One must remember that these people are not students or unemployed people on benefits. By and large they are highly qualified, well paid professionals who are definitely in the upper income brackets. So why do they pretend to be so poor? I think there are two reasons. First, as mentioned above climbing does have a healthy democratic tradition and unlike a lot of other sports the equipment is actually not too expensive and hence one cannot up ones grade by chucking a lot of money at it. This means that it would be considered contrary to the spirit of climbing to make an ostentatious display of wealth in front of other climbers. If you were into powerboat racing it really wouldn't matter because it is assumed that you are as rich as Midas to take part but with climbing you have to assume that everyone is as poor as a church mouse so you simply don't suggest that everyone has got loads of moolah.

The second reason is that in pretending to be poor it releases the atavistic subconscious desire to be young again. Thus your contemporaries my be driving their BWM X5 to the golf course but while you have spent the equivalent of an Ethiopian toddlers pocket money on you weekend's entertainment you can feel morally superior because being poor equates with being young and having fun again. The real irony here of course is that the naturally prudent climber probably has a modest mortgage and owns his car outright, unlike the Beemer driver who has debt equivalent to that of a Central American country.

Maybe the question has to be turned around and we should ask not why climbers are mean but why mean people become climbers. If one looks at it this way around the whole thing makes a lot more sense. The actual climbing is free, equipment is reasonably priced and once bought tends to have a long life, you are not forced into an expensive social scene (Cocktails at 7 for 8 in the front porch of my Quasar, Black Tie! I don't think so) and even when venturing abroad this tends to be outside of the peak season and when prices are generally lower.

There are of course genuine reasons for taking the cheaper option sometimes, there is more independence and privacy in a tent than in a bunk house and it sometimes it is simply more fitting to camp in the environment rather than trying to insulate yourself from it. It is quite easy to cook campsite food that is just as good as pub food and will remove the need to queue on busy weekends or search out special dietary requirements. Car sharing is a purely logical choice and reduces congestion, pollution and is far safer on a long journey where driving can be shared. These factors alone however cannot explain all the penny-pinching and scrimping that goes on so there must be other factors at work. It is probably a combination of naturally frugal types being immersed in an environment where parsimony is something of a fetish that leads to the extreme behaviour that can be witnessed.

Another aspect of this that is worthy of comment is the almost sexual joy that is experienced by these petty savings. A discounted pair of climbing shoes, finding some reusable car at the crag, a cheap campsite, all these will evoke the same pleasure that a two year gains when finding a favourite toy, previously thought to be lost. To finish with one example, I once stopped at a motorway service station with a certain Mike Woolworths (to use a thinly veiled sobriquet). He emerged having bought a coffee beaming broadly. "That's how you do it, you use a medium sized cup but press the large button, that way you only pay for a medium!"

Rambler