Thoughtful Thursday Climbing--Launch&Intro

OK Tech Tuesday—time to meet Thoughtful Thursday...
Tech Tuesday posts are super popular these days. Once a week, the posts come out. And, without fail, the climbing community social media comments section lights up like the Milky Way, with endless discussion and consideration of the “kilonewtons lost in clipping this higher piece or this lower piece” or whatever. I've certainly learned a lot from them and I appreciate the people who make the time to share the tech techniques they've learned over the years. I've certainly learned a lot from them.

But if all we can bring back from the mountains and share are ideas about clipping carabiners and load distribution, then we are missing something. Something big and important. I know climbing can offer more. I have felt it in my life and I have a strong sense you’ve felt it in yours.

This isn’t an attack on TechTuesday—safe techniques are the bedrock to a successful climbing experience and efficient, elegant execution add to the aesthetics of climbing—but it is a call for a complimentary balance between the gear-grockery/tech-geeking knowledge and the higher order experiences that we seek through the use of that knowledge. Means and ends. Forests and trees.

I’m not planning to put out a Thoughtful Thursday post every week and I’m not suggesting you should either.  But I will start using those days as an opportunity to share what I find to be evocative or illuminating thoughts I’ve experienced through and during climbing. And I hope you will as well!

Stay tuned for next week and I hope you’ll join me—as a reader and a contributor.
Let's climb higher—together.