Rawdogging Reality: Climbing and Deliberate Ignorance
How to become a GILC Hunter
Sometimes when visiting a new crag a piece of rock will jump out at you. You instantly know you want to climb it, even before you know its name, grade, or any information about it. You know this simply because of how it looks.
Rock that evokes this feeling in you is classified as GILC — pronounced “jilk”. This stands for Geology I’d Like to Climb; and is inspired by a similar well-known acronym. You might say to a friend while approaching a novel crag: “Oh mate check out that rock over there, that is some serious GILC, we have to climb that”.
GILC must be determined by raw sense data alone. As such, the rock immediately ceases to be true GILC as soon as you receive any external information about it; much like how an onsight degrades into a flash. Climbing experiences that are free from external information are unadulterated, adventurous and authentic. As Frank Smythe wrote in 1941:
He who fares on hills without a guide or guide-book tastes the subtlest of all joys, the adventure of the unknown. It matters nothing, that others have been there before; for him each peak, each pass, is new, each step untrodden.1
The importance of this type of experience is partly behind the ethic of non-documentation at crags such as the Grinah and Barrow Stones. If you go to a place with no prior knowledge, and no guidebook exists, then the experiences you have there can only be your own. The stigmatisation of beta-spraying is based on a similar logic: you want to have your own experience, not have it contaminated by someone else’s.
Hunting for GILC
Deliberately looking for GILC and climbing it without any external information — or GILC hunting — is a way of maximising these experiences. GILC hunting purposefully aims to direct mindful attention towards the rock, its beauty, its texture, the challenge it presents, and the movement it demands.2 This is even more necessary than usual because you have no external information to aid you. GILC hunting can therefore also be seen as a radically pure form of onsight climbing.3
Climbing mindfully is a key aspect of Climbing as Worship — a general approach to climbing discussed in a previous post.
Losing the Rock
GILC hunting can be contrasted with the opposite approach. This involves studying the guidebook long in advance, marching directly to the climb you have selected based on its name, grade, stars, or because some people said some stuff about it on the internet, copying the beta off a YouTube video, using this method to ‘get’ the climb, and instantly booting up UKC to log the ‘tick’.
In this case, the abstract information about the rock risks being more real than the rock itself. This is a cognitive distortion known as reification. At worst, the rock can be reduced to merely being the medium on which “the climb” exists, rather than that rock being what you want to climb up. “The climb”, as a noun, with a name, grade and other associated socially constructed information becomes the end goal.4 In other words, the map ends up being more important than the territory it is meant to help you navigate; this inversion of the map-territory relation is also a cognitive distortion. These distortions are characteristic of Climbing as Consumption and Climbing as Accountancy — common approaches to climbing discussed in a previous post.
Information Warps the Rock
Some of you might be thinking “so what’s the problem with using a guidebook if I don’t let myself get lost in abstraction?” Being vigilant to the possibility of losing the rock is prudent, but guidebooks have other subtle ways of compromising our encounter with the rock. Little can be done to mitigate these effects.
Firstly, knowledge of a route can change how you think about and evaluate that route; this effect is known as priming.5 Your own thoughts while on a route, and your post-climb assessment of that route, will inevitably be anchored to the opinions you read in the guidebook prior to your ascent. This is more likely to be the case if you hold the guidebook author in high esteem; a phenomenon known as the messenger effect.6
Secondly, and more insidiously, information about a route can literally change the way we perceive that route. This is because incoming sense data is influenced by the knowledge we already possess.7 Please see the two short videos below to experience examples of this.8
Encountering the Rock
So once we have seen the guidebook we can never see the geology as we saw it before. Instead of being the perception of “the stunning prow on the gigantic ship-shaped boulder situated at the bottom of a mountain”9 the geology becomes “Malc’s Arête 7B - classic, must do, test piece - hard for the grade - best problem in Scotland”. By exposing yourself to the map you risk losing the forest for the trees, or rather, losing the rock for the 6Bs.
