A climbing helmet is a thankless piece of gear. It doesn’t help you climb harder, it won’t bump your grade, and it doesn’t come with any highlight-reel moments—yet it plays a huge role in whether you make it back in one piece. You just need it to show up: on long days, messy approaches, at belays where rock breaks loose without warning, and during all the repeat transitions where your gear takes a beating right along with you. Black Diamond’s Capitan E fits that mindset. It’s a helmet that treats durability like a feature, not a compromise—less “ultralight showpiece,” more “workhorse for real climbing,” with a clear focus on protection and day-long comfort. The design is built for impacts—and for how climbing actually happens. Built with two kinds of impact in mind The Capitan E uses a two-part approach: a hard shell made from recycled ABS paired with DuraPET, plus a dual-foam setup with EPS and EPP. The logic is straightforward—and smart. It’s designed to handle a top hit (the classic overhead impact) differently than side or rear hits, which are often more subtle but very real in everyday climbing. Black Diamond describes an EPS “puck” at the crown, with more forgiving EPP on the sides, all wrapped in a shell meant to take abuse. The most compelling promise here is coverage: more protection around the sides and back, with an explicit aim to meet stricter UIAA requirements in those zones. No hype needed—nobody “feels” protection until the moment they absolutely need it. But in a sport where the unexpected sometimes gets the final say, taking side and rear impacts seriously makes sense, and it sets this helmet apart from some more minimal designs. A tough helmet can’t be a pain to wear A durable helmet still has to disappear on your head. Black Diamond goes with a low-profile suspension system for fine-tuning the fit, plus removable pads made with bamboo fiber. Those details matter, because they decide whether a helmet gets worn or gets stuffed in a pack (or left at home). The intent here is clear: make this an everyday helmet you can keep on for hours, without turning the day into a constant tradeoff between protection and annoyance. Ventilation stays fairly open, with a straightforward focus on breathability when it warms up. And because climbing days rarely stay neatly inside a “noon to six, perfect weather” window, the Capitan E includes headlamp clips up front and an elastic keeper in the back—simple, but genuinely useful when the day runs long or the approach happens late. Weight, sizing, standards: the numbers The Capitan E sits firmly in the “durable by design” category: 320 g in S/M and 350 g in M/L, for head circumferences of 53–59 cm and 58–63 cm. On compliance, it’s listed as CE/EN and UIAA, and it’s presented as meeting EN 12492, the reference standard for mountaineering/climbing helmets. Conclusion The Capitan E isn’t the helmet you buy to shave 50 grams off your kit. It’s the one you pick when you want something that can take hits, dials in cleanly, stays comfortable over long days, and clearly pushes harder on side and rear coverage. In a market that often chases ultralight everything, this tool-first approach feels reassuring—and, more importantly, it matches how a lot of climbers actually climb. Specs: Black Diamond Capitan E Construction:  Two-piece shell (recycled ABS + DuraPET), EPS + EPP foam Recycled materials:  30% by weight (claimed) Protection:  Increased side/rear coverage (with reference to stricter UIAA requirements) Fit system:  Low-profile suspension Headlamp attachment:  Front clips + rear elastic keeper Pads:  Removable, bamboo fiber Weight:  320 g (S/M), 350 g (M/L) Sizing:  53–59 cm (S/M), 58–63 cm (M/L) Standards:  CE/EN, UIAA (EN 12492 listed by retailers) Country of origin:  China

In the world of travel bags, a duffel is often a necessary evil: great at swallowing gear, miserable the moment you have to carry it anywhere that isn’t the trunk of a car. Osprey promises the opposite with the Transporter—a duffel designed to ride on your back as comfortably as a hiking pack. After several weeks of real use—train stations, muddy parking lots, and improvised bivies—it mostly proves one thing: comfort changes everything once you’re hauling 30-plus pounds. © Osprey Most duffels are the bulky sidekick you put up with because it’s the simplest option. You stuff it, you drag it, you curse it on stairs. But if you travel with a rope, climbing shoes, and a sleeping bag you packed in a hurry, a duffel still makes sense. With the Transporter, Osprey tries to flip the script: take a bag built for volume and make it something you can actually wear—on purpose, not as punishment. A Duffel Meant to Be Worn The Transporter’s big selling point is the harness. Where most duffels settle for token shoulder straps—fine for a two-minute shuffle across an airport—Osprey commits to real backpack-style straps: decent padding, a sternum strap, and, importantly, the ability to stow everything cleanly when you’re checking it. In practice, it changes the whole experience. Even when it’s stuffed to the ceiling, you can carry the Transporter for a few miles without feeling like you’ve got an anvil slung over one shoulder. The load sits well, the bag stays stable, and you can walk normally instead of doing that awkward, hunched-duffel wobble. It’s not a trekking pack, but in the duffel category, very few carry this convincingly—and that’s the real difference. A Fabric That Takes a Beating Osprey currently has two generations of the Transporter. The older version used a 900D polyester with a TPU coating—rugged and a bit stiff, with a “armored” vibe and a plasticky feel. The newer version, launched in 2025, switches to a fabric Osprey calls NanoTough™: 100% recycled high-tenacity nylon, with a carbonate coating meant to improve abrasion resistance and boost water repellency. You notice the change the second you handle it. The fabric feels more flexible, less like vinyl, and the bigger sizes drop a few hundred grams. It’s not a dramatic weight cut, but you’ll notice it when you’re lifting and moving the 95L or 120L. Either way, it’s a durable build, with a reinforced 840D bottom designed to handle repeated impacts—the kind of bag you can toss onto a train platform or into the bed of a pickup without overthinking it. The Transporter doesn’t have the bunker-like thickness of The North Face Base Camp, but it plays a smarter durability game: tough enough to last, flexible enough not to be annoying every time you have to handle it. Water-Repellent, Not Waterproof The zipper flaps, coating, and construction do a good job limiting water getting in. In steady rain, your stuff stays protected, and you can walk outside for fifteen minutes or push through a downpour without panicking. But it’s important to be clear: the standard Transporter is not a waterproof bag. Osprey does make a specific version, the Transporter Waterproof, rated IPX7—able to handle submersion to one meter for thirty minutes. That’s a different conversation: kayaking trips, river missions, and places where “dry” is non-negotiable. The standard duffel is built for travel and everyday abuse, not for floating down a torrent. It shrugs off rain, damp platforms, and the mud of a crag parking lot, but it’s not trying to replace a dry bag. Translation: an excellent travel-and-field companion—as long as you don’t ask it to do a job it wasn’t designed for. Minimal Organization, Done Right The Transporter stays true to duffel DNA: one big main compartment, no obsession with pockets. Access is through a wide, lockable U-shaped YKK zipper, which makes it easy to see everything you’ve thrown in there at a glance. On the outside, an end pocket holds the small essentials you want handy—keys, headlamp, train tickets—without dumping the whole bag. Inside, a zippered mesh pocket helps separate clean clothes from the stuff that’s already been worked over. No frills, but the details matter. Internal compression straps keep the load from turning into a loose, shifting mess after a few transfers. And when it’s empty, the bag packs down into the included mesh storage sack—easy to stash in a car trunk, or use as a laundry bag on the road. It’s intentionally simple, focused on function over gimmicks—which is exactly what you want from a duffel. From 30 to 150 Liters: Pick Your Lane The Transporter Duffel comes in six sizes, from 30 liters (almost a daypack) to 150 liters (closer to a soft rooftop cargo box than a “bag”). Each size points to a different use case. The 40L is the most versatile: compact enough to be considered for carry-on depending on the airline, but roomy enough for a long weekend with climbing gear. But the real sweet spot—yes, the actual sweet spot—is the 65L. It’s the balanced choice for one to two weeks on the move, with enough space for a rope, shoes, layers, and a sleeping bag without turning into an unmanageable blob. It’s still a bag you can carry on your shoulder or wear as a backpack without wrecking yourself. Go bigger—95L and 120L—and you’re in a different category: trips where you’re bringing the whole kit. You can still carry them, but these sizes are really built for checked baggage and long hauls. And the 150L is almost daring you to overpack: big enough for pads, ropes, a giant sleeping bag, and food for an expedition—while being obviously miserable if you have to navigate a crowded subway staircase. The Trade-Off That Matters The Transporter isn’t the most armored duffel out there. By feel and by looks, The North Face Base Camp still wins the “thick tarp that might survive the apocalypse” contest—and it’s reassuring, even if it comes with extra weight. Osprey takes a different approach. The Transporter doesn’t try to impress you with brute toughness. It tries to be a duffel you can actually carry, and that’s usually where the real difference shows up. You don’t remember the exact fabric weight months later. You do remember trudging across a train station with nearly 40 pounds of gear on your back. In that context, the Transporter earns its keep. It doesn’t claim to be indestructible. It just makes a strong case for being one of the most believable duffels when you need a storage bag to function like an actual carry system. It’s a deliberate compromise—and it chooses real-world usability over tough-guy marketing. Specs: Transporter Duffel 65 Capacity:  65 L Dimensions:  62 × 35 × 40 cm Weight:  1.206 kg Fabric:  NanoTough™ (recycled 630D high-tenacity nylon, carbonate coating) + 840D reinforced bottom Closure:  Lockable YKK EYL U-zip + rain flap Carry:  Stowable backpack-style straps + sternum strap Organization:  Zippered end pocket, internal mesh pocket, compression straps Water resistance:  Water-repellent, not submersible Available sizes:  30 / 40 / 65 / 95 / 120 / 150 L Made in:  Vietnam (bluesign®-certified site) MSRP:  Around €150 (varies by retailer) Best for:  Travel and expeditions, hauling bulky bouldering or sport-climbing gear, mixed road-and-crag use

In climbing, there’s this stubborn myth that your shoes are supposed  to hurt—like pain is the cover charge, proof you’re serious, some vaguely ridiculous rite of passage. In reality, your first pair of shoes is mostly about learning: how to place your feet, how to trust an edge, what sticks (usually) and what skates (sometimes). That’s exactly where the Black Diamond Women’s Momentum lands. It’s an entry-level shoe with a neutral, flat last, two Velcro straps, and a design built to stay on your feet for a long time. It’s meant to support the kind of progress that comes from hours of repetition—not an immediate hunt for millimeter-level precision. A “forgiving” build—without turning into a slipper The Momentum is built around a pretty straightforward idea: make the shoe breathable and accommodating without letting it collapse into full-on “house slipper” territory. The upper uses Black Diamond’s Engineered Knit Technology, paired with a microfiber liner in the forefoot to help limit stretch and keep a baseline of structure over time. The goal here is comfort you can actually climb in, session after session, without the shoe turning into a baggy sock. There’s also a detail that sounds like marketing until you live with it: a hemp footbed. It fits the whole point of the shoe—something you can wear long, often, and comfortably, rather than a pair you suffer through for two “performance tries” before it gets banished to the bottom of your pack. “Women’s specific” is mostly about volume Black Diamond frames this as a women’s-specific fit—meaning lower overall volume and a shape intended for certain foot morphologies. In practice, the Momentum has a pretty welcoming forefoot and an overall comfort-driven feel. That plays especially well for longer sessions—gym climbing, moderate routes, and days when you’re climbing more than you’re “projecting” (working a route over multiple tries). The flip side is predictable: a forgiving shoe forgives a lot , sometimes at the cost of a more “locked-in” feel if you’re chasing a very technical fit—especially around the heel. On sizing, Black Diamond offers guidance by goal. For “all day comfort,” the brand generally recommends