Have you or a loved one recently been afflicted by an influx in people going climbing? Tried to make dinner plans to no avail as your guest simply must go drinking with their new climbing buddies? Or perhaps you yourself have come down with this flash fever? You might be experiencing something known as socializing through physical activity. Do not fret, this is not a new phenomenon.
Originating in the late 19th century, the sport then experienced a whirlwind of expansion and change throughout the 20th century before its advent as what we know it today. But why is it so popular now?
Speaking to Darren Kelly, the captain of Trinity Climbing Club (DUCC) and Ruby Ge, the events officer, on their own theories as to why the sport has become so popular, they introduced a world of third spaces and physical activity.
Asked on what she personally gets out of climbing, Ge says, “I think to a lot of people, climbing is quite a special sport in the sense that it can be competitive, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be.” She emphasises that it can also be a “very social sport”, which is open to “any level”. One of the key social draws is being able to climb alongside others with varying ranges of experience. “You can climb with someone who’s a completely different level but still have a great time doing it.”
Speaking of the attraction of DUCC, Kelly and Ge pointed to the ideas of climbing gyms as third spaces, places beyond work and school where people can socialise and be together, ideally without having to pay too much money, as cost of living continues to rise. Membership for DUCC priced at €13 a year, including insurance, providing student members with a place to hang out with friends and share their passion for climbing in a relaxed environment. With the closure of The Wall in Sandyford, a loss felt within Dublin’s climbing community, as well as the decline of third spaces across the city more generally, access to such an activity is a massive benefit for students.
In comparison to other societies in college which tend to attract either humanities or STEM students, do communal sports based societies, such as climbing, bridge the gap between these groups? Kelly and Ge, with this in mind, talk of the diversity of people within climbing, mainly due to the ability to take completely different aspects from the sport “which appeal to different people.”
“For example, climbing itself, like bouldering, is a very mentally stimulating sport,” Ge says, “in the sense that it’s as much problem solving as it is physical exercises”. She also points out that another key attraction of climbing is that it is “very outdoorsy,” and therefore attracts “a lot of people who just enjoy being outdoors.”
Kelly adds “I think climbing is quite a gamified sport where people who don’t like to hit the gym, that kind of thing doesn’t work for them, but they want to stay healthy so they can get into climbing for that reason.”
So not only is the sport social, community-based, and easy for people to start, it also offers different areas of discipline and interest for different people. Perhaps more people will be persuaded to join in with these things in mind.
However, the recent boom in popularity, specifically among a younger, social, demographic is not chalked up to only the sport itself, though a major contributing factor. Ge and Kelly point to social media exposure, mainstream films using the sport as their crux and its introduction into the Olympics in 2020 as major reasons why more and more people have started discovering climbing.
“For me myself,” Ge says, “before I started climbing, I watched this film called Free Solo which is about a guy, Alex Honnold, who climbs this massive wall, about 900 metres, without any gear and it’s an incredible athletic feat.” She cites this film as one of the things that put climbing on his radar and points to the rise of climbing youtubers such as Magnus Midtbø for the sport’s exposure to many others. Not only that, but social media algorithms that push bouldering content have supposedly supplied this year’s freshers stall with interest stemming from these influencers.
Essentially, climbing is a fantastic melting pot of interests — physical, social and mental — which have added to its proliferation on social and mainstream media. It can attract people of many different demographics, who can take different things from the sport, whether it be the trips each term, the social meetups, the mental challenges, or the physical ones. As Kelly puts it “rock climbing is a fantastic avenue into adventure.”