Luckily we have a choice; all crags can be like the Grinah and Barrow Stones, at least initially, if we take a strategy of deliberate ignorance. External information cannot contaminate your experience if you haven’t been exposed to any; and you can’t confuse the map for the territory if you don’t have a map.
So when you next find yourself planning to visit a crag for the first time, consider putting the guidebook aside for a while. When you arrive, wander through the rocks and look around to see if you can find some Geology You’d Like to Climb. Consider attempting these GILCs before consulting the guidebook for information. Your perception of the rock thus remains free from the influence of unnecessary description, alphanumerical lines, and others’ experiences and opinions.
Try to go for as long as you can before picking up the guidebook, aiming to climb as much GILC as it is safe to do so, encountering and climbing the rocks exactly as they are.10
Developing Skill and Virtue
The strongest defence of guidebooks is that they tell you how hard routes are so that you can avoid hurting yourself by getting on something too hard or something deceptively dangerous. However, an important but often neglected climbing skill is being able to look at a piece of rock and quickly tell, on both an intuitive and analytical level, whether you will be able to climb it safely. In the absence of guidebook knowledge you have nothing to rely on except this skill, and it will develop quickly.11
Additionally, Mark Twight contends that the ability to “realize a state of intense awareness” is itself an essential climbing skill.12 In order to develop this, Twight suggests that climbers meditate or take up a martial art. The practice of GILC hunting might be a more climbing-specific way of developing this particular skill. It seems reasonable to assume that, once developed, such enhanced awareness could be deployed during even the most well-rehearsed redpoints.
GILC hunting is therefore a useful method for the intentional development of skill and thus pairs well with the Climbing as Craft approach. Climbing GILC also demands increased introspection, courage and self-confidence, key aspects for the Climbing as Quest approach. Consistent with this, Geoffrey Winthrop Young cautioned — back in 1940 — that use of guidebooks undermines the development of skill and virtue:
In the past, many of us resisted the introduction of climbing guide-books for the reason that we feared, even then, that they would help to restrict that free entry to the hills which demands a discovery of new romance and difficulty in accordance with one’s own powers. I have now learned that they contained a yet greater peril, the threat to our hope of self-discovery, to our finding of a relationship with the mountain rhythm such as can heighten all existence for us.13
Conclusion
Once you have finished encountering the rock, the guidebook is at its best; as an invaluable tool for identifying things missed on first look, and for detailing just how difficult that truly scary-looking GILC you saw earlier is. The guidebook’s history section can then serve to expand your knowledge of the crag into the fourth dimension, to contextualise your own ascents in a web of others’, and may evoke feelings of gratitude towards the pioneering generations who made your experience possible. Discovering the poetry of a well-named route can even serve to retrospectively enhance the experience of climbing the rock.
Yet the unavoidable consequence of reading the guide is that the lines, numbers, and opinions descend over the crag and superimpose themselves onto the rock, forever, though perhaps usefully, transforming your experience of it.
But in taking the GILC approach you will have encountered the rock exactly as it is, completely free from abstraction and contamination. These unadulterated experiences are yours forever. They cannot be lost or taken away.
With this in mind, I’d like to conclude with Eric Shipton’s closing thoughts from his book Upon That Mountain, published in 1943:
He is lucky who, in the full tide of life, has experienced a measure of the active environment that he most desires. In these days of upheaval and violent change, when the most basic values of to-day are the vain and shattered dreams of tomorrow, there is much to be said for a philosophy which aims at living a full life while the opportunity offers. There are few treasures of more lasting worth than the experience of a way of life that is in itself wholly satisfying. Such, after all, are the only possessions of which no fate, no cosmic catastrophe can deprive us; nothing can alter the fact if for one moment in eternity we have really lived.14
Smythe, F. R. (1941). The Mountain Vision. Hodder & Stoughton. Page 9.
This type of deliberate ignorance is also a means to avoid information/choice overload. John Gill contends that applying grades to rock affects one’s “style, technique, choice of climbs and basic goals” and interfere with one’s ability to experience the mystical via climbing.
