What Is Trad ?????????

Rock Me To Sleep
Elizabeth Akers Allen
(1832-1911)

Time is what prevents us from climbing everything at once. In every style.

This thread is one of the best in awhile, so much funny stuff & great posts.

Tarbuster, thanks for clarifying the c#m thing for me :-)

So in your opinion where does bouldering fit in with this?

It seems every top level "trad" climber of right now was a plastic prince at some point or clipped hella bolts, every single one. This is a tradition that probably won't change in modern day trad for some time or ever, so maybe coz is right........

Maybe better to define climbs & areas as trad/sport/headpoint/ rather than the people who climb them?

Trad climbers got stuck with the "traditional" name as a counterpoint to sport climbing. In fact, every generation of climbers has violated tradition by choosing to abandon at least some of the cherished rules of the previous generation. This is at least partially because the previous generation had already gotten about as far as possible within the context of the rules they adhered to.

Typically, the role of the previous generation has been to complain bitterly about the transgressions of the current generation and, in so doing, prevent at least some of the outrages that result from the drive of outsize egos for accomplishment.

I think sport climbing upended this conservative process by being something different and parallel to what came before, rather than an evolution of it. Although we don't like to say so in this country, the presence of risk and the way in which it is confronted lies at the heart of what is now referred to as traditional climbing. Sport climbing has banished risk, at least the forms of risk inherent in trad climbing, in favor of other aspects of climbing, and as the sport climbing mentality spreads, it becomes increasingly difficult to even communicate about the distinctions between the genres, not least because of the irrelevant formulations such as bolts vs. gear.

Consider a trad climb with a risky section. It's been done many times, but now there is a contingent of climbers who want to put a bolt there. Why? Because that part of the climb is risky! More people could enjoy it if there was a bolt, and the community has a "right" to the route.

But the risk is exactly why the trad climbers don't want the bolt there, although somehow that never seems to be made clear. Trad climbers see controlling the risk through the use of gear that may not be bomber and the practice of self-control under pressure as one of the intrinsic challenges of the sport.

Putting in that bolt destroys part of the essence of the climb for the trad climber. People may not like this and may not agree with it, but they should at least understand that there is a genuine and irreconcilable conflict between the preservation of risk and the desire for a risk-free environment.

Saying that risk is intrinsic to trad climbing does not mean that trad climbers want arbitrary risks. Trad climbing isn't a collection of stunts like how many cars you can jump your motorcycle over. The risks of trad climbing are the ones intrinsic to the environment: unknown territory ahead, no cracks for pro, no stances to drill from. This is why those who say "just don't clip the bolt" are utterly clueless. The bolt modifies the environment and makes a former intrinsic risk into a stupid stunt.

I grew up in a time when all climbing was trad climbing. I have nothing against sport climbing, and because of the decreased risk I find it increasingly attractive as I get older and more brittle. But I also would have found the sheer pursuit of difficulty in sport climbing compelling when I was young, strong, and less likely to snap on impact. I just wish the the practitioners of the two genres would learn to respect the traditions of each (yes, sport climbing is now old enough to have traditions too) and not try to impose their perspectives and preferences on the other styles of climbing. The UK is the only country that seems to have really managed to do this.

Unfortunately, there is a substantial asymmetry in the two outlooks that puts trad climbing at an enormous disadvantage. Trad climbers, by and large, are about leaving things as they are. Sport climbing is all about permanently modifying the environment to provide a certain type of experience. Someone with a Hilti will put in a bunch of bolts somewhere, and then we hear that they should be left in because who wants to start a bolt war. According to this view, the Hilti owners have free reign to do whatever they want and the rest of the climbing community just has to be resigned to it.

Of course, the sense of entitlement that allows a self-appointed guardian of communal safety to bolt trad routes will never be fully constrained to the placement of protection. Once one type of environmental modification has been embraced, the barriers to other types become fragile, and that is why we are seeing more and more chipping, even in former bastions of traditional values like the Gunks where the owners of the land explicitly forbid such actions.