Climbing’s been popular and accessible for quite a while, but now one article starts to examine the impact of it. “Yosemite’s new breed of rock rats” gives a quick history of the climbing at Yosemite and the push to for faster, riskier ascents amongst the sponsored climbers. The historical overview is good and they include bits about the impact of climbing on the Valley. But the article has a couple of odd features:

• I can’t seem to find link they mention for Dan Osman’s speed-climb of Lover’s Leap (from ‘Master’s of Stone’, perhaps they found out it was copyrighted); and
• A poll whether rock climbing has become too competitive (maybe it should only have referred to some parts of the climbing community and whether they’re getting too competitive).

Tags: yosemite, climbing, competition