She definitely meant the "birth of sport climbing in America". I'm more concerned that she hadn't found any high-quality thin featured crags prior to this.
Smith, is "basically the birthplace of climbing in America" (0:54)...huh? Just think of the American boomer's that started climbing before sport route's created controversy with the land manager's and ethically minded traditionalist's. Don't they teach climbing history in climbing gym's these days?
Pretty sure she meant sport climbing. But also.. American Boomers? Golden age of Yosemite was spearheaded by the Silent Generation. And a ton of climbing established before that... Also, sport climbing is not controversial anymore.
@@jon-williammurphy9780 I slotted anyone older than 40 to be the boomer generation these days, since ageism begins early in many of the recent digital age's mindset...but you are right about the proper phrase used to name the era of Chouinard, Frost, Robbins, Kamps, Bridwell and many others. I was lucky enough to meet and talk to three of those men and they were definitely the strong silent type, besides maybe for the Bird. To overstate the obvious, I know she was referring to sport climbing but she made a blanket statement that seemed to avoid other and not so long ago styles of climbing and their locations of birth. Soon we'll have an era of climbers that claim climbing started in a gym. And while sport climbing is not as controversial as it was in the 80's and 90's, it is still held in disregard among many American land managers. Like the gym's, the sport areas often lead to higher volumes of people and unlike the gym's but because of them to an extent, these new floods of population can damage natural habitats...the worst I've witnessed even thought burning down a Joshua Tree for a camp fire as fun. I guess what bugged me about the video and why it brought out the grumpy old man...was that the primary intent was to achieve a goal and project for a higher grade rather than be enlightened by the process, although obviously for Paige it was a bit of both. There's nothing like having to control your head on a sick long run-out on some back country dime edged slab facing a 100 foot deck-fall. That's the kind of climbing to keep the gym climbers in the gym where they belong.
