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Today’s guest is Graham Zimmerman, an alpinist, a recipient of the Piolet d’Or and a director at Protect Our Winters, a climate-advocacy group. His new book is “A Fine Line: Searching for Balance Among Mountains.”
But first, cave raves are all fun and games until your favorite crag gets shut down. Your favorite climbing podcaster hosts try to figure out where their personal boundaries lie for self-policing the climbing world.
Our final bit is an original ode to Vedauwoo by climbing couple Morgan Shannon and Ben Baltich.
Show Notes
Follow Graham Zimmerman on Instagram
2 responses to “RunOut #111: A Fine Line for Graham Zimmerman”
Recently I saw two climbers doing something non-kosher at a popular climbing area which I frequent. It was obvious that they were not doing this purposely, but rather out of ignorance. My first instinct was to tell them, but then doubt crept in. For one, I didn’t want to come through as an old complainer (n I’m 54), and then I didn’t want to create any sort of conflict. But then I thought that someone must educate them, and why not me? Maybe being an old geezer is to my advantage. So I mastered all my willpower, struck a polite conversation (to my best ability) and then gave them a “suggestion for improvement”. They were quite appreciative.
All of this to say: Andrew, you had all the right, and maybe even an obligation to somehow convey to those partying that there might have been consequences beyond what they considered. No, not break their fun, but talk to some of them afterwards, if you had the means to do so. I totally understand your hesitation on that, and I think there is a place for such conversations in today’s climbing circles. And maybe the young people of today cannot have all the same fun we had “back in the day”, but the world is different. And maybe we should really redefine what is fun?
Love the show, thank tou to both of you!
Thanks Dmitry! Great comment 🙏