sizing down modestly from your street shoe—snug, but not painful. In the real world, the most common mistake with a comfort-first shoe is overcorrecting: trying to force the compression of an aggressive, downturned model out of something that simply isn’t built for that. 4.3 mm molded rubber: durability, by design The Momentum uses a 4.3 mm outsole aimed squarely at durability, with molded rubber (rather than rubber cut from a sheet). Black Diamond positions that as a way to optimize consistency, weight, and comfort. Either way, the message is clear: this is a shoe for people still building footwork. That thicker rubber is more forgiving when you’re missing placements and grinding your toes on gym holds. It doesn’t demand the delicacy of a super-soft, ultra-sensitive shoe. There’s a known tradeoff, of course. The more rubber you put underfoot, the more you dull that fine feedback from tiny features. But for someone progressing, it’s usually the rational compromise: better a shoe that survives the learning curve than a “scalpel” that’s trashed before your feet get precise. How it feels on the wall: where it shines, where it taps out Black Diamond positions the Momentum for vertical climbing and long-wear comfort, with a “soft flex” midsole (more supple, more forgiving) and a neutral shape. In plain terms, it holds its own on: Gym climbing (slabs, volume-heavy walls, training routes) Moderate crag days where footholds are readable and generally solid Long sessions where comfort translates into consistency But once you move into very steep terrain, razor-precise edging on tiny nubs, or sequences where every millimeter matters, the Momentum calmly reminds you what it is: an entry-level shoe built to support progression, not to chase the tightest “performance fit.” Updates that target the usual weak points The Momentum isn’t stuck in time. Black Diamond lists a handful of updates aimed at the classic shortcomings of comfort-oriented shoes: an updated knit with a softer lining, softer toe rands, a reworked heel geometry for more consistent tension, and—most importantly—an updated midsole intended to improve edging ability. In other words: same DNA, but reinforced where it counts—fit security and overall coherence. Verdict: a smarter first shoe than it looks The Women’s Momentum succeeds where a lot of beginner shoes miss: it lowers the barrier to entry without turning learning into punishment. It gives you time—time to climb, repeat, adjust—and that’s what actually builds skill. Its comfort and forgiveness aren’t a flaw. They’re the method. The limits are real and worth stating clearly: this isn’t a steep-project weapon, and it’s not a micro-precision tool. But as a progression shoe, an everyday trainer, a comfortable backup, or a solid option for moderate multi-pitch days, it’s impressively consistent—and exactly what a first shoe should be. Specs: Black Diamond Women’s Momentum Last/Shape:  Neutral, flat (comfort / vertical focus) Closure:  Two Velcro straps Rubber:  4.3 mm molded outsole Midsole:  “Soft flex” (comfort / sensitivity) Upper:  Engineered Knit + microfiber forefoot liner Footbed:  Hemp Claimed weight:  440 g (US Women’s 5) Made in:  China MSRP:  Around €90 on Black Diamond Europe

Light like a skimo (ski mountaineering) harness, but kitted out like a do-it-all model, the WHISPER is trying to bridge two worlds that usually don’t mix. For years, ultralight harnesses have had the same problem: you put them on like emergency gear, grit your teeth for a couple minutes hanging in space, then bury them in the bottom of your pack and swear you’ll only pull them out when you absolutely have to. Whisper harness / Petzl © Petzl The WHISPER is trying to break that pattern. At well under 200 grams, it’s the kind of harness you can forget in your pack—and still actually want to use once you’re at the base. Long limestone multi-pitch, an alpine ridge with a handful of nuts and cams, or just the desire to travel light without going full monk: this harness is making a simple point. Ultralight doesn’t have to mean miserable or weirdly compromised. Light, but fully featured The first surprise is that the WHISPER doesn’t feel like it was designed in the “diet” aisle of the gear shop. In use, it feels like a real harness, not a skinny backup you tolerate out of principle. You get five properly sized gear loops: two big, stiff front loops that can handle a full set of quickdraws or a few cams without sagging; two rear loops that stay usable even with a pack on; and a fifth, softer loop for a cordalette or the small mess you always end up bringing. Add two slots for a CARITOOL—load them with an ice screw, a water bottle, or a pair of gloves—and the picture is complete. In other words, you’re not stuck playing Tetris with your rack. The WHISPER assumes you might climb with real gear, and it can handle it. That changes everything. At 170 g in a size M, you’d expect something you toss in your pack “just in case.” Here it’s the opposite: an ultralight harness that’s built for serious use, without turning climbing into a caricature of minimalism. It’s a welcome counterpoint in a world where shaving grams can become an obsession—often at the expense of what a climbing harness is actually for: carrying gear, and carrying it well. MATRYX®: the material that makes it work If the WHISPER pulls this off, it’s not magic—it’s MATRYX®, a textile that ditches the thick webbing and classic foam approach. The idea is straightforward: individually coated strands of polyamide and high-tenacity polyethylene woven into a thin but surprisingly tough grid. The result is a fabric that’s breathable, water-repellent, and durable—three traits you rarely get together in a sub-200-gram harness. On the wall and in the mountains, that shows up in the details. The harness doesn’t turn into a portable sauna when the approach is long. It dries quickly after rain or after you’ve sweat through your shirt. And it doesn’t fall apart the first time it scrapes against rock. Just as important, it packs down small—once folded, it takes up less room than a water bottle. That’s real, usable lightness. In other words, MATRYX® isn’t just a marketing badge here; it’s what lets the WHISPER be more than a “fast-and-light only” harness, and makes it legitimate for multi-pitch and technical alpine climbing. Minimal adjustments, demanding fit The WHISPER isn’t trying to please everyone. It sticks to a single waist buckle and fixed leg loops held in place by elastic. No extra adjustment points, no dangling straps. You put it on, cinch it down, and climb. The tradeoff is simple: you get a lot less wiggle room to fine-tune the fit. Sizing runs from XS (65–71 cm) to L (84–92 cm), with weight ranging from 140 to 185 g depending on size. Early feedback points to it fitting a bit small—if you’re between sizes, going up is the safer call. That isn’t a flaw so much as a choice: close fit, clean design, efficient setup. The WHISPER is dialed for people who land cleanly in the size chart, and less forgiving for in-between body types. Comfort, in the right context At under 200 grams, nobody is expecting an armchair. The WHISPER doesn’t pretend otherwise. This isn’t a sport-climbing harness you can hang in all afternoon while you work a move (working a route = repeated attempts with lots of resting on the rope). It’s a harness that disappears when you’re moving. Light, flexible, breathable—it stays out of your way on approaches and while you’re climbing. At belays, it does its job: you can sit long enough to handle transitions and rope work without suffering, as long as you don’t confuse “ultralight” with “plush hanging comfort.” The philosophy is clear. This is for climbers who value smooth movement and efficiency, not for folks who spend the whole day taking falls and hanging to suss out the crux. For that kind of repeated hanging, the SITTA still has the edge. The WHISPER is a reminder that you can’t have everything: going light has limits, and it’s better to know them before you buy. Between the FLY and the SITTA, with a real niche In Petzl’s lineup, the WHISPER lands right between two extremes. On one end is the FLY: 100 to 130 g, a stripped-down harness built for skimo and fast missions, but too minimal to carry a real rack. On the other end is the SITTA: 275 g in size M, designed to handle lots of hanging and long sessions—sport cragging, projecting, and steep multi-pitch—but less compact by nature. The WHISPER sits squarely in the middle: more capable than a minimalist harness, far lighter than a classic all-around model. It makes sense for alpinists trying to keep things light, and for multi-pitch climbers who want to cut bulk in the pack. A harness that can carry gear without feeling like an anchor—and one that hits a slot very few competitors really cover. Specs Model:  Petzl WHISPER Weight:  XS 140 g · S 155 g · M 170 g · L 185 g Sizes:  XS 65–71 cm / S 71–77 cm / M 77–84 cm / L 84–92 cm (waist) Construction:  MATRYX® (individually coated HMPE + polyamide strands), reinforced tie-in points and gear-loop zones Gear carry:  5 gear loops (2 very large rigid front, 2 rear usable with a pack, 1 soft rear) + 2 CARITOOL slots Adjustments:  1 waist buckle, fixed leg loops (elastic) Certifications:  CE EN 12277 type C · UIAA MSRP:  approx. €179.95 (sale prices around €150) Best for:  technical alpinism, fast multi-pitch, trad/adventure climbing, light climbing with a full rack

In late January 2026, Indonesia’s climbing federation (PP FPTI) provisionally suspended its head coach , Hendra Basir, after internal reports alleged sexual harassment and physical violence within the national training center. An internal investigative team was formed. The move followed a formal complaint filed on January 28, 2026 by eight athletes at the national center. About a month later, PP FPTI issued an official decision placing Basir on temporary leave while the inquiry proceeds. 2024 Speed Climbing World Cup in Briançon © David Pillet Local reporting has remained careful: it confirms the existence of the complaint and the provisional suspension, but does not publish the athletes’ identities or detailed accounts of the alleged incidents. That restraint helps protect the people involved. It also means the federation controls both the pace and the scope of the process—for now. The timing lands in a specific sporting moment. Since the Paris 2024 Olympics, climbing has taken on heightened strategic importance in Indonesia’s sports policy, especially in speed—an event that has become a high-visibility international showcase. The national training center is more than a place to train. It concentrates selections, funding, and career pathways. So a provisional suspension doesn’t just open a disciplinary file; it triggers an institutional test. Eight voices, one complaint According to multiple Indonesian outlets, eight athletes submitted a complaint to federation president Yenny Wahid on January 28, 2026. The allegations involve sexual harassment and physical violence within the national training program. The same sources say the athletes were supported in the process by the program’s psychologist. Federation secretary general Wahyu Pristiawan Buntoro, quoted by the Antara news agency , said an internal investigative team had been established and that coordination had begun with the ministry responsible for women’s empowerment and child protection. He added that he could not, at that stage, comment on whether a report had been filed with police. He denies any conduct that would constitute sexual harassment and describes his coaching as “strict” At this point, the federation has not disclosed the complainants’ identities or a detailed timeline of the alleged conduct. Reporting has largely stayed within the narrow frame of what can be confirmed: a complaint was lodged, and a provisional suspension followed. The decision PP FPTI issued a formal decision—an SK (Surat Keputusan) numbered 0209/SKP/PP.NAS/II/2026—ordering Basir’s provisional suspension for the duration of the review. As summarized by detikSport , the measure is presented as a way to “ensure protection” for athletes, prevent re-victimization, and preserve the objectivity of the process. In other words, the federation is treating this as a precautionary step. It is not, on paper, a final disciplinary sanction. It is a temporary removal meant to structure the investigative period. That distinction matters: it means the federation is suspending the exercise of his duties without officially pre-judging what the investigation will conclude. The immediate impact is practical. According to Liputan6 , the decision bars Basir from leading training sessions, accessing facilities, or communicating with athletes during the inquiry. Antara adds one more element : Basir’s term was already scheduled to end on February 28, 2026, and the federation says he will not be part of the next coaching staff. The provisional suspension therefore lands at the hinge point of a planned transition. The gray zone Basir disputes the allegations. In statements reported by detikSport , he denies any conduct that would constitute sexual harassment and describes his coaching as “strict.” He points to gestures he frames as support—kissing an athlete on the forehead, hugging during emotional moments—and rejects any sexual interpretation of those actions. That defense doesn’t just argue about what did or didn’t happen. It pulls the conversation into a harder terrain: how interaction works inside a structured hierarchy. In a national training center, the coach–athlete relationship isn’t simply personal. It shapes access to competitions, team selection, funding, and sometimes international visibility. So the question isn’t only intention. It’s also the power structure the gesture sits inside. 