Climbing Vernacular
“Pumped”

Olivia Hunter
Hanover, New Hampshire
May 20, 2019

Informant Data:

Olivia Hunter is a 22 year-old senior at Dartmouth College from Vancouver, Canada. She is upper-middle class and an atheist, white woman. Her demographic background is primarily western European, but she is also part eastern European and Jewish. She has 4 parents—two biological parents and two step parents, and 5 half siblings. Both her father and her step father works in business, and both her mother and step mother don’t work, although her mother is a travel blogger and is sometimes paid to travel. In elementary school and in high school Olivia used to be a competitive athlete as a gymnast and being on a competitive volleyball team. However, after starting college, she realized that she was burnt out from the competitive sports she played in high school, and wanted to try something different and do a sport just for fun instead of for competition. At college, she has many friends who are climbers, and her boyfriend is also a climber. Eventually, one of her friends convinced her to go to the climbing gym at the River Apartments at Dartmouth College, and taught her the basics of climbing. She has been climbing ever since. She decided to keep climbing because it was a fun sport with a great community, and a great way to get exercise. She is not a competitive climber.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context: The vernacular term “pumped” is used during conversations between climbers to describe the state of the climber. It is often used when climbers are trying to finish a climb or trying to end a climbing session. The term can refer to a climber’s condition when climbing both indoors and outdoors. Olivia shared that she used it last weekend to end a climbing session when she was too tired and could no longer do more climbs. An example of the way “pumped” can be used is: “I think I can do one more climb, but I’ll need to call it after that. I’m really pumped.”The purpose of vernacular folklore in climbing is to bolster a sense of community between climbers. Having unique vernacular terms defines an in-group identity for the people who know, understand, and use the term. In the case of climbing, it also serves to distinguish people as members of the counter-culture established by climbers. Vernacular also helps capture ideas that would otherwise be communicated in multiple words in just one word. In addition to verbal efficiency, it also emphasizes the importance of the idea in climbing culture since the folk group has dedicated an entire new term to capture its essence.

• Cultural Context: Climbing is a unique sport because it relies a lot on the climber’s grip strength. Since the fingers are composed solely of joints and ligaments, grip strength comes primarily the climber’s forearm. Because the forearm is usually not a part of the body that is often exercised day-to-day, grip strength is acquired solely through experience in climbing. It can’t be built up from everyday activities, and so is a pretty good indicator of how much muscle a person has acquired through climbing alone.

Text:

[I have recorded “pumped” as closely as I could to the way Olivia told I to me. The following descriptions were collected from the notes I took during the interview, and are paraphrases of what she shared during the interview.]

The term “pumped” in climbing refers to when the climber’s forearm is so sore that he or she can no longer move it anymore. It is caused by a lactic acid buildup in the forearm muscles, which are the dominant muscles that are being exercised during a climb. When someone is “pumped”, the muscles on their forearms have been broken down so much over the duration of the climb that he or she can no longer hold on to anything, and therefore can no longer climb for the day.

How easily a climber gets “pumped” is a function of how good or experienced of a climber he or she is. Being “pumped” signals the extent of a climber’s endurance when it comes to climbing. The more experienced the climber, the longer and harder he or she will have to climb to feel “pumped”. The less experienced the climber, the sooner he or she will feel “pumped” when climbing.

Angela Liu, aged 21
2 North Park St., Hanover, NH
Dartmouth College
Russian 13
Spring 2019