Complete Send

Climbing Vernacular

“Send”

LK

Zoom Interview

May 26, 2020

Informant Data:

LK is a 20-year-old sophomore at Dartmouth College, where he is majoring in engineering and earth sciences. He grew up in California, where he learned to climb while relatively young, and was experienced with climbing and mountaineering before coming to Dartmouth. He has experience with sport climbing, trad climbing, bouldering, and ice climbing. He is a leader within the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club and he competes on the Dartmouth Climbing Team.

Contextual Data:

Cultural and social context are in part from my own personal knowledge of the climbing community and in part from context given by the informant during their Zoom interview.

Cultural Context: There are many ways to go about completing a climb. The simplest is to get to the top – this is often a beginner climber’s sole goal. Beyond that, there was ways to define how much help someone received while climbing, making the completion more or less valid. For example, did the climber fall, stop and rest, place any weight on their rope, receive advice from other climbers, watch someone else climb it before they did, or require many attempts? Different climbers value these things differently, and so definitions of truly completing (“sending”) a climb change. Climbing has also evolved significantly, due to advancements in gear and the increasing popularity of the sport causing more bolted climbing routes to be put up. The informant stated: “For younger climbers, what we now consider a send, sometimes offends older people. Certainly, the more old-school you get, the more pride there is in that.”

Social Context: The term “send” is used to describe the full completion of a climb. It is typically used in more casual social settings. The meaning of “sent” as described here is more likely to be used by an experienced climber – a beginner climber would either not know the definition or not be focused on anything other than getting to the top of a climb by any means. The informant described some social context as such:

“Climbing is so goal oriented, and this is the base goal behind what people are trying to do when they’re climbing. There is a lot of pride in being able to say you actually sent a climb and you did it in good style and that you followed these, almost ethics, in accomplishing that goal, even if it meant trying for a long time after you first successfully got to the top.”

This term, like much of climbing vernacular, was learned by the informant in a group setting and picked up from conversation between more experienced climbers. An example of this term in use is, a climber gets to the top of a climb, but they fell once in the middle at a difficult section. Once they are back on the ground, they say, “I’m going to try it again – I want to have sent it,” and then they attempt to complete the climb a second time, but without falling. This term is used differently than “full send”/”sendy”/”sending it” which is described in a separate folklore documentation.

Text:

This text is an almost exact quote from the informant during an interview over Zoom, with some small edits made for clarity.

“Sending a climb is to successfully climb it, and it means different things within the climbing community. To send a climb is not simply getting to the top of it, it’s doing it in the arbitrarily defined style of climbing. I would only say I sent a climb if I did it without weighting anything man-made, except at pre-positioned belay points established by the route setter. Those would be the only points where I weighted anything other than the rock.  If I could get to the top of the route doing only that, I would be able to say I sent a climb. It really changes based on the objective you’re talking about. It’s very different to send on a single pitch short cliff setting, it has a very different meaning then if you’re doing a big multi-pitch route in the mountains. On a bigger route, you may be following your friend for part of it, whereas on a shorter route you are doing it all yourself. It varies based on the setting.”

Single pitch climbs have a belayer on the ground. The climber goes to the top and then is lowered down. Multi pitch climbs are taller than the rope, so the climber gets to the top and then is followed by their parter, who then starts to belay at a new point that is not on the ground.

Katherine Adelman, 21

Dartmouth College

Russ 13

Spring 2020