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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Bob, I have no problem whatsoever acknowledging that fact/reality. The synergies are obvious and logical. My complaint is it's just that today the Tommy's and Beth's emerge from a very high impact demographic base.
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
boulder, co
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Things change...people were climbing in nail boots and using forty-foot pieces of rope a hundred years ago.
The sport is always evolving...depending on your perpective it good, bad or it just is! What hasn't changed it the spirt of some climbers to jump out of the circle, leave so called traditions behind and show us what is possible when the mind is open to change.
Good OP Peter.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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I can remember in '76 going down to El Gran Trono (in Baja California) with Hugh Burton. The year before I'd climbed a wall down there with Mike Lechlinski and noticed out left a huge (1,800 feet) shield like face but couldn't see a route from where we were. Burton and I went down there and basically sight unseen climbed that face with one bivy at the base and one hamock bivy on the wall, then we drove back into the US in Hugh's thrashed Ford Fairlane. It was Thanksgiving Day. That was an incredible adventure for us, though we didn't really think of it that way at the time. That's just how you went about your bid-ness back then. No back up, high commitment and hard climbing--a little poorly protected 5.10 and several pitches of aid that even Hugh called A4.
I mention this because I would never have experienced such an adventure lest I'd been long schooled in that, the prevailing style of the day.
My hat's off to the remarkable things folks are doing today, but if I had the choice to trade experiences like I just jotted out for being at the top of the heap in today's sport climbing world--well, that's a no brainer. I'll take Baja every time. I couldn't have been happier to have climbed full time when I did, and that's the most anyone can ask of their first passion. How can I begrudge what's going on these days when in my mind we had it so much better?
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Bob,
"The sport is always evolving...."
Again, I have basically no problem with the technical evolution of the sport - I have some serious problems with the [commercialized] explosion in the sheer numbers of "climbers" we have to supply bolted resources to. Maybe someone here in sports marketing who is more knowledgeable in the actual demographics could contrast the stats on the number of folks that identify themselves as "climbers" today versus 30 years ago but I suspect it's a staggeringly large number.
John,
My father started flying in bi-planes and retired a UAL 747 Captain. He often talks about he wouldn't fly at all if he were starting out today with regulations, the FAA, etc. Flying was a real adventure and a special experience early on versus what it was by the time he retired. By then, while he enjoyed the equipment and flying, flight crews had virtually no interaction with the passengers who were not all that interesting anymore anyway and he felt it was more about just "driving".
We climbed obliviously in Gill's wake down in the the hollows of Southern Illinois pretty much making it up as best we could as we went. Everything we touched was an FA and we were blown away every time we ventured out into the "real" climbing world of Eldo and the Gunks - climbing in those places seemed pretty damn socially structured and turfed out even in the mid-70s compared to our raggedy little band of lost stoners. Like you and my father before me, I wouldn't trade a single one of those clueless early experiences for the very best of what can be had today...
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Nate D
Trad climber
San Francisco
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"Finding uncharted rock was surpreme, sharing it with your close friends was heaven."
Ahh, how true indeed... and still the case for this humble wanderer.
Now, I for one, wasn't around in the 60's and 70's, but why lament when you can just keep moving forward... and up?
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aldude
climber
Monument Manor
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Cheers to Tommy and Beth on their supremely difficult sends - but those El Cap sends would not have possible without legions of mad bolters preceding them. They are not First Ascents - they are First free Ascents. The point being that they are not " traditional climbs " nor are they traditonal climbers. Traditional climbers do first ascents not first descents. The Holy Grail of the Old School was to put all of your accumulated training,experience and knowledge in to the grand objective - A NEW ROUTE -ground up of course.
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caughtinside
Social climber
Davis, CA
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Yep, Tommy and Beth rapped in from above to work those cruxes.
And didn't trotter retrobolt an aid line in Squamish so it would go free?
Although I understand the frustration with a larger number of climbers today, just remember that it's the older generation who started the 'gymbification' if you will. Those guys wanted to make a living from climbing, and so they did.
Finally, I've always thought the whole 'trad purity' thing was a bit hypocritical, since just about every crack I've climbed has been nailed. Every crack I've done has been manufactured!
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
boulder, co
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Caughtinside wrote: Although I understand the frustration with a larger number of climbers today, just remember that it's the older generation who started the 'gymbification' if you will. Those guys wanted to make a living from climbing, and so they did.
Finally, I've always thought the whole 'trad purity' thing was a bit hypocritical, since just about every crack I've climbed has been nailed. Every crack I've done has been manufactured!
It is a little hypocritical. Joe has a puritian view of it. I am a little more in tune to the reality of it. As Jim Erickson once said...mostly all great climbs have been with dubious tactics (for the time).
