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thebravecowboy
climber
in the face of the fury of the funk
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Jun 23, 2014 - 01:57pm PT
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Ground-up multipitch with a rack of tricams, hexes, a #4 Bigbro, and a thin short cord. Pins and bit in pocket, no drill holder or hammer, with a heinous 98 degree 11 mile deathmarch approach. Uranium roads by cycle and sketchy routefinding to climb a short, very exposed piece of Kayenta perched on a 700 foot scree cone. The Second Longest Day of the Year, 5.4, III. Burrowing to the summit through rubble piles is so much better when your ears are clogged with gnats.
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Vitaliy M.
Mountain climber
San Francisco
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Jun 23, 2014 - 02:36pm PT
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So best possible style FOR A TRAD CLIMB seems to be onsight, GU ascent free solo or team on clean gear (no bolts/pitons involved). No fixed ropes. No pre-inspection. No cleaning. You show up, see a possible route, go up features following a natural line to the summit and do it without altering the rock in any way. Leave the area clean as it was.
For alpine team it is similar with a big emphasis on not using help from the outside and taking your things out after the ascent.
For a sport/slab climb I guess it would be drilling from hooks/stances GU and making all the moves free to the next stance/hook.
This seems fairly obvious. Ed, what made you start this thread if the answer is obvious to you?
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jun 23, 2014 - 02:47pm PT
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One more thing Vitaly, no report so the next party can also enjoy the adventure of a FA.
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Nate D
climber
San Francisco
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Jun 23, 2014 - 03:02pm PT
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I should add that I do savor the experience of first ascents employing the minimalistic ethic far more, but sometimes the fact that the product isn't shared by others makes me feel ...
Selfish?
Interesting. On the other hand, some would say that it's selfish or egotistical to desire/seek the praise or validation of others (hopefully many) who later climb the route.
Selfishness is definitely a word that comes up often in the FA discussion department.
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Vitaliy M.
Mountain climber
San Francisco
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Jun 23, 2014 - 03:04pm PT
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I think reporting your ascent is fairly important for keeping the history of a cliff straight. It provides accurate info for guidebook authors and avoids the soreness some experience when another team reports their old line as a FA.
Rick Sumner, how come you did not keep your FAs to yourself and actually wrote a guidebook if you are against reporting ascents? I am a little confused here.
In this thread I think the question is the style and not how you report it. As long as the report is accurate and contains no lie, I think it goes together well with good style.
Anyway, Ed, quit wasting time on this thread, I really want to see a TR about that thing you guys climbed by Tioga pas!!!! : )
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jstan
climber
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Jun 23, 2014 - 03:34pm PT
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Ed has posted a quite complete description of what happens when FA's are not reported. If my
memory serves me, it increasingly does not, I remember no case where I reported any new routes
to a guidebook author. Freeing of aid routes I would have.
In the early 70's, just as I am now, I was arguing not reporting ascents would be very beneficial in
the long term. At that time I focussed my efforts on selling this idea to a half dozen specific
people. Ed discusses what happens when a person who did an unreported ascent later tells
someone they did a second ascent. With the specific group of friends I was targeting, I did this in
two or three cases. I thought it might increase my ability to persuade. It did not of course and the
climb rating DYABS got generated.
My attempts to persuade were getting so little traction I was willing to court the illogical, to no
avail. More generally, not reporting kept only perhaps 10% from going into guidebooks right
away. Some 40 years later you have only to look at routes drawn on El Cap to discern the logic for
this is getting only stronger. I am guessing I will be dead before the idea begins to gain some
traction. That's OK.
Working with ideas is just as enjoyable as working with the rock. Where there is no chance for
failure, there is also no reason to try.
Now I will demonstrate I have not learned a thing in the last half century. On Netflix I found an
encomium for single gear bicycles. To prove my point I extracted the photo below. For the last
half century I have been working on litter removal and find it just as interesting as climbing was.
I see two possible conclusions:
1. We are so used to seeing litter it has become invisible.
2. A population that is drawn to litter has come into existence.
Either way, cleaning it up will be great fun.
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Laine
Trad climber
Reno, NV
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Jun 23, 2014 - 04:20pm PT
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What's the point of maintaining the best style if not to report the deed?
Say a climber sends a route in perfect style (naked onsight solo). She, being true to her style, does not report it and later finds out Joe "The Drill" Smoe did the "FA" of what he thought was an unclimbed line in a less than the best style. Now she's peeved by the use of bolts by Mr. Smoe, he feels cheated out of his FA and guilty for altering someone's else route, and everyone hashes out the matter on the Taco demonizing Mr. Smoe.
Reporting would be key to maintaining best style and ethics within an area. In fact, the history behind routes is one of the most interesting parts of this sport IMO. If you believe style matters, being a role model of your style is just as important as maintaining said style.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jun 23, 2014 - 04:54pm PT
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Laine does it really matter, when many reported ascents are subsequently bolted over then removed from mention in guidebooks ( the predominate source of climbing history)? A long long time ago I was doing a regular free solo circuit and found several parties clogging Corrugation Corner. No matter, I took the left sidewall to wide crack and chimney, only sharing the line of the regular route for twenty feet near the chimney belay. Well below this I found a single old FP. I never reported the line and interestingly enough at least parts of it were reported as FA's in later guidebook additions complete with protection bolts. Preserving adventure for later generations in whatever style they saw fit.
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
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Jun 23, 2014 - 05:00pm PT
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...FA in "best style" that would be less selfish and much more community oriented than the competitive drive to "be first."
Is that what I was saying upthread?