59.7% of licensed athletes surveyed said they had experienced at least one form of violence in their current club This is where prevention policies often talk about a “gray zone”: behavior that can be experienced differently depending on where each person stands in the relationship. What one party calls normal can land very differently for the other when structural dependence is part of the picture. Performance pressure as an institutional constraint PP FPTI says the national program will not be paused. Antara reports a timeline : a reorganization of staff, a new coaching team taking over in early March, and preparation continuing for the 2026 Asian Games . The federation is explicit about continuity. In an elite system, a coaching staff isn’t only technical capacity; it’s a human, financial, and symbolic investment. Handling a serious complaint therefore happens inside a structure already built around deadlines and results. Suspend, replace, maintain—each administrative choice has to fit that architecture. The contrast with other recent cases is instructive. In an investigation we conducted into how a sexual assault report was handled within the French national team , the question of a precautionary measure was raised but not activated by the federation, despite statutory tools that could have allowed it. In Indonesia, a provisional suspension was put in place as soon as the internal review opened. The legal contexts differ. So do the regulatory frameworks. But the core question is the same: how does an institution balance presumption of innocence, protection of complainants, and the stability of an elite sports program? Recent published data on violence in sports sheds light on that structural layer. 59.7% of licensed athletes surveyed said they had experienced at least one form of violence in their current club, with higher exposure when participation becomes intensive and competitive. That gradient does not prove a simple cause-and-effect relationship. It does suggest that the most institutionalized spaces also concentrate power imbalances. The Indonesian case is not a mirror of the French cases. But it points to a constant: in elite sport, handling a complaint doesn’t only test individuals. It tests how solid the system really is.

In the climbing world, “being engaged” is something you can now perform in a steady stream of Instagram stories and posts. But under that activist-looking gloss, there’s an uncomfortable question: when we say we’re committed, who’s actually taking a risk—and who’s settling for outrage that’s socially rewarding and professionally safe? Kelowna / Canada (cc) Jeremy Vejgman  on Unsplash Some nights, scrolling social media, you get this weird sense you’re watching a separate competition—a quiet little contest where the goal isn’t to hold a razor crimp, but to prove, post by post, that you’re on the right side of things. The holds aren’t bolted to the wall anymore; they’re bolted to words: “safe,” “inclusive,” “committed,” “feminist,” “eco-friendly.” Everyone takes their moral burn (a try where you give it a real go), some more dramatic than others, some supposedly higher-stakes than others. Except there’s a detail that starts to itch: in a lot of these cases, the risk is mostly rhetorical. Sure, you can “take a fall”—but it’s rarely the kind that breaks anything. Worst case, someone corrects you back, you lose a bit of standing in one circle, you eat a rough day in the comments. In other words: a cushioned fall. Let’s call it what it is: comfort activism. A way to be “on the right side,” loudly and visibly, at a low real cost. The kind of commitment that picks fights where the ground stays solid and the consequences stay manageable. What It Looks Like in Real Life The scene is almost ordinary. That’s exactly why it’s worth sitting with. It’s a climbing gym’s marketing campaign. The object of outrage? A poster that means well but botches something—an awkward phrase, a symbol, a word choice. Nothing scandalous, nothing involving victims, legal proceedings, or an actual power-abuse case. More like a misstep: debatable, fixable. And the gym itself? It generally has a good reputation. It pays its setters (the folks who “set” routes and problems) decently. It’s not known for macho-brutal management. It tries, genuinely, to do better on accessibility, mixity, prevention, welcoming people in. This isn’t some cartoon tyrant-owner situation. Not the kind of club that protects a violent coach. Not an institution sweeping serious cases under the rug. And yet: that’s where the lightning hits. Suddenly it’s story after story. Public call-outs. Subtweets. Screenshots. The message is simple: it’s not enough—and, most of all, it’s not “aligned.” Meanwhile, in the same ecosystem, everyone knows there are other stories. The ones that don’t fit into a story slide. The ones that involve power, and real blowback, and social cost. The ones where “speaking up” isn’t “correcting,” it’s putting yourself on the line. How Comfort Activism Picks Its Targets Comfort activism often works like this: it doesn’t start by asking, “Where is the worst harm?” It starts by asking, “Where can I hit hard without getting hurt?” Targets get chosen the way you choose a boulder problem: you look first at the commitment it’s going to demand. If the target doesn’t have much ability to retaliate—if it’s already “one of the good ones,” and therefore has to respond carefully—then it’s game on. If, on the other hand, the target is actually powerful—real influence, real network, real ability to shut doors—then everything goes very quiet, very fast. That dynamic is exactly what two American philosophers, Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke, describe as moral grandstanding . In Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk  (2020), they lay out the moment when people use public moral language less to move an issue forward than to present themselves as especially virtuous. Climbing—already a culture that knows how to stage performance—doesn’t escape that logic when it turns toward its own demons. The mechanism is straightforward: I post, I denounce, I correct. And yes, I can be sincerely attached to the cause—nobody has to be faking it for this to be true. But part of the motivation is also what that post says about me. I’m not just a climber. I’m on the side of justice, safety, equality, ecology. I’m the person who “dares to say it.” But “daring to say it” doesn’t mean the same thing when you’re saying it to someone who can actually hit back… versus someone who can’t. In a lot of cases, the ego is fully protected. You’re not risking your job. You’re not jeopardizing your spot on a team. You’re not blowing up a major contract. You’re not confronting someone genuinely intimidating. You get mad at the level your social circle can absorb. You look brave—so long as bravery doesn’t get expensive. Low-Cost Outrage This kind of activism loves the gray zones between supposed allies. It’s easier—and sometimes more flattering—to scold the person who agrees with 90% of the diagnosis but “messed up” the last 10% than to take on a system that denies everything outright. It’s more comfortable to correct a visual than to support someone through a long, uncertain, exhausting process. More tempting to put a “mostly decent but imperfect” organization on trial than to go after the ones with real leverage: money, reputation, gatekeeping, hiring power, access. In that framework, outrage becomes a low-risk act with a high symbolic payoff. It produces results immediately: reactions, applause, belonging, recognition. And that’s where Tosi and Warmke help again, because moral grandstanding is also a status economy—a way to convert moral posture into social capital. The problem isn’t being visible. The problem is when visibility becomes the goal and actual impact becomes secondary—when the moral act is built to be seen, shared, praised, and above all, to not cost anything. The Collateral Damage This isn’t only a moral issue (“doing it for yourself more than for the cause”). It’s also political in the plain, practical sense: it reshapes the terrain. When you multiply low-stakes controversies that generate lots of noise, you get three ugly side effects. First: mental overload. When every wording choice and every small organizational detail becomes a dramatic public dispute, it gets harder to tell the difference between fixable sloppiness and structural harm. From far enough away, it all starts to sound the same: an awkward sentence and an organization protecting serious misconduct end up on the same volume level. Second: moral language gets cheaper. If everything is “unacceptable,” then nothing really is. If the same vocabulary is used to call out a clumsy design choice and to talk about assault, the words lose weight. Here again, moral grandstanding is a good lens: when you keep waving morality around like a trophy, you wear it out. Third: it undercuts the people who take real risks. Calling out a violent coach, an abusive boss, an organization that covers for people—that isn’t decorative outrage. That’s accepting concrete losses: partners, clients, friends, sometimes your mental health. For those people, watching the word “courage” get claimed by safe, consequence-free call-outs can feel brutal. Let’s be clear: the issue isn’t the causes themselves. Fighting sexist and sexual violence in climbing, looking honestly at power dynamics in gyms, taking the ecological stakes around crags seriously—those aren’t just legitimate. They’re necessary. Critiquing certain postures doesn’t mean you’re joining the people who want everyone to shut up. What’s exhausting isn’t the fight. It’s the comfortable version of the fight—the tendency to turn serious causes into ego workouts, into spaces where you prove you’re “one of the good ones” without ever going where it costs. Real Activism Means You Might Lose Something You could reduce all this to “hypocrisy,” but that’s too easy. Most people caught up in comfort activism aren’t waking up thinking, How can I use a cause to polish my image?  They really do care about justice, equality, respect. Some have lived through domination or violence themselves. They’re also, like everyone, trying to balance what they believe with what they’re willing to risk. That’s where the question gets interesting: when can you say you’re actually doing activism? In climbing, as elsewhere, the answer probably comes down to one simple thing: concrete risk. Not the risk of a bad day in the comments—that’s background noise now. The risk of losing something tangible: a relationship, a contract, a role, an opportunity, a sense of safety. Real activism isn’t picking the most compliant target. It’s accepting that the person or organization you’re calling out can genuinely harm you—and doing it anyway, because staying silent would feel worse. Sometimes it means turning down a deal. Writing an email you know could blow up. Sticking with someone all the way through a process that will drain everyone involved. Sitting down in an office where nobody asked you to be. And that’s where moral grandstanding becomes a tool for clarity: if your public statement brings you a lot and costs you nothing—if it makes you look good and never puts you in a difficult spot—then you at least have to consider that it might be more about positioning than commitment. Changing the Route So what do we do with that in the small, vertical world of climbing? Maybe it starts with a simple move: treat our activism with the same honesty we bring to training. Correcting a clumsy phrase, pushing a gym to adjust a visual, pointing out a bad turn of speech—call that what it is. It’s correction. It’s education. Sometimes it’s necessary cleanup. It can be healthy. But it isn’t, by itself, bravery. Supporting someone who speaks up. Standing up to toxic leadership. Refusing a sketchy partnership. Documenting structural patterns. Accepting that you might take real hits—that’s where real commitment begins. That’s not moral performance. That’s not just narrative. At bottom, comfort activism forces a question that’s unpleasant but necessary: who is this kind of “engagement” actually for? Is it mostly for other people—the victims, the most exposed, the ones without access to the mic—or is it mainly a way to secure a role, a place, a comfortable identity? We won’t change climbing culture with low-cost outrage. We’ll change it with people who sometimes commit without a clean exit, without applause, without instant payoff—and do it anyway.

