What kind of climber is nonkel V?

For the occasional people who would like to know about my climbing, but in the first place to refresh and backup my own memory, I started to write down a "climbing resume". This turns out to be quite hard sometimes, since I never really kept a log or similar.

Now I do keep a log, at least of my climbing outside Belgium. The Climbers Log Book I got as a welcome present from the MCofS last winter is the katalysator that made me think about it and finaly made me start writing down my climbing journeys.

You might wonder why only "outside Belgium"?
To be honest, I'm not sure about this myself yet. I usualy indicate my routes in the guidebook myself, and if I'm not to lazy, put them in the BCN route database. Going climbing outdoors here is mostly a one day out trip, like other people go biking or walking on a sunday afternoon. I'm definitely not the type to patiently "work" on one route for ages.

In fact I mainly subscribe to the climbing philosophy I heard in South Africa: "If you don't succeed a route, try another one! There's more than plenty of them!"

Or as another climber once put it: "Either you can climb a route, either you can't.
I'm not sure about his exact words (therefor I don't put his name) but this philosophy is definitively not a modern sports climbing one.

Sometimes I put some quite radical and perhaps slightly shocking statements, I realise. One of them may be the one that there's only two kinds of climbing: the one where you're allowed to fall, and the one where you shouldn't. More and more climbers climb harder and harder routes, but stick to the first category, where good protection, like bomber bolts and thick crashpads, is omnipresent.

Once you go beyond that, whether it be in alpine mountaineering, harder trad climbing, exposed bouldering or... iceclimbing, you get into category 2: here falling is not a part of the climbing anymore, and might result in some harm.

I believe in our over secured day to day world today, the remains of our human instinct miss the excitement of the "struggle for life", and that's one of the possible reasons why people go climbing, motorracing, skydiving,... to get back some thrill in their lives.

The Goal & the Way to get there...

It's a widespread cliché climbers want to climb mountains (or frozen waterfalls, whatever) "because they are there".
For outsiders this most probably is a very vague and insufficient answer. Although the question is not more (or less) obvious than why people collect postage stamps, why people play football, or why people try to meet other people at places where the music is so loud you can't even hear what they're screaming in your ear. I'm giving my personal point of view here.
"Climbing" is not the goal itself, it's a way to get there. "There" is not the top of the mountain, because there you are only half way and the most difficult or scary part in many cases, the descent, still has to come. It's also no such a thing as "been there, done that". Ah well, maybe that plays along too.
In my eyes, climbing is a way of travelling, or perhaps a reason for travelling. And as many travellers say, not the destination is the goal, but the travel.
During the years I climb, I've tried to get to lots of different places to climb, not sticking to the obvious southern French sport climbing spots, or Chamonix for alpine stuff. They're excellent for climbing, and I did have great times over there, but there's more in the climbing world... like Canada.

As for the iceclimbing, living in Belgium, the Alps are not too far away, and offer plenty of good climbs. So why on Earth would one go to Norway? Or Scotland, which is not only farther away and more difficult to get to than France or Switserland, but also is well known for its rain ten days out of nine?!
Or... why Canada? Because Sean and Will told us to? Because we were so hopeless and frustrated about last warm winter with terrible -or unexisting- ice conditions at the Kandersteg Ice Climbing Festival? No, yes, not only. There's always not only the ice, the rocks, the mountains, there's always the country too, and the local people you get into contact with. Briefly said: it's about the whole travel experience built around the climbing.
And for some reason the climbing stuff with all its peculiar logistic challenges, like material, routefinding, transport, more than often obliges you to go off the beaten touristic path and go to less known places. But you always have a goal, a purpose of going there..

So, is climbing the goal or the way to get there? It's both, and it's none of them!
But for sure it's more than a sport.