Dale Goddard

Everyone I know who watches Dale Goddard in the climbing video "Painted Spider" fast forwards through his section fo the video. You know, the part where Goddard starts by swatting a bug off his shoulder.

That's too bad because if you slow the video down you can see that Goddard has sneakily used a twig or something to hold open the gate of the biner at the hardest clip. No problem. I couldn't hope to come close to doing that climb. But this somehow contradicts everything Goddard says about climbing reflecting how you feel about yourself. Hypocritical? Maybe.

"Painted Spider" and many of the instructional climbing videos actually show very poor climbing practices. All too often you will see experienced climbers making beginner-type mistakes, such as letting go of the rope with the brake hand (and they're not using a GriGri either!).

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Part of a Los Alpinistas story by Richard J. Hughes.