8a.nu . Social Boulder. Private gym comps. Federation circuits. Competition has swallowed climbing whole. And yet everyone still says the same thing: I climb for myself.  So why the constant one-upmanship? And more to the point: what’s the psychological cost? Luka Potocar, dans le dur, lors de la Coupe du monde à Chamonix, été 2025 © Jan Virt / IFSC This is the third installment of Heavy Mental, our new series breaking down key psychological concepts in climbing under the weight of performance. It’s written by Léo Dechamboux , a mental performance coach and co-author (with Fred Vionnet) of the french reference book Le Mental du grimpeur . I’ve been around competition climbing for more than 20 years. From crags to gyms, from my work as a mental performance coach to my own days as “just another climber,” I’ve heard it—and I’ve said it myself: we climb “for the beauty of the movement.” Even in competition, we like to measure ourselves against ourselves, against the route. Not against anyone else. And yet: competition is everywhere now. Between major national and international federation events, friendly “for fun” comps at private gyms, big-name private events with international reach, and platforms like Social Boulder or 8a.nu , comparison feels baked into the walls. Wherever you are, the message is the same: faster. stronger. farther. So let’s ask the question plainly. If everyone insists they climb for themselves, why does competition feel unavoidable? That’s the point Mental performance coaching has two goals: help you get better, and help you stay balanced and well. Where those overlap, you find the stuff that actually makes a practice sustainable—psychological well-being, motivation, and goal-setting. We pointed out how neoliberal thinking has reshaped psychology by pushing a more individual, performance-driven view of people. Psychology ends up helping produce the “entrepreneur of the self”—someone focused on constant optimization. Key researchers like Edward Deci and Richard Ryan describe three basic needs that support long-term motivation: autonomy, social connection, and competence. That’s the foundation of self-determination theory. They also show how goal-setting shapes motivation, and they distinguish between two broad goal types: mastery goals and ego goals. Mastery goals are about your own progress—strategies, useful behaviors, collaboration. They tend to support intrinsic motivation. Ego goals are competitive by nature: comparing yourself, trying to “beat” someone, making sure nobody beats you. The problem with ramped-up external motivation—or goals that lean too hard on ego—is that they can drive anxiety, self-sabotage, avoidance, negative emotions, or quitting altogether. They’re also heavily shaped by your environment: the motivational “climate” created by the people around you, plus the broader social context that influences how you think, feel, behave, and relate to performance. And this is where competition can start to cut deep. Modern sport took shape in the 18th century alongside industrial capitalism. That shift came with the commodification of people, environments, health, and education. In From Ritual to Record , American historian Allen Guttmann argued back in 1978 that this period also brought standardized measurement: stopwatches, regulated distances, uniform rules—and with them, the concept of the record. For the first time, international comparison became straightforward. Performance became measurable, exchangeable, sellable. It also turned into something like personal capitalism: optimize your body, make it “pay,” celebrate the self-made man and the “good” athletic body—defined against the one that isn’t. Free climbing emerges in that world, and it quickly plugs into the same logic: performance as product, body as capital, your “project” as a narrative investment. Tick lists—lists of “sends,” the climbs you’ve done, your personal scorecard—mixed with social media, instant communication, and sponsors, turn the climber into a thing to be packaged and valued. British sociologist Nikolas Rose described this dynamic in 2008 with the idea of “biocapital”: training becomes a rational production plan. The body becomes a machine. Progress becomes a value. Earlier in Heavy Mental , we pointed out how neoliberal thinking has reshaped psychology by pushing a more individual, performance-driven view of people. Psychology ends up helping produce the “entrepreneur of the self”—someone focused on constant optimization. Sport doesn’t escape that. The pressure ramps up: performance becomes an economic value, and “mental strength” becomes something you’re expected to monetize. In 2024, a report titled “ Navigating Neoliberalism ,” published in the Journal of Sport for Development , described how some sport practices line up with efficiency logic and continuous evaluation. Mental performance coaching can slide into that same frame—sometimes aiming less at personal growth than at productivity-driven optimization, with athletes treated like performance units. When the setting shapes your head Last September, in an interview with Grimper , a journalist asked me a blunt question: isn’t my job, basically, helping climbers survive in a toxic environment—competition? It’s true that competition comes with real psychological constraints that can leave long-term marks. But what’s often more problematic is how  we approach performance and competition. Mental performance coaching should help climbers thrive in this world if they choose it—without it swallowing the rest of their lives. Competition isn’t inherently toxic. But it can become toxic if we ignore the mechanisms—and if mental coaching becomes nothing more than “helping you tough it out” instead of building a healthier, durable relationship with performance. The issue is that we rarely talk about the psychological “set” of competition—the environment that shapes how we feel: how important the result seems, how uncertain it feels, the anxiety it creates, the expectations (internal or external, real or imagined). In 2017, sport psychology researchers Christopher Mesagno and Jürgen Beckmann showed that “choking under pressure”—a drop in performance when the stakes feel high—shows up especially when athletes lock onto the outcome rather than the task. In climbing, that’s what happens when you’re climbing not to fall , not to disappoint, when every attempt turns into a performance for other people. Competitive demands amplify those patterns. Bigger events mean more distractions. Rankings push ego-oriented motivation. And once you’re stuck judging yourself through that lens, it can drag down emotions, thinking, and behavior. Flip the format—make it more about learning and exchange—and motivation tends to swing back toward mastery and competence. That’s the direction the broader research points to when it looks at instructions, motivational climate, and the framework around athletes. These aren’t abstract effects. They show up as less enjoyment, injuries driven by urgency, identity narrowing around “being a performer,” anxious chasing of results, overtraining, burnout. Competition isn’t inherently toxic. But it can become toxic if we ignore the mechanisms—and if mental coaching becomes nothing more than “helping you tough it out” instead of building a healthier, durable relationship with performance. Recognition, gamification, and micro-fame For a long time, the competition frame in climbing was simple: a date, a wall, a deadline. Now the ecosystem has grown into something sprawling. Between federation circuits, gym comps, hybrid events, and platforms like 8a.nu or Social Boulder, competition has fractured into endless micro-scenes—each with its rules, rewards, and visibility. That isn’t unique to climbing. A study by Rob Franken , Hidde Bekhuis, and Jochem Tolsma on digital sports culture shows how platforms—Strava especially—reshape sporting norms by creating what they call “spaces of constant evaluation.” You’re no longer trying to be seen as a person. You’re trying to match a valued image. Your worth starts to depend on being visible, validated, and ranked. Design matters here. Gamification—the use of game-style design in sports apps—often does increase engagement, motivation, and consistency . But it’s not cleanly positive. For people with lower self-control—meaning it’s harder to regulate behavior in response to social cues—gamification can also feed comparison and dependence on feedback. These digital spaces also create new social statuses: micro-celebrity in sport. Researcher Theresa Senft, writing about micro-celebrity culture, describes visibility itself as a resource. A noticed “send” logged on 8a.nu , a well-edited Instagram clip, a #1 spot on the monthly Social Boulder leaderboard, a cameo in a private comp aftermovie—these things can produce “micro-stars” whose recognition rests less on athletic value than on cumulative visibility: fast, consumable, and fleeting. That shift creates a new kind of competition: continuous, and often invisible. You’re not measuring yourself only at one event. You’re measuring yourself every day—through what you post, what you like, what you log, what you “send.” (To “send” is to complete a climb cleanly—your personal stamp of “done.”) That diffuse competition shapes how you train, how you compare, how you judge yourself. Competitiveness seeps into how you climb. And the broader context directly shapes how we approach climbing, progress, performance, and well-being. A competitive environment can satisfy those core needs and feel energizing. It can also frustrate them—by squeezing autonomy and competence under external control. So it’s reasonable to hypothesize that this always-on competitive climate—fed by a broader environment that commodifies bodies, progress, and performance—helps generate a psychological need that feels especially modern: recognition. We know recognition matters for self-esteem. But sociologist Axel Honneth argues that the pursuit of recognition hits a wall when it stops being support for self-worth and becomes a condition for legitimacy. It can creep into the core of our needs, reshaping them without us noticing. Philosopher Nancy Fraser adds another layer: when recognition becomes a kind of “social currency,” it stops being relational and becomes an expectation. You’re no longer trying to be seen as a person. You’re trying to match a valued image. Your worth starts to depend on being visible, validated, and ranked. In sport—and in climbing—that slide is easier to miss because performance is so easy to display, count, and compare. Psychological needs can get artificially “filled.” External rewards can feel like autonomy while quietly steering behavior. They can mimic competence while really just handing you approval. They can imitate connection while actually running on constant comparison. Recognition stops being just a human need. It becomes an identity requirement—a proof of existence, sometimes even a duty to perform. Another way to put it: competition, now everywhere, doesn’t exist without person-to-person evaluation, and that evaluation feeds the hunger for recognition. That hunger stops being one pillar of self-esteem and starts behaving like something closer to a basic need—warping autonomy, competence, and connection. You still hear the old lines in climbing spaces: I climb for myself—alone, facing a problem to solve.  Those lines keep echoing because they’re part of climbing’s symbolic culture. But the spaces have multiplied, and the environment has changed. When every move can be quantified, every climber can be ranked, every send can be filmed and uploaded, competition stops being an event. It becomes a condition. And it threads itself into our needs—turning recognition into an identity requirement that quietly redraws what it means to exist as a climber.