I have a wonderful time climbing back in the 70's and continue to have great times now.
Joe--isn't top-roping starting from the top down? And if you fall on a top rope...bringing the ground up to you??
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Bob,
Our ethics were strictly LNT-based which was certainly a difference between us and others in the mid-70s for sure, particularly on West Coast granite as opposed to our basically unclimbed hollows. Both coasts had a long history of climbing that clean climbing ethic emerged from, in the Midwest there wasn't outside of Devil's Lake. That on your West Coast granite it was a messy and at times incomplete transition to clean climbimg is understandable as is the fact that all the cracks got nailed - duh, just what today do you think the impetus for nuts and hexs was? Nailed cracks...
And denigrating Eldo ethics by taking one of Jim's comments out of context and slathering it over the entire decade and all climbing areas is really lowering the bar on revisionist history in eldo and most other areas. If you are claiming all the great routes in Eldo and the Gunks put up in the '70s were done with dubious tactics go ahead and say it and I'll step aside and let those folks speak for themselves - but that's a gross distortion of reality that lot's of folks love to bandy about - that it never really happened. Who knows, maybe he was talking sh#t about routes in the Valley at the time, I wasn't there for that conversation...
But I was sitting on the top of the NW corner of the Bastille once with my feet over the edge lighting a joint after a my first-ever roped solo (up the Bastille Crack) when Dave Brashears' hand appeared more or less right next to me while he and Steve were putting up "Rain". He couldn't figure out the very last sequence and took a very pounding and bloody 60 footer right before my eyes - stunning for a boy from the hollows. Steve, who was out of sight around the corner yelled "Davey, are you all right?" and Dave said he was, and then Wunsch asked, "are you going to do it again?" I still recall Brashears' response clear as a bell today: "sure, now that I know that piece will hold..." And he came back up and took the same bloody fall again. That's the ethic I witnessed on all my trips to Eldo and the Gunks. Again, claims that all the great routes in either place used dubious tactics is a joke - never having been to the Valley in those days I'll leave your history with clean climbing to you guys here.
As for our doing a lot of routes on top rope - we did. Our sandstone had lots of places where you can't do it on pro and we weren't going to bolt under any, repeat any, circumstances and in those years we placed one pin on a one-A1-move roof. LNT was our deal to the point of deliberately not using chalk. Lots of those routes were completely safe because of it, some weren't. We did several roofs on top rope that were completely desperate taking repeated 22 foot horizontal semi-decking falls ("Fiddler on the Roof"), long 60' rides out through trees that did break one guy's back ("Fear of Flying"), and yet another that was too close to the road we took 25 rides each into a 10' high by 15' long pile of wet leaves ("Leaves of the Failing Faith"). Here's a shot of "Fiddler":
http://photos.rockclimbing.com/photos//469/46917.jpg
What really, is the deal with bolting up one pitch routes? If bolting is all about focusing on the difficulty and movement then why fck around with superfluous clipping? Our take on it then was if you weren't placing pro on it why the fck bother - clipping them is posing. I suppose that makes us some of the earliest [clean] sport climbers. The best of those routes that we put up in '76 and called an 5.11 is now rated between a 5.12b and a 5.13a depending on who you talk to. Trust me, we did lots of hairball routes on lead as well, I've done my share of stacking hexs in pegmatite, and taken 30 footers on to #3 Crack'N Ups free climbing on them so I do have a clue in both realms. But the bottom line for me is I've never placed a bolt for protection to-date and likely never will.
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TradIsGood
Trad climber
Gunks end of country
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healyje - How long have you had such low self-esteem? :)
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Trad - Climbing was certainly no cure for that, but we did what we could back in the hollows in the deep shadow of all you real climbers on both coasts...
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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Nice story, Healve
I take different approaches for different kinds of climbing, I generally try to onsight stuff, but when I don’t make it, the type of climb dictates my further actions. On a trad climb (esp one with no shenanigans in it’s FA history) I will generally get off it the most expedient way (rap and pull, hang and go etc.) but if it’s a cool climb I will wait and come back rather than work the moves. If it’s sport climb I’m much more likely to work the moves, more like training.
If I’d had to onsight everything, I’d never have had any fun at Cave Rock! Though eventually I could redpoint a bunch of ‘roots’, there.
But, first time I climbed Hotline, I suspected that I had got tension at the crux, It bothered me till I finally went back.
dingus made a great point a while back about the diffuseness of climbers and styles.
