothing but jiu-jitsu during the interview. They kept asking and I kept talking. After about 20 minutes they said thank you and goodbye.
It seems to be one of those hobbies that becomes completely all-consuming. Every person I've ever known who gets into rock climbing, it's all they ever do; every weekend they go climbing, they talk about climbing, they get really into optimizing their climbing gear.
