It’s almost 4am and I’m crying in a rocking chair, trying to get my 2-month-old boy to go to sleep. Yesterday, Guy Lacelle died in an avalanche in Hyalite Canyon. For some reason it’s sadder when I hold a baby.

Most people know that Guy was a great ice climber. That’s not news, although it probably makes his death more newsworthy to the layman’s press. His climbing was impressive, but there are many other things that made him Guy. These are the things that I’ll remember.

Guy had dogs. Lots of them. It probably qualified as a pack. You could tell that his dogs saw him as one of them, the alpha. With the older ones, he didn’t have to call their names or chase after them. They did what he wanted and the communication was silent. And when one of them died, it hurt him.

Guy had a temper. He was a great climber but even he got frustrated at times. He kept his temper under wraps, but if let loose, an impressive stream of French Canadian profanity came forth.

Guy had a big smile. I looked forward to seeing him in the winter in Canmore. Recently I was thinking I should touch base and see when Guy’s coming back to town. But I didn’t and I regret that.

Guy was competitive. He was 54 when he died, but he’s been in competitions against people half his age for the last decade, maybe longer. I think he liked it too when — if we went ice climbing with him — the younger climbers would insist on bringing the screws. (Guy did most of his ice climbing by himself, so he was comfortable with few or no ice screws.)

Guy was incredibly motivated. Even in his fifties, he would often climb nine or ten days in a row and then only take one rest day. Like many of my friends, I’m in my mid-thirties and I haven’t done that in ten years.

Guy was open-minded. As climbing changed, he didn’t resist it or hang on to the past. He was excited about every new development and what he could learn from it. It was great to see, and I really respected his approach.

Guy had crazy hair. He was balding on top and he let the rest grow long. It gave him a crazy, classic bushman look. I don’t think he was aware of it, but it was part of his charm.

If you climb long enough, the death of people you know is guaranteed. For me, other deaths have been sad, but Guy’s death was the first to make me angry. He had taken more risks than most of us and come out unscathed until now. I would have preferred to think that he had earned some kind of free pass. I would have preferred he remain invincible.

If it had to happen, then I’m glad it was something out of his control. Guy prided himself on knowing his margin of safety; he only thought a solo was successful if he was in 100% control at all times. If his accident had come from a popped tool or a sheared crampon, that only would have pissed him off. And as one of the world’s most accomplished soloists, dying because he slipped would only be sensationalist fodder for the always-ill-informed media.

The last time I asked him, he had logged over 5,000 pitches of ice since he started ice climbing, most of them without a rope. He kept track of every pitch since he started. I like the idea that that climbing record can stay perfect and intact.

The baby boy in my lap is asleep now; that deep, drooling baby sleep. The 6-year-old is asleep in the next room. If the boys become climbers, they will see Guy’s name in alpine journals and guidebooks, and I hope they hear the stories of his achievements. I will be proud to tell my sons that I knew him.

Guy, you will be missed.

091215 Update
A few links to news and info about Guy and the accident:
* News coverage of the accident
* Doug Chabot’s video explanation of the avalanche
* “Adieu, Guy” from Petzl with friends’ comments
* An interview with Guy on Alpinist.com from July 2008
* A video of Guy tree-planting, summer of 2009

“For me, [my legacy] will be the trees. I’m getting close to plant a million trees.”
~ Guy Lacelle, summer of 2009

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On October 30th, I presented “Is Sponsorship a Sin?” at the annual Night of Lies in Canmore. It’s a fun evening of heckling, mockery & ridicule. Given the nature of the event (& the typical amount of beer consumed), I thought examining professional climbing would be a good fit. I’ve included a video of my talk below.