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Laine
Trad climber
Reno, NV
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Jun 23, 2014 - 05:12pm PT
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If you are referring to the wide crack/chimney I think you are, well done. Quite a bold solo and a contender for best style. I agree some climbing history is incorrect or rewritten but does that mean we should simply stop trying?
Is that not one of the biggest benefits of this site? Communication of information regarding all things climbing, passing on history, ethics, debating matters of contention.
You've just reported the FA which I find useful and interesting. Now go chop them bolts ;)
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Jun 23, 2014 - 05:51pm PT
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Yes,the very same offwidth crack /chimney which followed a long section of moderately difficult dike hiking, but remember I found an old Fp. So you see that parts of this line provided the adventure of a FA in three very different styles. Climbing history preservation is pretty spotty, usually in guidebooks derived from earlier additions. Errors get magnified when "select guides" are used in reference for future additions and compilers deem modern variations of old routes as superior, then lacking space drop the old. Eventually the error rate will be such that old routes in pristine condition will once again provide FA's.
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MH2
climber
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Jun 23, 2014 - 08:23pm PT
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Just my humble opinion, but slightly better than best style: you think you are doing a route that was done before but it turns out you were wrong. In that case you get no flack for not reporting a FA.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 23, 2014 - 08:45pm PT
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Ed, what made you start this thread if the answer is obvious to you?
that's what intellectuals do... they discuss an idea to explore it. What wasn't obvious, but something I suspected, that climbers actually all know what "best style" is for first ascents. They may have reasons for doing an FA in "less than best style", and those reasons are probably all valid to some extent within our natural feelings of anarchy, or perhaps libertarianism..
the other point I wanted to make, and I've made it before, elsewhere, is that climbing today is dominated by climbing established routes, not by putting routes up. There is a huge emphasis on making the route fit for those consumers by the producers.
no one wants someone to get hurt on a climb they have reported an FA on, on the other hand every climber has a responsibility to make a choice for themselves whether or not to do a climb.
and there is an issue of the future, now that we know what climbing is about, we can pronounce what "best style" is
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Jun 23, 2014 - 08:56pm PT
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Ed wrote: this was on-sight, ground-up, no bolts, single push, pretty close (if not spot on) "best style"
Go do an overhanging crack less limestone wall and see how far you get.
This best style thing is totally absurd when it comes to climbing.
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jstan
climber
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Jun 23, 2014 - 09:06pm PT
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no one wants someone to get hurt on a climb they have reported an FA on
Never assume this.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Jun 23, 2014 - 09:13pm PT
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This best style thing is totally absurd when it comes to climbing.
Not when it comes to areas where clean protection and anchors are useable, safe and desirable. No, not absurd at all.
When you have overhanging crackless limestone, I leave it to others.
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ruppell
climber
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Jun 23, 2014 - 09:17pm PT
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Survival
Then it's not a climbing ethic. It's an area ethic. Each one has it's own "best". To try and call out one as superior to all others because the OPs area lends itself to it is short sighted at best and egotistical at worse.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jun 23, 2014 - 09:17pm PT
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For me the ideal trad FA is a pretty simple proposition: eye a line, get on it with no pre-inspection, no pre-cleaning, lead it onsight with no dogging and no fixed pro. How often has that happened? A handful of times over forty years in my case. But every single FA I do starts there and then suffers varying degrees of deprecation and taint in my mind as I back off of any and each of those attributes in turn, which I do with varying degrees of reluctance depending on the attributes and circumstances forcing the compromise (I'll also just walk away).
Coming from a small backwater, I was lucky enough to have experience the luxury of everything we touched being an FA and my climbing has always been a self-interested matter driven solely by an obsession with successive lines. I don't climb for you and don't really give a f*#k what you or anyone else thinks of my FA's and never 'reported' them (and in fact tried to keep the more recent ones out of the guidebook revision).
And to each his own, but frankly I find the concepts of 'community service' (in a route context) and 'crag development' both a wee bit nauseating. But hey, don't get me wrong, I fully understand the predominant aural landscape in places like Eldo long ago transitioned from 'Falling!' to 'Take!' in the wake of an expansive, commercially-driven demographic powered by the growth of gyms and climbing's progressive media integration into suburban pop culture; I've just never really seen where that has f*#kall to do with me or what drives my climbing beyond having to avoid cluster f*#ks and what are essentially outside climbing gyms, but at this point I'm cool with that.
My dad who just passed started flying in biplanes and retired a 747 captain - he liked the newer equipment better, but the earlier pre-FAA flying more. So too, I really appreciate how lucky we were in the beginning to have had our little untouched hollers to ourselves.
P.S. A couple of years ago a quite pragmatic female friend from Chicago startled delicate Portland sensibilities when - a bit sloshed at a party and having overheard something about yet another bridge suicide (we have a lot of them here) - she quipped, "life isn't for everyone". I have to admit feeling the same way about climbing despite concerted efforts on multiple industry fronts to prove the contrary. Does that make me a bad person or just an as#@&%e? (I'm completely fine with either...)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 23, 2014 - 10:49pm PT
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Go do an overhanging crack less limestone wall and see how far you get.
This best style thing is totally absurd when it comes to climbing.
I agree that given today's equipment and climbers that the only way to get up your overhanging crackless limestone wall is by "less than best style"
and if some climber is determined to climb that, they will
but who's to say that that climb could not ever be done in "best style"?
the concept is absurd to us, but the idea of someone soloing El Cap, Half Dome and Mt Watkins in a day was absurd just 5 years ago... in whatever style.
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