A climbing area is a small geographical region with a concentration of opportunities for climbing. The term is most commonly used of rock climbing areas, but there are also ice climbing areas that have the right combination of steepness and water to result in climbable ice during the winter.
While there are many mountains and cliffs in the world, only a small percentage are popular for climbing. Mountain ranges are frequently at high elevations, remote, and tend to have poor weather much of the time, which means that the climber spends more time hiking, camping, and battling the elements than actually climbing. At the opposite end of the scale, many cliffs are too small or the rock is too unstable to make for an enjoyable and safe experience.
Read more about Climbing Area: Characteristics, Development of A Climbing Area
Famous quotes containing the words climbing and/or area:
“There is, however, this consolation to the most way-worn traveler, upon the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so perfectly symbolical of human life,—now climbing the hills, now descending into the vales. From the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon, from the vales he looks up to the heights again. He is treading his old lessons still, and though he may be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet sincere experience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,—if only that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)