Tall Beta

Climbing Vernacular

“Tall Beta”

FS

May 25, 2020

Informant Data:

FS is a 21-year-old junior at Dartmouth College, where he is an engineering major. He grew up in New York. He started climbing at Dartmouth, where he is a member of the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club. He spends a lot of time climbing in the indoor gym and has also gone on a couple big outdoor climbing trips.

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 interview.

Cultural Context: The climbing community is often very internally supportive but also competitive. It is driven by people who are constantly trying to push themselves and their climbing skills, but who also typically enjoy climbing as a group activity and a fun thing to do with friends. The result of this dynamic can lead to a lot of light-hearted heckling. One of many things this can be applied to if a climber completes a climb by “cheating” in some way. Given the nature of climbing, specially outdoors, there are many ways to complete a climb, and some are viewed as more valid than others. In this example, being able to reach past a difficult section in a climb is an acceptable way to complete a climb, but it may make others in the group who do not have that ability a little frustrated.

Social Context: The term “tall beta” is used to describe a move or sequence of moves that a taller climber completes while climbing, using their height and longer wingspan to their advantage. Typically, this involves skipping a difficult hold. Examples of difficult holds include ones that are very small or very rounded, and thus hard to grab on to. It could also involve a climber being able to simply reach a hold that a shorter climber had to jump to – jumping and other dynamic movements in climbing are often very difficult and sometimes nerve racking. 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 situation could be a taller climber having an easier time with the difficult section of a climb; a friend watching might say, “Wow, how did he do that so quickly?” and another would respond, “Tall beta – he just skipped the hard part.”

Text:

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

Beta is information about a climb, or more specifically how to do a certain climb, like the sequence. And “tall boy beta” is how specifically a tall person does it, in a way that is genuinely impossible for a shorter person. It is mostly used to call out super tall people for having bad technique and just reaching past the more difficult holds. It is typically used by people that aren’t super tall. This term is used anywhere people are climbing, an indoor gym or at a crag, where there’s a group of people and maybe one person is taller than the rest. It is usually some sort of light hearted insult.

Katherine Adelman, 21

Dartmouth College

Russ 13

Spring 2020