Gill, J. (1979). Bouldering: A Mystical Art Form. In The Mountain Sprit.
Chernev, A., Böckenholt, U., & Goodman, J. (2015). Choice overload: A conceptual review and meta‐analysis. In Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Hertwig, R., & Engel, C. (2016). Homo Ignorans: Deliberately choosing not to know. In Perspectives on Psychological Science.
Craig, D. (1987). Native Stones. Flamingo. Chapter 15.
See also: Climber, M. (Forthcoming). Guidebooks. In Modern Climber.
Craig, D. (1987). Native Stones. Flamingo. Chapter 15.
Irmak, C., Vallen, B., & Sen, S. (2010). You Like What I Like, but I Don’t Like What You Like: Uniqueness Motivations in Product Preferences. In Journal of Consumer Research.
Moon, S., Bergey, P. K., & Iacobucci, D. (2010). Dynamic Effects among Movie Ratings, Movie Revenues, and Viewer Satisfaction. In Journal of Marketing.
Chakravarty, A., Liu, Y., & Mazumdar, T. (2010). The Differential Effects of Online Word-of-Mouth and Critics’ Reviews on Pre-release Movie Evaluation. In Journal of Interactive Marketing.
Livingston, I. J., Nacke, L. E., & Mandryk, R. L. (2011). The impact of negative game reviews and user comments on player experience. In Proceedings of the 2011 ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Video Games.
Tsao, W.-C. (2014). Which type of online review is more persuasive? The influence of consumer reviews and critic ratings on moviegoers. In Electronic Commerce Research.
Lee, Y.-J., Hosanagar, K., & Tan, Y. (2015). Do I Follow My Friends or the Crowd? Information Cascades in Online Movie Ratings. In Management Science.
Sanborn, A. N., & Chater, N. (2016). Bayesian Brains without Probabilities. In Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Van Dessel, P., Cone, J., Gast, A., & De Houwer, J. (2020). The impact of valenced verbal information on implicit and explicit evaluation: the role of information diagnosticity, primacy, and memory cueing. In Cognition and Emotion.
Hoskins, J., Gopinath, S., Verhaal, J. C., & Yazdani, E. (2021). The influence of the online community, professional critics, and location similarity on review ratings for niche and mainstream brands. In Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
Albarracin, D., & Dai, W. (2021). Priming Effects on Behavior and Priming Behavioral Concepts: A Commentary on Sherman and Rivers (2020). In Psychological Inquiry.
Van Dessel, P., Cone, J., & Gast, A. (2022). Powerful Effects of Diagnostic Information on Automatic and Self-Reported Evaluation: The Moderating Role of Memory Recall. In Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Pornpitakpan, C. (2004). The Persuasiveness of Source Credibility: A Critical Review of Five Decades’ Evidence. In Journal of Applied Social Psychology.
Dolan, P., Hallsworth, M., Halpern, D., King, D., Metcalfe, R., & Vlaev, I. (2012). Influencing Behaviour: The MINDSPACE Way. In Journal of Economic Psychology.
Davis, M. (2007). An Introduction to Sine-Wave Speech. MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge.
McGurk, H., & MacDonald, J. (1976). Hearing lips and seeing voices. In Nature.
Clark, A. (2016). Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind. Oxford University Press.
Top-down processing effects have also been shown for vision, smell, touch and taste.
The same effect can be achieved by watching the translation scene from the film Hot Fuzz twice in quick succession.
This is obviously an imperfect textual description of a phenomenological experience. The only way to know what I mean is to stand in front of that boulder as if you’ve never read this.
NB: Some philosophers would advise attempting to climb GILCs because you are not sure if you can climb them safely.
Craig, D. (1987). Native Stones. Flamingo. Chapter 15.
Moreover, there is some evidence to suggest that spending time immersed in nature, and away from technological distractions, increases performance on creative problem-solving tasks — which is most of what climbing is.
