"The Rock Climbing Slide Show" Intended to help your piece avoid sounding like most media stories on climbing...i.e. uninitiated and ill-informed.
I just found the best example of this ever....it came to me over Yahoo! news alerts. Seriously, this is word-for-word how it came across the wire.
Rock climber falls, breaks arm
The Salt Lake Tribune
Wed, 02 May 2007 7:49
AM PDT
Posted: 8:34 AM- CEDAR CITY -- A hiker was injured last night when he fell while
rock climbing in Garfield County. Sheriff's deputies say a rock broke loose
while the man was rappelling, causing the fall.
So was this hapless dude a hiker, a climber, or a rappeler? Three very different things, and this piece is very indicative of the misperceptions we get as climbers. Any fool who falls off a rock while trying to take a high altitude drunken wiz gets counted in the "climber" casualty statistics...simply because he was near a rock when the mood struck him. What I have prepared for you here is meant to keep you from writing such inane pieces.
The slide show is a public service, but Cliff Dweller won't object to being cited as a source in your piece.
The Slide Show is a comprehensive look at Climbing, laid out on full color, Power Point compatible slides. A one stop, "sit-back-and-enjoy" shop that's more than adequate for you to understand enough about the methods, history, and lingo of climbing to write a better piece.
The links below go into greater detail still...
What is Rock Climbing and What are Climbers Trying to Accomplish Up There? A detailed explanation of the primary climbing disciplines.
Cliff Dweller Inc builds the "Raddest" climbing gyms on my favorite planet
A dramatized Sample Scene that describes rock climbing
Difficulty Rating Scale (American)
Climbing
GalleryMy Best (Climbing) "War Stories"....."no @^%&^%*, there I was!"