In a world where dinner plans became Zoom meetings, friend groups became WhatsApp threads, and “community” is curated by an algorithm, something has slipped: our shared sense of direction. The French sociologist Émile Durkheim called it anomie —a state of social drift, when common norms break down and nothing solid replaces them. (cc) Redd Francisco / Unsplash So here’s a question: somewhere between a bouldering session and a post-climb beer, could climbing gyms and crags be stitching some of that fabric back together? Picture the end of a workday. The subway’s packed. Your phone keeps lighting up. You’ve spent hours on Slack and Teams, double-tapping stories, reacting to memes. And then it hits you: you haven’t looked anyone in the eye for more than ten seconds all day. A few blocks away, a climbing gym is filling up. People walk in wearing chalk on their hands and rubber scuffs on their shoes. Someone passes a brush. Two strangers trade beta—route advice on how to solve a sequence. Someone sits down next to you on the pads. You nod. Next week, you’ll recognize their face. No one’s worried about whether it’s “professional” to be on a first-name basis. You’re just there. In a space where gravity is real, and so are the people around you. That contrast sits at the heart of a question Durkheim was already asking in the late 1800s, long before Instagram: what happens when the big collective structures—religion, extended family, village life, trade guilds—stop organizing daily life, and nothing stable replaces them? He called that in-between moment anomie . Hyperconnected modern life has only sped it up. We’ve never been more digitally linked. We’ve rarely felt more socially untethered. That “emptiness” people talk about isn’t just a mood. It has structure. And that’s where climbing becomes interesting—not just as recreation, but as a small-scale attempt to rebuild rules and relationships in a world that feels short on both. Welcome to Anomie For Durkheim, anomie wasn’t a rant about “kids these days.” It was a diagnosis. Societies go through phases where the norms that guide behavior weaken. The rules get blurry. The promises of modern life—progress, mobility, success—don’t match reality. The result? Frustration, isolation, rising depression, self-destructive behavior. In Suicide  (1897) , Durkheim described what happens when individual desire is left without collective guardrails. Sound familiar? Today, job insecurity is normal. Families are scattered. Cities keep losing free gathering spaces. Digital platforms organize our relationships through metrics and monetization. We’re told we’re free—but that freedom often feels like low-grade anxiety: Where do I fit? What am I worth? Who notices if I disappear? Anomie isn’t the absence of rules. It’s too many conflicting ones. Be productive but chill. Competitive but collaborative. Independent but always available. Authentic but polished. We play different roles in different settings and start to lose track of which one is supposed to be “us.” In that fragmentation, sports aren’t just hobbies. They’re spaces where ways of being together get replayed—and sometimes repaired. Climbing, with its tight-knit gym and crag communities, holds a particular place in that landscape. A Gym Is More Than a Gym A modern climbing gym is a strange hybrid: part fitness center, part café, part town square. People show up for the workout, sure. But they stay for something else. From a Durkheimian angle, it’s a small lab for social integration. First, there are rituals. Monday night sessions. Wednesday crew. Friday night under the lights. We don’t go to church like we used to, but we do have our weekly service at the wall. Same time. Same faces. Same chalky air. Second, there’s a recognizable community. The regulars. The setters—the crew who design the problems. The front desk staff you joke with. It’s not total anonymity like the subway. It’s partial anonymity that slowly fades as you keep running into each other in climbing shoes. Third, there are clear shared rules. Don’t walk under someone climbing. Don’t sprint across the pads. Check your partner before you lead—clip the rope into quickdraws as you climb up the wall. These aren’t just technical guidelines. They’re social glue. Following them means taking care of other people. Where anomie blurs expectations, the gym clarifies them. You know why you’re there. You know how to act. You know roughly what you can expect from others. It’s not a grand political vision. It’s a small daily compass. Sociologists talk about “third places”—spaces that aren’t home or work, but where people build belonging: cafés, bars, community centers. Climbing gyms have quietly become third places for a lot of urban adults. You might walk in alone. You rarely stay alone. In a world where so many interactions are screen-mediated, simply sharing air, watching someone work a project—an ongoing route or problem they’re trying to send—and sitting in silence before a crux, the hardest move on the route, matters more than we admit. A Promise That Holds For Durkheim, anomie also comes from a mismatch between desire and reality. A society that promises everything and delivers less breeds frustration. Climbing does the opposite. It promises very little—and delivers exactly that. A 5.10 (roughly French 6b) doesn’t claim to be a shortcut to success. It says: here’s a specific problem. There’s a start, a middle, an end. You’ll need time. You’ll fall. You’ll try again. That’s it. The scale is clear. Your body is the metric—not your résumé, not your salary, not your follower count. After a day of abstract tasks and endless emails, climbing is blunt. Grab the hold. Push through your feet. Manage the pump—that forearm burn from hanging on too long. Fall. Get back on. You’re not optimizing your life. You’re trying to link three more moves. You could call that escape. Sometimes it is. But it’s also coherence. The question shifts from “Am I winning at life?” to “Have I improved on this style since last season?” Progress is local. Feedback is immediate. That kind of clarity works as a counterweight to social drift. It doesn’t solve structural issues—inequality, loneliness, precarity—but it creates a field where effort makes sense and results are visible. And then there’s falling. Falling is part of the deal. You learn to trust the pads. The rope. The belayer—the person holding your rope and managing your safety. Risk isn’t abstract. It’s human-sized. You face it. Together. Vertical Communities Durkheim insisted that what holds us up isn’t just psychology. It’s collective structure. Climbing clubs—public or private, indoor or outdoor—function like mini-institutions. There are authority figures: setters, coaches, the strong locals. There are rites of passage: your first lead, your first 5.11 (around French 6c), your first multi-pitch. There are shared stories: “Remember that winter project?” There’s informal solidarity: carpooling to the crag, lending gear, advice after yet another tweaked pulley. For many, this fills or supplements forms of belonging that have eroded elsewhere. Maybe you’re not joining a political party or a church. But you’re deeply invested in a climbing community—with its quiet values: help each other out. Stay humble in front of the rock. Don’t humiliate beginners. Falling is allowed. It would be naïve to paint climbing as conflict-free. Gender dynamics, class, race, and power show up in gyms and at crags, too. Not everyone feels instantly welcome. The codes can be intimidating. Still, compared to many social spaces, the symbolic barrier to entry is relatively low. Shorts, a T-shirt, a pair of shoes—and soon you’re on the same wall as a surgeon, a server, a college student, a city worker. Worlds that rarely overlap elsewhere share the same problem and the same gravity. That co-presence is a partial antidote to anomie. It rebuilds fragments of common society in a time when neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces are increasingly siloed. Even the most “solo” send has a crowd behind it: setters, belayers, friends who yelled “You’ve got it!” at the right moment. Clear Limits in a Blurry World One of anomie’s quiet effects is the feeling that everything is negotiable, that standards don’t hold. Climbing isn’t negotiable. The wall doesn’t care about your LinkedIn profile. If the hold’s too far, it’s too far. If you don’t know how to clip, you don’t lead. You can fake it in a meeting. Not on a 45-degree overhang. That clarity shapes more than muscle. It teaches patience—progress is slow. Responsibility—your mistake affects your partner. Self-awareness—today might not be the day for that project. Durkheim talked about the moral function of the collective—not moralizing, but orienting. Climbing offers a small, concrete code: don’t text while belaying. Don’t toss your crash pad wherever. Share the wall. Respect the crag. In a time when big ideological compasses feel worn down, these embodied micro-ethics matter. They provide direction, even if it’s temporary. Cure or Commodity? There’s an uncomfortable question here: does climbing heal anomie—or sometimes package and sell it back to us? Private gyms aren’t monasteries. They’re businesses. They need members, retention, “community.” Belonging is real—but it’s also monetized. Social media complicates things further. What felt like refuge can become a stage. Posting sends. Sharing trip footage. Building digital clout. The offline emptiness can creep back online as comparison and pressure: Am I strong enough? Cool enough? Doing enough? Again, Durkheim’s lens helps. Any community that doesn’t reflect on its own norms can slide into its own form of drift: unspoken expectations to be strong, stylish, fun. Silence around burnout or mental health. No real space to talk about harassment, sexism, racism, or labor conditions inside gyms. The question isn’t whether climbing is “good” or “bad” for contemporary emptiness. It’s under what conditions it truly builds connection rather than just simulates it. Do we welcome newcomers? Do we address what’s broken? Or do we stop at the Instagram-friendly version of “after-work send sessions”? Durkheim wrote that society isn’t just a backdrop. It’s a force that shapes us—and sometimes crushes us. Anomie names the moments when that force misfires and leaves individuals adrift. Climbing won’t fix deindustrialization, urban loneliness, mass precarity, or climate crisis. But it offers a practical space to try something other than drift: concrete ties, explicit norms, mutual commitment. In a moment when many people feel like they “have no hold” on their lives, climbing doesn’t promise salvation. It offers something smaller—and in its own way, powerful: real holds to grab, real bodies breathing next to you, real communities you can choose to belong to.

You can stick a boulder and still know—deep down—that you didn’t really own  it. It goes today, sure. But try it tomorrow and it’s a coin flip. In software, Martin Fowler popularized a word for this: refactoring—rewriting the internal structure without changing the outcome, so it holds up over time. On the wall, the idea is simple and slightly annoying: progress isn’t always about getting stronger. A lot of the time, it’s about reorganizing a move until it’s stable, clear, and repeatable. (cc) Tofan Teodor et Walkator / Unsplash - Montage Vertige Media It’s Tuesday night. The gym is packed, the music’s too loud, people keep brushing past each other. A boulder that “goes” eventually lands in the sent column: three tries, a grimace, one last move yanked out, and then that quick smile halfway between relief and self-belief—the one that says you barely got away with it, but you’d rather tell yourself it was under control. It looks clean on the scorecard. In your body, it feels… questionable. You won it with tension more than understanding. So you do it again. Not because you’re a masochist—because something feels off. This time you prop a phone on the ground and film the whole thing. On screen, the diagnosis is instant: shoulders creeping up, hips drifting out, feet tapping  instead of settling, a chain of tiny panic-corrections. A system that survives. And that’s exactly the problem. This is where Fowler’s refactoring mindset —built for code—turns out to be a useful method for climbing. Refactoring, in the most practical sense, isn’t “doing more.” It’s making the structure readable. And readable climbing is often worth more than extra strength: you can repeat it, you can use it elsewhere, and it holds up when conditions aren’t perfect. You sent. So what? There’s a stubborn misunderstanding in climbing: people confuse success  with solidity . Success is an event. Solidity is an architecture. An architecture can be wobbly and still stand—until the day something changes: you’re tired, your skin’s thin, you’re stressed, the humidity’s up, the move’s just slightly different. That’s when the “it goes” style shows what it always was: a stack of compensations. The trap is that this kind of climbing validates itself. Since it worked, it becomes your method. Since it paid off, it pushes you to add another layer: a little more power, a little more core tension, a little more stubbornness. Strength becomes a patch—effective, immediate, rewarding. And deeply misleading. Because what we call “getting better” can just be getting better at compensating. The mistake isn’t fixed; you’ve just increased your margin for slop. Then one day the hold isn’t as positive, or your focus is off, and the whole thing falls apart—not because you “lost your level,” but because you built up too much debt. Refactoring Without Changing the Score In software, Fowler’s idea is almost provocative in a speed-obsessed world: refactoring means changing a program’s internal structure without changing what it does from the outside. You’re not shipping a “new feature.” You’re making it possible to keep shipping without everything catching fire later. It’s a promise to your future self, not a present-day fireworks show. On the wall, it’s the same. You redo the same boulder—but differently. The goal isn’t a harder grade. It’s the stable version: the one that survives repetition, fatigue, and surprises. The one where you can say—without lying to yourself—“I can do that again.” In a sport obsessed with “I sent” (send, meaning you climb it clean without falling), that shift is almost subversive. Refactoring is the difference between a momentary win and an actual skill. One is a fluke you can’t bank on. The other is something you can carry. If you want progress that lasts, you need structures: readable code, readable movement, readable climbing. Feet: The Forgotten Syntax A lot of climbers think “strength” when they should be thinking “syntax.” In plenty of failures, the issue isn’t weak muscles—it’s a badly written sentence: a foot placed too late, hips left out, a path that wastes motion, a breath held at the worst moment. You pull to cover for positioning that never happened. Then you call it “I’m not strong enough,” when what you’re really missing is structure. In climbing, your body is a language. Your feet are the grammar. Ignore them and it’s like writing without punctuation: the message might get across, but everything becomes expensive, violent, and sloppy. And that cost gets mistaken for “power.” It’s hard, so I need to get stronger.  Not necessarily. It’s messy, so you need to get clearer. Refactoring here is painfully concrete: place the same foot differently, weight it earlier, accept losing half a second to save three at the crux (the hardest part of the problem). Spend less emotional energy “trying hard,” and more attention placing things correctly. That kind of attention eventually produces a rarer kind of strength—the kind you don’t notice, because it lasts. Movement Debt “Dirty” climbing is climbing on credit. You borrow from your skin, your tendons, your headspace, your confidence. You borrow from the future to pay for the present. In the moment, it works: you get up, you tick the box, you move on. But the debt piles up quietly, with no immediate receipt. Then one day you stop improving and you reach for a noble explanation for a basic problem: plateau, no motivation, bad style.  Sometimes it’s simpler than that. Sometimes it’s just the bill coming due. Refactoring is about paying down that debt instead of chasing more power. It’s not flashy. It asks you to redo problems below your ego, to replay sequences without the dopamine hit of novelty, to let a session feel like a workshop instead of an exam. And, most of all, it asks you to give up a piece of identity—the part built around this is how I climb. But it’s also the only road that doesn’t end in a crash. In climbing and in code, what matters isn’t sending once. It’s building a system that keeps working when conditions get worse. And they always do: fatigue, stress, cold, pride, age, life. The Protocol: Same Boulder, New Architecture Refactoring isn’t a vibe. It’s a practice. Pick a boulder you can do “with tricks,” the one you can muscle through when you have to. Then impose a quality constraint—not an outcome constraint: quiet feet, hips in, steady breathing, fingers placed exactly where you want them. Do it again. Adjust. Do it again. Same result. Different structure. One thing almost always happens: for a while, you get worse. The patches stop working. The compensations get rejected. The little cheats disappear. That’s normal. A new internal logic often feels fragile before it feels efficient. Then, without warning, it goes—with a calm obviousness. Not the loud kind of obvious that says watch this , but the quiet kind that says yeah, that was it. And in that moment, you get something strength doesn’t always buy: margin. Margin that makes your climbing steadier. More transferable. More durable.

In software culture, there’s a technique that’s as weird as it is effective: you explain your problem to someone who won’t talk back—a rubber duck. In climbing, that same habit of explaining might do what a lot of sessions don’t: turn “this beta isn’t working” into an actual diagnosis. And then—finally—into progress. © Al Elmes / Unsplash You know the scene. A climber falls at the same spot, lowers, pulls back on, falls again, repeats. And as the attempts pile up, the explanations get shorter: “Bad skin.”“No gas.”“Just morpho.”“Not my style.” Sometimes that’s true. A lot of the time it’s just convenient: it closes the case while making it feel like there was nothing to figure out. Except climbing isn’t only about strength and skin. It’s a sport made of tiny decisions, stacked fast. Where does the foot go? When do you lock off? What hip angle do you need? When do you breathe? When do you relax? More often than we like to admit, we don’t fail because we’re not strong enough—we fail because our logic is sloppy: a hidden assumption, a rushed read, a sequence we “kind of” decided on without really deciding. That’s where, in this slightly ridiculous story, the duck starts to make sense. Not as a gimmick. Not as a good-luck charm. As a tool for clarity. It forces you to put words on what you’re doing—until you hear, in your own sentence, the exact point where it stops making sense. What’s Yellow and Teaches You Something? “Rubber duck debugging” comes from a book—and from a certain idea of rigor. In The Pragmatic Programmer  (1999) , Andrew Hunt and David Thomas describe a deliberately low-tech method: when a problem won’t budge, explain it step by step to a third party—not so they solve it, but so the solution shows up the moment you try to make your logic consistent. The duck is just staging: a perfect listener—silent, available—who makes you go all the way through. As long as your reasoning stays in your head, it can live in a comfortable fog—feelings, hunches, shortcuts. The detail that turned it into legend is an anecdote that’s basically canon now. At Imperial College London, David Thomas worked with a research assistant, Greg Pugh, known as an excellent programmer. Pugh carried a small yellow duck and set it on his terminal . When he got stuck, he’d start over from the beginning, sentence by sentence. The duck didn’t answer—but the act of explaining often revealed the contradiction that had been hiding inside his mental shortcuts. The book is clear about the real point: duck, houseplant, teddy bear—doesn’t matter. What matters is being forced to spell it out. That’s exactly why the method outgrew office folklore and became a teaching tool. Harvard’s CS50 —the famous intro computer science course—explicitly presents it as a debugging technique, right alongside more “serious” tools, because shaky logic tends to give itself away the moment you explain it cleanly. For a while, students on campus even got their own “ddb”—duck debugger. And yes, it’s still sold in Harvard’s online store. The iconic CS50 rubber duck debugger (ddb) © The Harvard Shop In other words, the duck is a tiny device for rigor: a portable version of a simple idea—if you can’t say your logic clearly, there’s a good chance it isn’t clear. Talking Is Testing Why does this work so often—even for very experienced people? Because putting something into words isn’t just “telling a story.” It forces an idea to meet a standard: coherence. As long as your reasoning stays in your head, it can live in a comfortable fog—feelings, hunches, shortcuts. Once you say it out loud, you have to pick an order, a cause-and-effect, a justification . That’s when the cracks show: an assumption you never named, a sequence that “worked” only because you never really ran it end to end, a “this should go” that collapses the second you try to be precise. Learning research talks about this under the label “self-explanation”: forcing yourself to explain improves understanding , because explanation doesn’t just create connections—it also exposes gaps. The duck doesn’t need to approve your answer—it’s there to reveal the moment you don’t have one. The little “uh…” In sports, there’s a more practical cousin: self-talk. Not the vague mantra meant to hype you up, but short, action-focused cues that keep your decision-making stable when everything starts to blur: “foot first,” “hips in,” “breathe,” “push.” When that self-talk is instructional, research suggests it can support performance by steering attention toward the right signals and cutting down the noise. The duck just takes the same logic to its strictest version. It doesn’t let you get away with a single keyword. It demands the details. And details have one ruthless benefit: they don’t tolerate hand-waving. That’s why it can make you better. The Climbing Duck Climbers already know the idea of “getting your thoughts out of your head”: route reading . You watch, you anticipate, you tell yourself a plan. But that story is often the short version of us—a fast summary that skips steps and assumes your body will “figure out the rest.” You announce an intention (“hit the jug”) without laying out the path (“with which foot, what hip angle, what timing, what relaxation”). You confuse a direction with a strategy. The “climbing duck” is the opposite. You describe the sequence like someone else needs to understand it. Not to play coach. Just to force yourself into something rare: clarity. Start with a blunt question: where is the complexity, exactly? The crux? The top-out? Managing fatigue? The read? Fear? Coordination? Then you walk through it move by move, naming what actually organizes the action: how hands and feet relate, where your hips need to be, where your eyes go, the rhythm, the breathing. And you add one simple, brutal follow-up: “…for what?” “I put my foot there… for what?”“I lock off here… for what?” (Locking off: holding a bent arm position so you can move with control.)“I switch hands now… for what?” This isn’t rhetorical. It makes every move accountable to an intention. The duck doesn’t need to approve your answer—it’s there to reveal the moment you don’t have one . The little “uh…” In climbing, that “uh” is often more honest than the fall. It marks the spot where the sequence wasn’t “too hard.” It was just misunderstood. Testing isn’t repeating. Testing means changing one identifiable variable and watching what happens. Without turning your session into an audit, simply talking it through tends to surface three classics—not “mistakes,” exactly, but very normal mental traps that are extremely good at sabotaging improvement. 1) The goal bug:  thinking you’re searching for the most efficient solution, when you’re really searching for the one that costs the least discomfort . On paper, those look the same. In your body, they’re not. You call a risk-minimizing strategy “beta” (beta: the planned sequence of moves), then act surprised when it fails on a route that demands the opposite—commitment, positioning, accepting a moment of instability. 2) The cause bug:  blaming the hold—“it’s bad”—when the real cause happened three moves earlier . A foot placed too early, hips left out, a lock taken at the wrong time, breathing cut off. Verbalizing forces you to rebuild the chain , and once you have a chain, excuses are harder to keep. 3) The everything-at-once bug:  changing three variables at once , succeeding once “because it went,” and naming that “the right beta.” You didn’t understand it—you got lucky. And luck has one huge flaw: it doesn’t repeat. The duck pushes you back toward a harsher discipline that pays off: isolate one variable, test it, learn . A Hypothesis, Not a Novel The key moment after diagnosis is how you manage your attempts. The duck is useless if you go right back to lottery mode—pulling on and hoping your body magically does better this time. Testing isn’t repeating. Testing means changing one identifiable variable and watching what happens. One burn (burn: a try that doesn’t send) for a foot placement—not “everything with my lower body.”One burn for timing—not “be more dynamic.”One burn for hip orientation—not “get positioned better.”One burn for a micro-rest—not “manage pump.” (Pump: that forearm swelling/burning that makes you feel like you’re losing grip.)One burn for breathing at the right moment—not after you’ve already been holding your breath too long. This kind of minimalism is frustrating because it’s slow—almost too plain for a sport where we often confuse intensity with efficiency. But that’s exactly why it works: it produces knowledge, not just fatigue. It makes improvement traceable. It turns progress into understanding instead of a vague memory (“I did it once”). At the end of the day, the duck doesn’t add strength, skin, or courage. It adds something rarer: a way to stop lying to yourself. It turns failure into information, and information into progress. In a sport that loves to romanticize “instinct,” the duck offers a simpler, freeing truth: you don’t get better just by trying again. You get better by trying again with an explanation . And when your explanation collapses, that’s not a disaster. It’s finally a starting point.

On January 23, Netflix will livestream American star Alex Honnold as he free-solos Taipei 101—a 508-meter (1,667-foot) skyscraper in Taiwan—without a rope. The made-for-the-world event is already everywhere, and it’s splitting the climbing community. Vertige Media brought together three informed voices: Alain Robert, the French “Spider-Man” and a legend of urban free-soloing; Anthony Andolfo, a younger French climber following in Robert’s footsteps; and Owen Clarke, an American climbing journalist who has interviewed Honnold multiple times. A conversation that blows hot and cold. Alex Honnold / Taipei © Netflix The panel 🎙️ Alain Robert  — Nicknamed the “French Spider-Man,” he has soloed more than 150 skyscrapers worldwide, including Taipei 101 with a rope in 2004. 🎙️ Anthony Andolfo  — A 31-year-old French climber who has been free-soloing on rock and buildings for four years. In Alain Robert’s wake, he’s climbed the Tour Montparnasse and a tower in Melbourne—an ascent that landed him a week in prison. 🎙️ Owen Clarke  — An American journalist specializing in climbing, who has interviewed Alex Honnold several times. Vertige Media: When you heard Netflix was going to livestream Alex Honnold free-soloing Taipei 101, what was your first reaction? Anthony Andolfo:  I thought it was awesome. I never expected building free-solo to get mainstream coverage one day. You have to understand: when we climb buildings, we get slapped down every time. I did a week in prison in Australia for it. Alain has done time too. The last tower I did—Montparnasse—I spent 36 hours in police custody. So I was like: it’s cool that, for once, it won’t automatically be framed as something illegal. Alain Robert:  I didn’t find it that surprising. I’ve done four or five live broadcasts for big TV networks with millions of viewers. I soloed in front of cameras in Caracas, the Emirates, Rio de Janeiro, Canada. For me, that part isn’t new. The big difference is global reach. And that’s because it’s Netflix. Owen Clarke:  Honestly, it didn’t interest me that much. But I think most people reacted one of two ways: either “Wow, this is amazing,” or yelling betrayal—like Alex is going back on his word. My reaction was basically: “Cool, Alex is going to make some money. Good luck to him.” Alain Robert / Sears Tower / Chicago © Coll. Alain Robert Vertige Media: How do you explain Netflix’s interest in free solo, and the decision to turn this into a live event? Owen Clarke:  I think it’s pretty grim, actually. Content creators—from tiny channels all the way up to Netflix—keep raising the stakes to grab our attention. Anthony Andolfo:  Climbing has blown up in the last few years. It became an Olympic sport, Alex’s documentary Free Solo  won an Oscar… Netflix feels like it has to cover what’s become a phenomenon, and Alex Honnold gives them the chance to do it. Alain Robert:  Netflix is a money-printing machine. For them, climbing has exploded in the media, so they’re going in. And they don’t do anything halfway. What I’m seeing is that now you can talk openly about stuff like free solo. Before, you couldn’t. Owen Clarke:  What bothers me is this whole “Look how dangerous I am, look how much I’m risking my life” culture. You see it everywhere now— influencers posting crazier and crazier stuff for clicks. Netflix is part of that. Now, do I think Alex is doing something wrong? No. I know him a little, and I know he’ll use the money from this climb for his foundation (which funds environmental projects, especially solar power in underserved communities, editor’s note). He’s not a guy blowing cash on sports cars and champagne. Anthony Andolfo:  I don’t think he came up with the idea by himself. He’s pretty introverted—a purist. We all saw that in Free Solo . He seems more tied to the rock than to anything happening around him. That said, he’s said he’s been thinking about Taipei 101 since 2012. That’s 13 years. Alain Robert:  When I went on his podcast two weeks ago, Alex told me it was just a new experience for him. But his life—clearly—is on rock. It’s not on buildings. Buildings are just something a bit different for him. In the trailer I saw, you get the feeling he’s chasing this huge dream. That’s not really how he described it to me. You can tell Netflix is hyping it way beyond what Alex actually feels. Owen Clarke:  Alex has told me before that he thinks it’s fun to climb buildings. There are even some skyscrapers he’s wanted to do for a long time. The thing is, it’s usually illegal and pretty disrespectful to do it without permission. He’s very strict about that. So I think getting the chance to do it legally—with the city’s support—solves that problem for him. Alain Robert:  In 2013, with National Geographic, he was interested in the Burj Khalifa (the tallest building in the world, editor’s note). But that building is impossible to solo. So the one they landed on was Taipei 101 in Taiwan. One: it actually can be climbed without a rope. Two: it’s tall. Three: the government gave the green light. The truth is, building climbing is mostly political. When the Taiwanese government contacted me to climb it in 2004, it was because they thought the tower was cursed. Guys were dying every day during construction. I was supposed to break the spell, in a way… Vertige Media: Technically speaking, how hard is this ascent? Alain Robert:  A while back, I created a rating scale for skyscraper climbs (with David Chambre, editor’s note). It goes from 1 to 10. For Taipei 101, I’d put it at a 5 or 6. Alex recently said that, for him, it’s like 6c+—around 5.11 (6c+)—so he’s got a huge cushion compared to his top level. I’m not worried about him at all. He took far bigger risks on El Capitan. Anthony Andolfo:  Same for me—the climb is 100% under control. He’s prepared, and when he goes for it, everything will be dialed. The pressure might come from the fact that it’s live, on camera. But he’s used to being filmed now. Alex Honnold / Taïwan © Netflix Owen Clarke:  It’s pretty basic climbing. It’s the same move repeated a hundred times. Alex trains constantly. He free-solos and does high-end scrambling (moving fast over steep, exposed terrain without a rope) all the time around Vegas, where he lives. I agree—his safety margin is huge. And it’s been planned for months. They inspected the line, cleaned it, checked that everything was solid. It’s not like Alain, who sometimes climbed not knowing whether a bolt was loose or not. Alain Robert:  That’s for sure—when I climbed Taipei 101, we weren’t in the same situation. I had 15 stitches in my elbow, it was pouring rain, and 30% of the beams were covered in vinyl with oil on it so it could be removed. I thought I’d do it in two hours—I took twice that. Alex is working on a schedule, but with his level and his current fitness, he should move fast. It’s the same eight “blocks”—eight is a lucky number in China—separated by three-meter-wide platforms where he can rest if he wants. Anthony Andolfo:  The biggest factor is endurance. On a building, you never really get a true rest. On Montparnasse, it was the same left-right movement for 200 meters. In Melbourne, it was harder because it overhung in places, but mentally, you don’t doubt. Once you do the first move, you have to get to the top. You don’t have a choice. Vertige Media: What about responsibility? Owen Clarke:  I don’t think Alex has any responsibility here. It’s his life. We know he’ll be careful—he’s not stupid. Every day on Instagram, I see videos of people getting blown up in Palestine, or starving to death in Sudan. Here in the