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RULE OF THE BOULDERS
by Mick Ryan
"Crimp, dyno, then call your lawyer: bouldering-related violence is on the
rise at bouldering areas around the world."
Attack Of The Killer Chalkbag
With bouldering experiencing its greatest boom since John Gill strapped on
his shoes - a 750 per cent rise in four years- "bouldering rage" has swelled
into a genuine menace at ever more crowded bouldering areas. "Too many rats
and not enough cheese is the basic problem" said Brett Meyers, a boulderer
turned deputy district attorney based in Boulder, Colorado. " There seems
to have been increase in reports of serious violence". Meyers was the first
in his state to win an assault with a deadly weapon conviction against a
boulderer who had bashed someone with a chalk bag filled with rocks. Mark
Sprague, a 36 year old boulderer turned computer programmer, was the victim
of bouldering rage last March, when he was accused of cutting in on someone's
boulder problem - a breach of protocol- and beaten nearly to death. Meyers
got Sprague's assailant a ten year stretch in Colorado's State Pen. |
An artists impression of 'bagging', the act of hitting
another
boulderer with a rock-filled chalk bag.© Ian Poirier |
Disenfranchised Locals
Bouldering, despite its mellow reputation of its practitioners, has always
had a territorial undercurrent. This "localism" has only been intensified
by the bouldering boom, especially in places like Bishop, California, where
local boulderers feel increasingly squeezed out by visitors from the Bay
Area, the East Coast, and Europe. And many of the new boulderers are oblivious
to bouldering etiquette. "When I grew up, you wouldn't think of "bagging'
someone- bashing them over the head with a rock-filled chalk bag", said Fred
Nicole, a long time boulderer from Manchester, England. "Now guys brag about
it".
Searching For A Swiss Solution
In Switzerland, one option now being pursued is to increase the number of
bouldering spots by building artificial bouldering parks. But according to
critics like Prof. John Sherman, who runs the world's only degree course
in bouldering science and technology at the University of Colorado in Estes
Park, building more boulders may simply attract more rude boulderers. So
a bouldering member of Switzerland's Parliament recently convened a meeting
of the bouldering community. Elder members have started a bouldering-etiquette
education campaign. (Don't cut in when someone's about to start a problem,
stay clear if someone is working a problem, yield to the boulderer who has
been waiting the longest.) And this spring, a Swiss Law School is holding
a Law of the Boulders conference; panelists include David Graham, a boulderer
from Fontainbleau near Paris, now a supreme court justice. "We don't want
to be like the line in the Soup Nazi's kitchen," he said. "We don't want
to be tearing off numbers in the deli. But on the other hand, if people are
going to commit acts of violence, the law is going to intervene.
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Crowded scenes like this at Californias' Happy Boulders
are being repeated at
bouldering areas all around the world.© Mick Ryan |
Melllowing Out
In Boone, North Carolina, home to some of the best bouldering in
the East, Ward Smith, a boulderer turned police chief, tried having undercover
cops pose as boulderers- an experiment he describes as ineffective. But he
says he has made headway blanketing the bouldering areas with officers in
uniform. Representative Joe McLoughlin tried, without success, to get localism
classified as a hate crime in the federal hate crimes bill now under
consideration. In the end, however, there may be no laws that can tame the
passions of boulderers. "The old-timers are trying to hang on to the good
old days," said Ian Poirier, who writes for Boulderers World magazine. "But
the harder reality is that bouldering is not going to be that way anymore.
It's just getting too crowded."
- Mick Ryan has one of the best senses of humor of anyone in bouldering,
and assures us that all of the names in this story have been changed to protect
the guilty. Check out more of Mick's work at
rockfax.com. |
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