Sport climber, Patrick Edlinger began climbing with his father on trad routes. He never liked the ethic of his father and started climbing harder routes on smaller cliffs. He is probably one of the first real sport climbers. His commitment to a climb was as high or higher than most trad climbers. He adopted a pure ethic to climb without a rope. In doing so, he was not the first. With his film, he introduced sport climbing ethics that are used today.
His book, "grimper", with the old version of mountaineering freedom of the hill (fifthe edition) are two most important book to read as a climber. His mentality was to bring people to be autonomous. To learn by themselve and train as much as thy can. He was not a reckless person...but a strong minded climber who was aware of the dangers of climbing. He never tried to convince others that his way of climbing his better than trad climbing.
He sign a petition against climbing competition, with 31 other strong climbers. In that paper, they state that the new generation his going to kill climbing. As people become more competitive, they forget that we can just have fun in a route like lake view which his just 5.4. Today, in most gym, a beginer climb 5.9 or are nothing. They was true.
I learned with his book on my hand. I trained so much that I overtrained when some people smoke in the building where I leaved. I wasn't able to sleep because of smoke allergy. I never know about carpal tunel either and the operation that I had helped me to climb 5.11. I was limited by a physical problem. The book I red after "grimper" was also good and many of them was just to cover one aspect of training that Patrick doesn't explain completely. One can think of him as a good climber that you can beat...for me he his a friend who follow me on all of my best routes.
