Connections

The best climber in the world is the one having the most fun. Jeff Lowe.

This year’s Accidents in North American Mountaineering is out at a record 144 pages as climbing accident reporting rises again. Pete Takeda who edits the annual volume speaks about the 2026 issue on the American Alpine Club podcast and reports that there has been an increase in top-rope soloing accidents. When I first started climbing (the dark ages), rope soloing (either top rope or lead) was virtually unknown and, to this day, I’ve only ever come across one person engaged in top-rope solo climbing at a crag in Castlegar, B.C. The bloke was climbing a 5.10 or 5.11 crack climb and all I really remember is that he had a boom box (also a thing from the dark ages) blasting (at a sensitive residential crag) and the whole procedure from set up to climb appeared to take an inordinate amount of time.

H. Mutch photo

The rise in rope soloing is perplexing given that there are more people climbing today than ever before in history and yet, apparently people are having trouble finding partners. I have to wonder if this reveals something about our culture, which is both increasingly individualistic and increasingly divided along identity lines. If you’ll only climb with women, or non-binary people (whatever that is), or black, brown or yellow people you might start to run short of climbing partners.

Alternatively, it could be social media culture. In an age when everyone is “projecting” it’s gotta be like solving the middle east crisis to find a partner who wants to project your project, on the day, time, humidity level and lunar cycle that your training schedule predicts you’ll be peaking to send the project and clip the chains. While I understand the satisfaction of finally accomplishing something you have worked hard for, I wonder if we have lost something ineffable about climbing when every midwit climber believes the most important thing is working their project not having a good time with their climbing buddies.

Today I paddled out to the Tollgate Islands with some friends. It was so nice to talk with people you haven’t seen for a while, to hear how their lives and the lives of their families are going, to share a little bit in their joys and adventures, and to remember that we are connected by more than some filaments of nylon rope, or at least we should be.