is the hiking to mountaineering pipeline or the climbing to mountaineering pipeline more common?
>>2852304It depends on where they live.A rock climber that lives somewhere like the Alps or the Canadian Rockies is far more likely to also be a mountaineer than a rock climber in Southwestern US.
>>2852304For me it was hiking to trail running.
>>2852304why not both? my goal currently is to get into mountaineering and i do this through hiking, where i have ascended two smallish peaks more or less accidently, which left such a big impression on me that i am hooked. none of those peaks where in my home country though. so now, bouldering is a way for me to develop skills for future ascends. mountaineering essentially is a mix of both hiking and climbing anyway.
It's depends on the "kind" of mountaineering. There's a large amount of "mountaineering" that doesn't involve "climbing on rock or ice" in the strictest sense of class 5 routes needing trad gear or ice pro, but still involves technical roped glacier travel. There's also a large amount of "climbing" which doesn't involve "mountains" (or even the outdoors for that matter). I think what makes the difference between "hiking or scrambling" and "mountaineering" in most people's minds, though, is whether the route is at least in some way "technical". In this sense, rock climbers often have an advantage because they understand technical rope systems and protection, are often more comfortable with exposure, etc. All a climber has to do to be "mountaineering" is be climbing a route to the summit of a mountain. Conversely, when a hike becomes a mountaineering objective can be a bit fuzzier. I've heard some people say it's "big glaciated peaks" that makes it mountaineering. I've heard some say it's any time any sort of "protection" comes out, even if that's just an ice axe. So some would say scrambling isn't mountaineering because there's no protection involved . But ironically, the American Alpine Club doesn't recognize scrambling as distinct from climbing at all, and in their yearly Journal of Climbing Accidents they list the "secondary cause" for all scrambling-related accidents as "Free-Soloing" since they just see it as a form of unroped climbing (Anton Chigura: "which it is"). There's also a healthy pipeline from backcountry skier/split-boarder to mountaineer, FWIW.Mountaineering tends to be very outdoor interdisciplinary. In that way, it's kind of the /out/ endgame.
I do feel like there's some kind of split between climbing and mountaineering bros on one side, and hiking, trail running and thruhiking on the other. The former is a "sportier" approach to the outdoors and the latter is more "wow nature is so amazing" hippie/naturalist type. Ironically, a lot of ultralight hiking tech was invented by the same guy who invented cams.I feel like there are a lot more hikers than climbers, so by that virtue alone there are more hiker/mountaineers, but I'm a hiker/casual mountaineer so I'm a bit biased. I've heared bouldering and sport climbing is very popular these days.
>>2852304Probably hiking to mountaineering. I've seen more people go from mountaineering to rock climbing than the other way around. >>2852363>In that way, it's kind of the /out/ endgameIt would be cool to see an /out/ skill tree diagram showing the different paths you could take. Like hiking to backpacking to winter backpacking to mountaineering. Or hiking to scrambling to rock climbing to mountaineering. The hiking to mountain biking pipeline is also big.
>>2852399The anything to mountain biking pipeline is big because boomers and millennials went nuts with mountain bikes during COVID even though they were supposed to be "staying home". Remember Year of the Bike and all that?
