The Fun Scale
I first heard about the Fun Scale from my friend Peter Haeussler back in 2001, as we bushwhacked through thick Alaskan Devil’s Club en route to cold beers on his sailboat. I’d just come out of the Range, where Scotty D and I had a terrific climbing trip, sometimes terrifying but we loved it later – we’d put up two new routes on Thunder Mountain and made the probable first one-day ascent of Mt. Huntington. Anyway, while bushwhacking and salivating over the beers, avoiding the bears, and dealing with the Devil, it dawned on me that when engaged in Type II and Type III fun, I find myself dreaming about Type I fun. But the transient fix of Type I fun rarely lasts, at least without something deeper, something committing. And so I think … ahhh, nevermind – I could go on and on.
Here’s the Fun Scale:
Leaving the good stuff and heading toward the final slopes on Mt. Huntington. Scott DeCapio photo.
Type I Fun – true fun, enjoyable while it’s happening. Good food, good sex, 5.8 hand cracks, sport climbing, powder skiing. Margaritas.
Type II Fun – fun only in retrospect, hateful while it’s happening. Things like working out ‘till you puke, and usually ice and alpine climbing. After climbing the West Face Couloir on Huntington, Scotty and I both swore that we hated alpine climbing. The final 1,000′ was horrific – swimming up sugar snow that collapsed beneath us, roped together without protection – and took nearly as long as the initial 3,000′ from camp. On the summit, Scotty turned to me and said, in complete seriousness, “I want my mom so bad right now.” By the time we reached Talkeetna our talk of Huntington turned to, “Ya know, that wasn’t so bad. What should we try next time?”
Scotty (L) and me back in base camp after Huntington.
Type III Fun – not fun at all, not even in retrospect. As in, “What the hell was I thinking? If I ever even consider doing that again, somebody slap some sense into me.” The final 1,000′ of Huntington, when I stop and think about it…but, then again, a friend climbed it the next year and had perfect conditions.
I guess you never really know what sort of fun you’re getting yourself into once you leave the couch, which is fine, because it doesn’t always have to be “fun” to be fun.
Maybe the whole goal, the path of the enlightened, is to turn Type III situations into Type I fun. Right. Anybody had any luck with that?
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Great! Although I would add a Fun 2.5. A mix of 2 and 3. I mean, those climbs when you get really really scared and you don’t know whether you’ll make it back. It’s bad while it’s happening and bad when you recount it a few months later; but then, a few years in the future, you meet you old partner again and you laugh about that especial climb. Or maybe not…
That’s a clear type 2 I’d say.
Kelly, I’d say that the road to enlightenment comes first by turning II into I, and then true masters may convert IIIs to IIs.
In the words of Suzuki Roshi: “The true purpose of [Climbing] is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. [Climbing] practice is to open up our small mind.”
Love the fun scale! I reviewed it in an article in Canadian Alpine Journal 2008 (crediting Kelly, as he’s the one I heard it from). I jumped on the “2 cents” bandwagon, proposing Type IV fun: Postmodern Fun.
By definition, Type IV is difficult to describe, requires high sounding, diffuse words. The nutshell of its meaning remains obscure; but Type IV is mostly a deconstruction of the notion of fun.
Here’s the true definition of Type IV fun, quoted from elsewhere.org/pomo:
“If one examines the pretextual paradigm of fun, one is faced with a choice: either reject neocultural objectivism or conclude that fun is fundamentally meaningless. But subdialectic semioticist theory implies that fun, surprisingly, has objective value, but only if truth is interchangeable with language.”
There you have it.
great replies — so, Uri, maybe it’s like a form of Purgatory, this 2.5 you propose. But it’s probably just temporary, no? Or, as they say, time heals all wounds. Maybe we go: time makes all type III fun into type II. my friend Peter, from whom i first heard the fun scale, said to me in email today: “No one really wants Type 3. Our minds have this incredible ability to forget pain. Thus the Type 3–>2 transition.” seems a fair and valid observation!
Indeed. I guess on the long run 3 can become 2 and there is no 2.5. In my case it was a scary attempt on Mont Blanc in winter. I am still scared. I can’t even think about that climb, however my buddy and I got together yesterday and over Tequila (yeap, I am a big fun of Margaritas too!) we manage to laugh about some of the scary parts of the climb.
the merits of margaritas! Yikes, sounds like Mont Blanc would qualify as type III, I’d say. it’s like the mythical 2.5 fun represents that transition time. if you managed to laugh about it, maybe soon it’ll be type III…
ah, stonebhikku shows the path to enlightenment! true, though — and that quote is great. only thing in my experience i might question is whether you have the first part backwards — meaning, seems to me the hardest part, the things the true masters could do, would be to turn II into I. actually, scratch that — to turn II OR III into I, wow. i’m no master, i just have a short memory, and after some time and some PBRs, i can fairly easily convert III into II. hmmm.
nice, Jer, didn’t know we got the fun scale in your CAJ article, yes! man, the type IV, postmodern…makes my head hurt. makes my face hurt, too, from laughing so hard. thanks.
The question is: why is type III fun called fun at all if it never becomes fun. Shouldn’t type III be defined as some other level of fun and the current definition be called something like Type I misery?
Craig
i know, i’ve thought that very thing as well. perhaps it’s that you go into it thinking it’s gonna be fun? or maybe it just works like the way a 300-pound guy is nicknamed “Tiny.”
I’d say that the expectation of fun is pretty key, but also, if you want to make a scale of fun, it’s got to go from ultimate fun to no fun at all, and the grades must attend to that as well.
ps. kelly, that was a funny podcast you did for patagonia, made for a good listen.