Four Hauls that Can Assist a Struggling Climber Through a Hard Move

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“It’s cheating. Having someone haul on the rope to help you up a hard move on a climb is cheating.”

I can’t disagree… if our definition of completing the climb “by fair means,” revolves around “free climbing,” or only using the rock features to create upward progress. But let’s unpack this a little.

I could get into technicalities about if you complete a climb by fair means if you follow someone else up (or do you have to do the leading). I could make arguments about how a team will say they completed a climb even if they swap leads but won’t say that both members “freed the climb” if one climber does all the leading. We could get into verbal jousting about all this stuff.

But I actually have a more cutting argument…

I don’t care.

The whole endeavor is arbitrary, so why do I care about a layer of arbitrary rules placed on top of an arbitrary activity?

Let’s imagine a climber of high, but not exceptional quality…

“Are you going to climb a route up that peak?”

“Yeah.”

“Why climb, though? There’s a walkup trail on the backside.”

“I want the challenge.”

“Oh, so are you climbing the peak the hardest way possible?”

“No. There’s another way up that goes 5.14d, but I can’t climb that. I’m taking the 5.12 route next to it.”

“So, you aren’t going the easiest or the hardest way. How’d you decide what route to take?”

“I wanted a route that is hard enough that it isn’t practically guaranteed that I’d make it to the top but also not so hard that it’s basically impossible for me to get to the top.”

Where we’ve landed, then, is almost pure subjectivity. The climbs we choose are based almost entirely on our capabilities at the time we make the attempt. In that world, who gives a damn if a follower on a two person team needs a haul to get past a move they can’t do when they can do most of the route without such assistance. I mean, if they couldn’t do most of the route without assistance, it is unlikely that the route would be any fun for them, so it probably is just a move or two.

Now, this isn’t to say that I believe we should pass off our climbing tactics as being the same as having both partners free climb the whole thing. Because there are common terms and shorthand meaning to how we talk about climbing, we are obligated to not mislead others into thinking we did something we haven’t.

But my point is that there can’t be “cheating” unless we are comparing. And if you aren’t comparing our ascent to someone else’s (because you are honest that you needed assistance for a move or two), then you aren’t even playing the same game. So, you aren’t cheating the other climbers out of anything.

Climbing is dangerous. Also, I would argue that it is most fulfilling when it is an activity rooted in self-discovery rather than chasing progressively harder grades. So, if we can have a fun time out on a big route, filled with hours of expressive movement and team comradery that is interrupted once or twice with a haul that keeps the less capable of the two of you in a positive and comparatively safe situation, is that worth it?

I’ve used these hauls with my kids. No one seems to judge it. If we use them for an adult, all of a sudden it is cheating? What’s changed!!??

Well, with the kids, we accept this type of assistance as part of the price of their enjoyment and their learning. Well, what if the adult is there for enjoyment and learning rather than saying “I climbed this route with this particular grade”?

In the end, we can only cheat ourselves. And we only cheat ourselves if our intention is to not use such assists or other mechanically assisted means. And to be fair, for most of my climbing, I am trying to do just that. But should I, or a partner, get stuck due to lack of ability or maybe conditions (maybe it started to rain and the rock has gotten slick), I think safety and enjoyment can often trump my need for purity. I can always come back and try again, sometime, with the goal of not using mechanical assistance. Again, I just need to be honest that I didn’t free the whole thing.

In the end, we are climbing things at that point where neither success nor failure is a guarantee. If I’m on one pitch, I might just come down and try again if I can’t make a move. If I’m one thousand feet up, I might just want to keep the enjoyment of the rest of the climb in sight.

No, we can’t cheat anyone but ourselves.