I sent this video to a few friends that weren’t there, and my friend Dave Karl, a sales rep in the northeast US, raised a good point:

Good slide show but I disagree with the three-test rule. I have IFMGA & AMGA Mountain Guides that I sponsor that are totally worthy. Their personal (non-guided) climbing accomplishments may not be noteworthy among their elite peers, but they don’t bullshit either, and they do help sell product. These guides help the entire sport and climbing community by educating the public and introducing new participants to climbing. A good mountain guide can be a great sponsorship investment.

This is a good point, and one I wish I had made during my talk. I agree with Dave that there are folks out there worthy of support that may not be on the cutting edge of climbing. They are typically local, grassroots climbers or industry-folk like guides that are in front of the target market on a daily basis. I have no objections to these athletes being supported, either by sales reps or by brands, on an informal basis.

My beef is with climbers that are put on an official, publicized pedestal by the sponsoring brand (and with climbers that are striving to be put on that pedestal) — via blogs, websites, magazines, slideshows, etc — but who really haven’t done anything of note to warrant their elevated status.

This latter group seems to be growing in numbers, and that trend needs to be reversed.

Enjoy the show…

Sponsorship Slideshow from Scott Semple on Vimeo.

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“Self-promotion is bad.”

No, bullshit is bad. Self-promotion happens everywhere and it’s smart. We just don’t like it mixed with our idealistic pursuits, of which climbing is one.

“Sponsorship is selling out.”

Only if the person has previously committed to not being sponsored. Otherwise, it’s just psychological projection on the part of the critic.

“Sponsored climbers are pressured by brands to perform.”

I don’t believe it happens. If there’s any pressure, it’s self-inflicted by the athlete. I was sponsored for five years, and the only pressure I felt was what I put on myself.

“Sponsored climbers get paid.”

I wish. Sharma and Hirayama maybe. Some retainers are paid, but they are very rarely enough to live on. (Unless you live in your car, don’t put gas in it and eat dog food.)

“If I’m rad enough, they’ll just call me up and give me free gear.”

Sorry, this ain’t the NBA, sugar. If you want it, you have to go after it.

“Sponsorship has no influence on me.”

Only in a blind taste test.

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“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether his is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”

- Francois A. R. Chateaubriand

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On October 30th, I presented a slideshow version of this post at the annual Night of Lies in Canmore. Feel free to check out the video.

Is sponsorship a sin? NO. But bullshit is.

After nearly 15 years of climbing, I rarely read climbing magazines. I have no subscriptions. If I do pick up a magazine, I usually only look at the pictures. The words usually make me nauseous.

My experienced climber friends are the same way. Some of them haven’t looked at a climbing magazine in years.

The more you climb, the less you’re interested in reading the same recycled stories with the same characters smiling from new faces. And the less you can tolerate the self-promotion that comes from white lies and self-serving exaggerations in hopes of becoming (or staying) sponsored. And those indulgences are rampant and widespread.

If sponsorship isn’t backed up by a legitimate accomplishment that is significant to the sport, then being rewarded for something insignificant is sad and undeserved. And it’s immoral, because it creates a facade, and facades are lies.

This happens more often than you might think. Many of the athletes you often see in climbing magazines are phenomenal at self-promotion, but range from average to crap at actually climbing. Ice, mixed and alpine climbing have the worst offenders. (Rock climbing is usually too consistent, popular and objective for lies to last long.) Truth is, many climbers are sponsored for what they say, or how well they’re known, rather than for what they’ve done.

The problem stems from the fact that the “athlete” is the performer, but also the judge and the journalist. A lack of objectivity and a lack of integrity combine to create opportunistic self-promotion masquerading as journalism. The result is that average achievements beget above-average attention. (All those “Hot Flashes” you read, written in the third person, are often written by the climbers themselves.) Few other disciplines would tolerate such a lack of objectivity, but no direct access to the “feats” of accomplishment makes us dependant on it.

Sponsorship is only defensible when the degree of self-promotion is equal to or less than the significance of the achievement. When Good Climber does something Rad and says, “This is Rad”, that’s fine. Kudos. Too often though, Wanna Be Famous does something mediocre and says, “This is Rad! Really! I swear!”