U.S., we watched a woman get murdered on the street on a livestream. These are tragedies we carry around in our phones and face every day. If Alex fell, it wouldn’t be the most traumatic thing most people saw this week. Anthony Andolfo:  It’s tricky, though. One mistake and someone dies—and it’s live. That’s something people have thrown at me a lot: “If you fall, I’ll be traumatized for life.” But I’m not asking anyone to watch. Still, the responsibility of making other people want to do it—that can be a problem. I get that too. People see me and they want to try. Alain Robert:  Come on—Alex Honnold has zero responsibility. He’s a professional climber. When people get into their car, they don’t think they’re Lewis Hamilton, as far as I know… Owen Clarke:  I think Netflix has more responsibility. They’re a media giant, always pushing for more extreme buzz. They’re constantly dealing with subscriber stagnation. They need “more,” so they stage these kind of absurd spectacles. If something happens, it’ll be on them. Me? I’m just happy Alex gets to take their money. [laughs] Alain Robert:  This endless question of our responsibility in the face of danger also comes from how the West relates to death. People are obsessed with it. They’re so scared of dying that when they see someone doing something risky, it reminds them of their own end. I live in Bali—most people here are Buddhist. Death is celebrated. It’s a festival. We need to stop treating it like the ultimate punishment. Anthony Andolfo / Paris © Coll. Anthony Andolfo Vertige Media: Millions of people will watch. Does that change anything? Alain Robert:  Not many people know this, but when I climbed for Sábado Sensacional  in Caracas in 2002, I was dressed as Spider-Man to promote the movie at the time. The stunt drew several million live viewers. When I climbed in Abu Dhabi after another ascent, the whole city was honking. There were traffic jams for more than 150 kilometers. It was a party. I felt a lot of love. Owen Clarke:  There’s something beautiful about what Alain did. Building climbs can carry real power—real beauty. But I don’t think that power comes through when you plan it out and broadcast it live on Netflix. At that point, it’s just a circus show. Alain Robert:  It’s different, yeah. I come from a time when climbing wasn’t covered like this—it was a one-shot thing. The climbs were more spontaneous. Here, with Netflix, we’ve been getting blasted with info on social media for two months. Anthony Andolfo:  For me, climbing a building is still deeply personal. No matter who’s watching or what they think, it stays a refuge for a lot of people. I’ve done a few building solos, and I’m not doing it for fame. I’ve got 2,000 Instagram followers—I don’t care. What I like is being in my own bubble when I’m climbing. On a building, the vertical is pure. The freedom is absolute. It’s the only time that, when I’m climbing, I start singing. Alain Robert:  I discovered other worlds through the show—other ways of living, other cultures. I loved that. And I think Alex is going to love it too. During the climb, you don’t think much because you’re focused. But Alex will have such a big cushion on Taipei 101 that he’ll be able to perform a little. I warned him: people don’t want to see you fall. They’ll push you upward, cheer you on with every move toward the top. Vertige Media: What kind of mark will this leave on climbing history? Anthony Andolfo:  For a lot of purists, it probably won’t be seen as a good thing. But in climbing history, it’s interesting because it’ll be the first time a free-solo is broadcast live around the world. In terms of popularizing climbing, that’s massive. For me, it might even be one of the biggest mainstream climbing events we’ll ever see. And it’ll be hard to top. Owen Clarke:  I don’t really know. It’s a media stunt. It’s circus. It’s not a real climbing achievement. To me, a real achievement is unlocking a new level of difficulty, or putting up a route for the first time so anyone can go try to repeat it. Here, Alex gets permission because he’s Alex Honnold. Other people won’t be able to go repeat it—they’ll probably get arrested. Alain Robert:  I think it will leave a mark, though. I don’t know exactly what kind, but Netflix has more than 300 million subscribers worldwide. The reach is enormous. That said, for Alex, it won’t change anything. He has nothing left to prove. His biggest climbing moments are already behind him. Netflix will broadcast the Taipei 101 ascent live on Saturday, January 24 at 2 a.m.

In L’Argentière-la-Bessée, ICE Climbing Écrins still brings a few hundred people together every winter around ice climbing. From the outside, it looks like one of those mountain meetups that’s been there forever—steady, familiar, basically part of the local winter scenery. But the 2026 edition landed in a weirder moment than the postcard suggests: a new organizing team, shrinking public funding, and a warming climate that makes “ice season” feel less like a season and more like a gamble. So how do you build an event when you can’t fully predict what you’ll have to work with? Pelvoux © PEMA ICE Climbing Écrins has never been “spectacle” in the classic sense. No grandstands. Very little staging. Even fewer flashy promises. For thirty-six years, the point has been something else: give climbers from all backgrounds a way to discover or level up in ice climbing, rooted in the place itself and the people who live there. Taking Over Without Breaking It In 2026, that surface-level continuity hid a real handoff. After ten years led by Cathy Jolibert, the event changed hands. The takeover was quiet and collective—no dramatic “new era” messaging—but it forced the new team to look at ICE differently: not just through the participant experience, but from the ground up—its finances, its relationship to the practice, and the values it actually puts into action. The transition wasn’t rushed. Julie Gégout, an osteopath from the Hautes-Alpes, had already been working on the event for years when she learned—along with Maëlle Le Ligné and Oriane Jouneau—that Jolibert was preparing to step away. “We knew it was coming,” she says. The handoff took shape gradually, forming a core group of five people, later joined by two guides, Octave Garbolino and Nil Bertrand. They describe their structure as horizontal: no single director, no one public face. That choice slows the tempo, but it also sets the method—understand first, adjust second. “We knew a lot about what was on the surface, but not what was underneath,” Gégout says. In other words: people see the climbs, the clinics, the evening hangouts. What they don’t see is everything that makes those moments possible—partnerships, schedules, long-standing teams, and the whole logistical balance. Cervières © PEMA So 2026 became a year of observation. The team kept the overall framework, leaned hard on people who’ve been involved for twenty or thirty years, and avoided sudden shifts. But they still put their stamp on it. Registration opened first to people who had never attended before, and only later to returning participants. Gégout says close to three-quarters of this year’s participants were first-timers. Altogether, the event brought together about 500 people, including 70 invited guests welcomed through a solidarity-based program. The message is straightforward: don’t let the festival shrink into a closed circle of regulars. And don’t pretend a mountain gathering is only about skill level or gear—it’s also about access: to a sport, to a place, and to the kind of story people come to the mountains to live out. A Fragile Model—and No One’s Pretending Otherwise Financially, ICE runs backward from what many people assume. It’s not primarily carried by private sponsors. Its balance rests on three pillars: registration fees, public subsidies, and—far behind—brand booths. The total budget is around €100,000. About half comes from registrations. Partners—mostly the brands present at the expo—bring in around €10,000. The rest depends on local public bodies. That dependence is intentional, but it’s also stressful. “It runs on subsidies. Today it works. Tomorrow, we’ll see,” Gégout says bluntly. Grant applications go in during the fall. Answers often arrive in February or March—when the event is already underway. So ICE gets built with a built-in unknown: if funding drops—or disappears—you’re forced to adjust after the fact, on money you’ve essentially already spent. In that situation, the options narrow fast. If subsidies fall, you either raise registration prices, start charging for concerts that used to be free, or cut certain budget lines. None of those moves are neutral. Each one hits the event’s identity: a gathering designed to stay accessible, even though ice climbing, by definition, requires time, travel, and a certain baseline cost. Tour Freissinières © PEMA That reality also shaped some 2026 decisions. To supervise the invited groups, the team relies on a partnership with several local guide offices, which mobilize instructors on a volunteer basis through internal agreements within their organizations. The setup opens the event to people who might not otherwise be able to participate, while limiting a cost line that, in previous years, weighed heavily on the budget. So yes, there’s a solidarity message. There’s also a very practical truth underneath it: keeping prices low in a tightening financial climate means rebuilding the math. Ice, With No Guarantees The future of ice climbing sits in the room, whether anyone wants it to or not. Warming temperatures make conditions more uncertain, more variable, sometimes simply not workable. ICE isn’t trying to dodge that. “We don’t want to lie,” Gégout insists. Some years are great. Other years are not. There have already been editions where planned ice outings had to be replaced with other activities because conditions didn’t come together. The team pushes back, though, on the idea that ICE is drifting into “ice-adjacent” programming as a replacement. The rough numbers they give are clear: around 300 people per day are out on ice outings, compared to about 50 total across all the other workshops. Diversification exists, but it’s still on the margins—more a response to specific needs (recovery options, activities for accompanying friends or partners, weather disruptions) than a plan to substitute something else for natural ice. On artificial ice, their stance is cautious. Existing structures can serve as a fallback, especially for first-time instruction. But the team doesn’t want, at this stage, to systematically replace missing natural ice with artificial installations. “For now, we’re going year by year,” Gégout says. If the ice is there, it stays central. If it isn’t, the event adapts. That philosophy shows up most clearly in the logistics. Vegetarian meals, local products, and a system where participants wash their own dishes: these choices—carried over from previous editions—are kept without hedging. The most debated piece is the “autowash,” the setup that asks everyone to clean their own plate and utensils, which Gégout says is “heavily contested.” Some criticism even comes from mountain professionals, irritated by what they see as an extra layer of constraints. Gégout doesn’t try to sell it as a moral lesson. She points to the alternative. Serving 500 dinners each night means either mountains of disposable waste or a more demanding system. The line is framed less as virtue signaling than as consistency. One Last Awkward Detail: The Name There’s also a distinctly modern discomfort the event can’t fully shrug off: the acronym itself. In 2026, “ICE” doesn’t only mean frozen water. For part of the public, it also calls up U.S. immigration enforcement. Gégout smiles, then admits the awkwardness: “In 2026, can we still be called ICE? I don’t know. But we were here first.”