Atchley, R. A., Strayer, D. L., & Atchley, P. (2012). Creativity in the Wild: Improving Creative Reasoning through Immersion in Natural Settings. In PLoS ONE.
Twight, M. (1999). Extreme Alpinism. The Mountaineers. Page 33.
Young, G. W. (1940). Should the Mountain be Brought to Mahomet? In The Alpine Journal.
Shipton, E. (1943/1945). Upon That Mountain. Hodder & Stoughton. Page 248.
Stimulating discussion, though I have to say, I don't sense it as strongly as the author frames it. How often do rawdogging opportunities occur ? Well, more frequently if that's what you buy into, for sure. It certainly has a deeper reward. Guidebooks however, yield immense satisfaction from armchair action - which spans a vastly larger duration than the time spent cragging - and this is worth something. Most of us are limited by opportunity whether that be work, weather or company - so narrowing down choices for those precious moments when we actually get out is important. OK so we could choose different guidebooks which leave more elements to the imagination. Fact is - we may count as a blessing - the detail which comes across in a topo may well be (often is) flawed in some way, whether it be grade or presentation - so happily, the reality of real life encounter still holds reward.
But here's a thing - *today* 11/12/2023, the bluemoon phenomena really took place ! We went out to a little known sport crag in Spain where topos are not allowed - and discovered a newly equipped sector. As the only lead climber present I was compelled to consider the value of this find (stay with it or escape to safer territory) - some of the routes looked easy enough to get going with, while others, though v inviting 'might' be too hard. The choice came good - the 'too easy' routes were certainly more interesting without grade definition (F5a/b), and the 'might be too hard' routes both went with great success - steep juggy holds on orange/red streaked conglomerate (F6a/b). Discovery went deeper :)
Incidentally the crag's name is Betesa, which features in my v recent blog post 'Climbing Sites, Central Pyrenees' - here at treelee.substack.com - free to access and share
Interesting, and I would hope widening the thought envelopes young people seem to spend their time within now. I don't get as categorical, preferring to be receptive to whatever complex of ideas come up for rumination.
I will say that after over fifty years climbing, my early obsessively fanatical ones were productive, but fraught with the nearest-to-death winter first ascent epic, dark months of isolation, confusion and self-loathing over motives, priorities, responsibilities, against objectives I now see as box-checking ambitions, with little satisfaction or personal enlightenment to be gained.
The character profile of the typical new climber today is vastly different from my peers in the day; my first outing, rappelling with buddies, felt like the first hit of crack - I was addicted before I understood what I'd just experienced. Now, a blur of videos, TV and movie documentaries, celebrity climber figures, all raise the notoriety of the sport, but the sensory elements cannot be a spectator activity.
I find it paradoxical, that so many crave the new route adventure, when the leftovers are either mostly insignificant, poor quality, or ever more obscure, and farther afield.
One can compromise, study an area from MP or a guidebook, but not fixate on ratings, PR redpoint lists, etc. I will say that "adventure climbing" consumes a lot of time, with a lot of it wasted on junk routes, dangerous situations, and lousy weather - and living the dirtbag style comes with costs beyond dollars. Relationships, straight careers, often suffer for one's obsession, and the romance wears thin as one ages, and must work harder to rationalize one's choices as compadres move along, and actually appear happy to have done so.
Acquaintances insist on slamming in new bolted routes after forty-plus years in the game, and I have to think a lot of youngsters may resent this Manifest Destiny mindset as no different from shooting every buffalo, or stripping every forest for lumber. I enjoy testing myself on solid rocks, without nasty surprises at some death anchor, avoiding loose blocks, gardening choss, or being sandbagged by bad advice. Been there, done that, and I no longer fall for the Grand Moral Superiority of the Noble Mountain Pioneer conceit. Too many climbers I've known were assholes, racists, misogynists, even outright sociopaths; being a misanthrope outlier does not make anyone special, or deserving of respect. What you did is far less important than how you did it, and with whom, and how you impacted others. Judging and grading how most of us climb, as recreation (Re -Creation), is a bad habit to practice.