Sometimes though, you end up climbing with people with different ideas.Last night I climbed, inside, with one of my longest term climbing partners, (we wailed pins on lead, for free pro when we were preteens, when dinosaurs walked the earth). Back to last night, after a bunch of warm ups we moved to ‘the steep’ wall. I climbed a mid-range 11 and when it was his turn he fell off early on, bailed and decided to go for the climb next to it, said it looked ‘better,’ a 12b/c!
“I dunno, man, I haven’t climbed a 12c in a while...”
“I don’t think I’ve ever climbed a 12c,” he said and gave me a weird look. Half an hour, and many hangs and hoists later he was on top. He seemed to have as much fun as if he’d been climbing.
My turn, I opted for 12a and fell off on the last move. I’ll try it again if I get back there before they change the route, after all it’s only a gym climb.
I’ve had tons of fun on sport climbs, FA's, FFA's and repeats, but they definitely blend together more than a lot of the trad routes; say “Meatgrinder,” and I have something in mind, but I’ll never remember the name of that 11b right of Gorgeous.
To be fair, a lot of Sport Climbs stand out, as well.
BTW, happy 50th today, Jerry!
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caughtinside
Social climber
Davis, CA
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Some good thoughts there Jaybro.
And how could you forget Knucko's Pride of the North? hah!
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nature
climber
Flagstaff, AZ
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C'mon Knucko?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I'm not saying there aren't righteous sport routes on rock that wasn't protectable in any other way - I'm just saying it isn't my thing. And I'm also pointing out the combination of gyms and bolted routes is sustaining a demographic that is causing access and impact problems. Personally, the principal rationale I see for bolting one pitch routes is protecting the top environment and at the hollow we climbed in that was basically destroyed, albiet by the combination of climbers, sport rappellers, and kegger partiers (easy walkup). In hindsight I wish we had installed top anchors there.
In fact, my partner and I were just back at the first ever So. Ill. climbers reunion and two days we climbed at Jackson Falls which is primarily bolted and I was impressed out how well it was done and how much that had saved the top environment. All the routes had sported "sporty" clips and their choices for developing routes, given there is no easy way back to the top once you're down in the hollow, was walk away from it or bolt. There are no draws or chains hanging all over and nothing looked remotely close to overbolted so on the whole I think they have done as good a job as can possibly be done when developing a sport area.
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James
Social climber
My Subconcious
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Many people downplay the difficulty of a first ascent. There is a significant amount of knowledge required. Climbing in unknown terrain requires a certain ability, awareness of protection, and how to "find the line", making first ascents rather daunting even for the nuevo elite.
Climbing is largely a collection of people stroking their egos, which is made easier when people can relate to the bar. First ascents aren't as much a part of the climbing culture. The easy thing is in.
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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"First ascents aren't as much a part of the climbing culture. The easy thing is in. "
Hunh? Please elaborate.
are you saying that lots of folks can climb all their climbing days without doing FA's, and still have rewarding climbing careers? Could be. Otherwise, please advise.
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
boulder, co
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Healjye wrote: And denigrating Eldo ethics by taking one of Jim's comments out of context and slathering it over the entire decade and all climbing areas is really lowering the bar on revisionist history in eldo and most other areas. If you are claiming all the great routes in Eldo and the Gunks put up in the '70s were done with dubious tactics go ahead and say it and I'll step aside and let those folks speak for themselves - but that's a gross distortion of reality that lot's of folks love to bandy about - that it never really happened. Who knows, maybe he was talking sh#t about routes in the Valley at the time, I wasn't there for that conversation...
Looks like that went right over your head. He (Jim) or I did not say all routes.
Rent the movie "On the Rock" Steve Wunsch use "dubious tactics" on Supercrack and Kloeberdanz. Jim Collins used dubious tactics on Genesis. Tony Y used "dubious tactics' on Grand Illusion. Do you see were I am going with this??
As to distorting reality...I don't think so. I was there...in the Gunks and Eldo. I did my first 5.12 in 1978 and continue to climb fairly hard. I have followed the history of climbing and take it for what it is...not what I want it to be.
Also fyi...Jim loves clipping bolts.
Aslo FYI...I have led NED.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Bob, you were there no doubt, so you tell me, are your examples exceptions or the norms? I'm relating what we did and what we saw and heard wherever we went. Our FAs were all done clean, ground up, no dogging. Everyone we knew and met climbed by the same ethic. And we didn't hear of more than a handful of FAs contested in either place for chipping, dogging, or pre-placing gear back then. No doubt these things happened, but again, are you saying that was the norm? Or were those the exceptions? Say take the list of top 100 climbs in Eldo and the Gunks from the '70s, what percent of those do you think were put up with contested or dubious tactics?
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WBraun
climber
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In the beginning there were the pioneers. After them came the developers, strip malls, golf coarses, climbing gyms :-)
What are ya gona do about it man?
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