What is聽 鈥渂eta鈥� and what can it mean in climbing? These synonyms touch on the concept: information, knowledge, moves, sequences, sections, tactics, strategies, tricks, tech, systems, the plan, logistics, conditions.
While rapidly changing, climbing has long been an activity centred on the concept of efficiency. Can you find the easiest way to the top? As avenues of climbing move toward pure athleticism and sport, it鈥檚 important to remember that above all, your training, preparation, practice and effort should all be towards finding the path of least resistance. On a mountain, that might mean careful route-finding to avoid objective hazards. On a big wall, that might mean choosing just the right balance of gear, food and water to lower the weight of your haul bags. Let鈥檚 unpack this rucksack of terms and see how the mental gymnastics of climbing work as opposed to the physical. This is a grossly simplified list.聽
Starting simply, as in bouldering, the term beta means the ways of doing the moves on a problem to successfully get you to the top without touching the ground. It鈥檚 a completely physical definition here with all the intricacies falling into which hands and feet go where, how each hand takes the holds, how you shift your centre of mass to get the most weight off your arms and onto your feet and where your feet need to be to accomplish all this.聽
The conditions like friction, humidity, wind and moisture come into play here too. Every night, I keep myself awake longer than needed thinking about these physical problems; how do you turn the physically impossible into the possible?
We move outwards 鈥� or upwards 鈥� from this and expand to route climbing. Suddenly we鈥檙e not just thinking about single moves alone but sets of moves, sequences, rest positions and sections of terrain. Gear selection comes in here with types of ropes, shoes and even chalk. If you鈥檙e trad climbing, you may be assessing hazards, weighing risks and choosing which protection to bring to keep yourself safe.聽
We could layer onto this and expand to multipitch rock climbing, like that of routes on the Stawamus Chief. Now, beta includes whether the routes are in condition or still wet from winter rains, weather forecasts, gear selection, food, water and clothing choices. It includes things like: Do you haul a pack or climb with it, one jacket or none, and do we bring one rope or two to facilitate speedy descents?
From here, we come to a fork where one path leads to multipitch rock climbing in the alpine and the other heads to other types of mountain terrain like snow, ice, and glaciers. Beta in alpine rock climbing takes all the aspects mentioned and adds objective hazards like poor, rapidly changing weather or loose rock, cold, greater distances and often glacier travel. Suddenly the beta includes much more in the way of risk assessment, objective hazards and speed versus extra preparedness gear.聽
The other fork, to climbing in an alpine and mountaineering sense, rolls in the whole ball of wax: beta becomes objective hazards like weather, snow conditions and crevasse danger, longer distances and careful gear selection to find a fine balance between being prepared but not weighed down, as well as route finding, assessing all the risks you can sniff out and hopefully protecting yourself from them in a way that lets you come home alive.聽
Beta is like an onion; each level builds and layers on top of the previous, hopefully fitting together to piece together a climber who marries the physical with the mental, whether working out the moves on a boulder problem, performing the sequences right during an onsight of a sport route, preselecting your rack for a single pitch trad climb, dreaming up logistics for a long multipitch day on the Chief and so on.
As a great friend once told me, 鈥淚f you鈥檙e not talented, you better be tough. If you鈥檙e not tough, you better be smart. If you鈥檙e not smart or tough, well鈥� then I just keep trying.鈥�
