The American Alpine Club, one of America’s oldest (founded in 1902) and largest (24,000+ members) organizations devoted to the climbing sports (read about them here; their website is here), is launching an initiative it refers to as “rethinking” route names, which apparently was settled upon as a more tentative approach to this touchy issue than “redacting” or “renaming” routes (because their original monikers are now thought to be too vulgar or otherwise offensive for decent society).
Assuming you know nothing about this, therefore starting from the beginning, humans have been naming oceans, mountains, and other prominent geographical features since time immemorial; probably originally for practical purposes, such as preventing armies from getting lost, but at some point because they felt like it. And it couldn’t have been very long before they also were naming routes up, over, around, or through these features (“take the Old Camel Path through the Southwest Corner of the Burning Hot Desert to the Old Fort at the Dry Oasis”). Thus, it should not surprise you that climbers have been naming their routes up mountains and cliffs for many generations (i.e., longer than anyone remembers).
Typically, the first name bestowed on a path by the first person or party to use that route tends to stick. In the case of climbers’ routes, that long ago became a peer pressure-enforced social convention. For a long time, climbers utilized two common route naming conventions: After the people who climbed it (e.g., the “Hillary-Tenzing” route on Everest), or descriptively (e.g., the “North Buttress of Pimple Peak” — okay, I admit I made up a portion this last one). After a while, they became more creative; and eventually, all inhibitions fell away, like autumn leaves blown away by the wind, and it became “anything goes.”
For example, there’s apparently a route on a rock in New York City’s Central Park somebody named “Sweat of a Rapist.” No one should accept this name, nor should it be published in magazine articles or route books, or mentioned at all; it doesn’t deserve recognition. But given that the climbing fraternity has some members who are notoriously free-spirited, uninhibited, and at times (okay, often) vulgar, such things probably are will happen. So the question is, should there be some limits on route names? (See proposed principles and guidelines here and here.)
To answer this question, let’s begin by trying to imagine a world of route-naming in which anarchy reigns supreme. Let’s say the next route over from “S.O.A.R.” hasn’t been climbed yet, so someone offended by the name of the first route climbs it and names her route, “You Have Your Head Up Your Ass, Mikey.” And then Mikey* retaliates by naming the next route over using the “C” word — you can see where this is going. Anarchy is a bad system of government; there’s a reason for rules. (*I randomly chose the name “Mikey” from a list of characters in “The Sopranos.” Don’t worry, Mikey got whacked in Season 1, Episode 13, so he’s not around to take offense.)
Some routes never should have been named as they were in the first place. See, e.g., above. But more nuanced is the fact that things once accepted can go out of fashion over time. (E.g., Confederate statues in public parks.) The difficulty the A.A.C. initiative faces is that climbers tend to be inflexible about route names, once they become ensconced in their consciousness. (This applies to rock formations, too, e.g., Rat Rock in Central Park.)
This is more or less a universal problem, not just applicable to climbing routes. Renaming a public building or school (e.g., Christopher Columbus has lost luster) invariably provokes an uproar, but is easier than renaming a route, because all you have to do is change the sign and then put up with the abuse (except for sports stadiums, which are frequently renamed, when the current sponsor runs out of money or another corporation is willing to pay more). If you try to rename a route, you’ll likely be ignored.
Climbers like freedom. The Mountaineers, a Seattle-based outdoor club (read about them here; their website is here), even named their iconic climbing textbook “Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills” (buy a copy of the 9th edition here). Regulating route names, to them, is totalitarianism; refusing to publish route names is censorship, and changing route names is apostasy. Yet they will acknowledge their sport needs to be “diverse,” “inclusive,” and “non-discriminatory.” None will argue against that. They’re not racist, sexist, or bigoted; at worst, they’re thoughtless or insensitive, and at their best they’re fabulous friends and partners. It’s this latter field that should be plowed, i.e., appealing to reason instead of attempting to regiment the sport of naming routes, which for many climbers is as much as fun as climbing the route.
This is the approach the A.A.C. initiative’s leaders appear to be taking; so no, the club isn’t getting too politically correct by asking the sporting community they serve to “think” about the subject and consider how others might feel about an existing or proposed route name. “Political correctness” is when you tell people what to do, and no one will ever be able to tell climbers what to do. The A.A.C.’s initiative simply asks climbers to think, respect others, and choose their words carefully so they don’t hurt others, when they name new routes. That isn’t asking for too much.
Photo below: Climbers queued on the “Hillary-Tenzing Southeast Face Covid Vaccinations Line” route on Mount Everest