The sad fact about our sport is that genuine devotees are the exception, not the rule. True athletes, masters and visionaries do exist, but only some of them are sponsored. Most are not.

Disclosure: Yes, I was a sponsored climber. I resigned from all of my sponsorships in December 2007. I am happy I did.

UPDATE, October 22nd: After some dialog with editors of some of the climbing magazines, I see now that the first few paragraphs of this post may seem critical of the magazines. That is not what I intended. My beef is not with the magazines, but with opportunistic climbers of questionable integrity and the brands that support them. It’s not the magazines’ responsibility to police our sport. It’s my hope that the climbers themselves will do that, and then the brands will follow suit.

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“Who are you upsetting? Because if you’re not upsetting anyone, you’re not changing the status quo.”

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You used to read the paper with breakfast at the kitchen table.
You used to make to-do lists with Sticky Notes.
You used to book appointments in your DayTimer.
You used to write letters on paper, sitting at your desk.
You used to send email from your computer.
You used to watch movies in the den.
You used to listen to music on the stereo.
You used to read paper-bound books.
You used to take pictures with your camera.
You used to manage projects with flow charts on the wall.
You used to check your stock portfolio just at month-end.
You used to watch the news on TV.
You used to get the weather from the radio.
You used to do research at the library.

Now, “all you do is play with your fucking phone.”

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I’ve always done my best work when I’ve had to come from behind. You need that sense of urgency. You need that heightened state of anxiety, that state of awareness and focus, to get your creative juices flowing. That’s when you dig deep and find solutions. It’s a condition that plays an important role in business; it’s what creates new products, new ventures, new ways of doing things.

— Jack Stack, author of The Great Game of Business (Full article here)

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Technology is changing our expectations of writing and it’s a change for the better. The immediate access that the Internet, cell phones and fast food have conditioned us to expect is lowering our tolerance for the historically slow, painfully dry, academic approach to writing. I’m glad for the change.

When I was in school, every essay needed to have an introduction, expand on the first idea, then the second, then the third until slow, painful mental atrophy set in like quick-dry concrete. I suspect that tenure-laden professors still bore their students with this approach today.

When I buy a book, and find that stale approach inside its pages, I get angry. I don’t have the time for it. My stack of unread books is twice as tall as my stack of read books. I have a family, two businesses to run, a new child arriving in October and an obsessive, time-consuming love of rock climbing. I suspect that I am not alone. Readers today don’t have the time or the desire to read where you got your book idea, who inspired it and who you want to thank. Save it for the back-page index.

The new rules for writing are…

1. Introductions must be 500 words or less and add value to the reading experience; a drawn out synopsis of the book is indulgent and unnecessary. Introductions are as antiquated as the roman numerals that mark their pages. If the design firm you hired to pretty up the cover isn’t good enough to communicate the idea in a glance, find another designer.
2. Acknowledgments are important to the writer and the people they thank, but no one else cares. Please place them after the index just before your bio.
3. Layout the meat-n-potatoes, bullet-point, 45-minute speech version of the book in the first chapter. Someone should be able to read chapter 1 and know what is in the rest of the book. It will increase the readers desire to continue.
4. Don’t hide behind feel good case studies and anecdotal statistics, especially if it’s a how-to book. Don’t hide your consulting business behind a vague theory.  Step-by-step implementation is what your readers are after. Have the confidence in your material to know that if you lay it all out there, people will want to hire you to implement it because of it’s value, complexity, and the demands on their time to implement it that they don’t want to commit to.
5. Lastly, and most important, make the book as short as possible. Don’t follow Malcolm Gladwell’s example by putting in enough filler to make the book 5″ x 7″ x 1″. His publisher is wrong. Do it right, do it well. Don’t waste words.

Less is more. That reality is old, permanent and needs no introduction. Hopefully your book will be as strong.

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