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F'ueco
Boulder climber
San Jose, CA
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Mar 17, 2005 - 10:39am PT
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It's a bit hard compare the moves to an old-school 5.13 when you haven't done any of them. Besides, what is old school?
Do I have to go as far back as The Phoenix or Grand Illusion? How about that 5.13 crack on The Muffins at Castle Rock?
The single hardest move that I have pulled on a boulder problem is the crux of Blue Suede Shoes. That (as far as I know) is an old school 5.12- slab. Now it's V5. So what changed? The problem or did the rating scale shift?
Another question is: how do you correlate the difficulty of a slab against the difficulty of an overhang? Crack vs. Face? They really can't be directly compared due to the differing techniques.
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handsome B
Gym climber
Saskatoon, Saskatchawan
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Mar 17, 2005 - 10:59am PT
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Well here are some things to think about. . .
"Dreamtime" in Switzerland is (was, now that it has been chipped) V15. It is a granite problem consisting of some big moves between rails, then a traverse and mantle over the lip. The total height is about 15 feet off the ground with about 20 feet of climbing packed into that. So if V15 moves could be extended to a 70 meter pitch (or pitches) it would be such a gigantic leap in grades as to be unimaginable.
I think this could be done, while there could be a limit as to what human hands could hold, i think there is no limit as to the endurance of the human body/mind.
Think of a 28 pitch El Cap free route with no move easier than V15; we have a long way to go.
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F'ueco
Boulder climber
San Jose, CA
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Mar 17, 2005 - 04:18pm PT
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But you still face the problem that you can't compare the dynamic lunges between holds to a crack. Because of that, you still can't correlate the difficulty of climbs like Dreamtime to the old routes.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Mar 26, 2009 - 01:14pm PT
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5.16?
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Mar 26, 2009 - 01:39pm PT
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I wonder if the push to harder and harder grading numbers has been the ulitmate limit climbers place on themselves. It seems the push the harder and harder numbers has caused a large number of climbers to persue hard technical moves at the loss of the ability to persue difficult mental climbs, i.e. those requiring boldness.
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jstan
climber
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Mar 26, 2009 - 02:24pm PT
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By the early 70’s I had decided the whole topic of climb grading was a dead end. Why?
Ed has brought up all the new techniques, hang dogging, preplaced protection, permanent draws, the list goes on forever. What is really being increased? What are we really doing? We take a climb that appears to be hard and then apply whatever stratagems are needed to make it less hard(easier). I was accused of cheating in the late sixties because I did not wear a pack when climbing. And yes I did use those new pitons which made everything easier, at least till we all saw that was going nowhere.
Is it that we are increasing the disparity between the actual difficulty and the apparent difficulty? The importance of this disparity becomes undeniable when someone comes along and wanders up something that was another person’s “project”. In 1969 when I got up something that took 12 days of effort I personally decided the whole thing was silly self-delusion.
If you really want to talk actual difficulty, forget about all the tricks and even forget about “working” on that fascinating line. Don’t even touch it till you have gone off, conditioned, and developed all the needed techniques. When you decide to take your “one go” at the route follow your personal rules for climbing implicitly. If your rules limit you to carrying four stoppers that’s all you can bloody well take.
Don’t get me wrong. People are getting better. But face it folks. The numbers don’t mean a thing. Not really.
To finally be free you have to realize climbing does not mean anything. Somebody going from here to there for the first time? This event will reverberate through history? C’mon. Risking your life? Means something only to the people you happen to care about, and bye the bye affects them adversely.
You have a start on meaning when at the end of the day you feel good. Since no one else knows how you feel that achievement starts and ends inside you. Unless you draw strength from it and determine to go out and find an answer to fixing social security. Now that is really friggin hard!
I have to put this video in. Life is never what you think it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO3tscCAVJ8
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Mar 26, 2009 - 04:34pm PT
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jstan,
With very great trepidation, I must disagree with your conclusion on the meaninglessness of numbers. If by "meaningless" you mean the word the Preacher uses in Ecclesiastes, I agree. But if we stay physical rather than metaphysical, at least some numbers mean something to me.
The Tahquitz climbers originally subdivided class-5 because merely calling a climb fifth class gave too little information. A new leader could do the Trough or Angel's Fright, but not Open Book, all of which had a class-5 rating. Thus, the decimal system was shorthand for a climb's comparative difficulty. A 5.0 had difficulty comparable to the Trough, 5.9 to Open Book, and the others somewhere in between. There was never an idea that each subdivision had any mathematical relationship to the last. It simply represented what people then considered the next useful quantum of difficulty. That way, one could use the information from the ratings to select appropriate climbs.
As long as we understand ratings in that context, they have great meaning. I think we lose the meanings with the highest grades, however, because too few people have done them to form a consensus of their difficulty. I find many climbs, but especially difficult ones, have difficulty that depends on personal idiosyncracies. I am short, so I have certain advantages on some climbs, and disadvantages on others. I may find a climb quite difficult that you find easy, simply because I can't make a critical reach, or I may find a move straightforward that you find awkward because I don't need to contort as much as you. In that instance, the ratings may not really give enough information.
The problem, of course, is that we are competitive beings, and began using ratings as a means of keeping score. I happen to think ratings work as a crude score-keeping device, but need some refinement because of the idiosyncratic effect set forth above. In the end, all is vanity (i.e. meaningless) unless we climb in a way that satisfies us, but I know many people -- often including me -- who feel satisfaction in climbing something with an impressive number.
Now as for Ed's question . . . I think climbing is much closer to, say, swimming or distance running circa 1960 than, say sprinting. If you compare the swimming records of 1960 to, say typical times in a good college swim meet, you see how far we've come. If you compare marks in the long jump or 100 meters, however, you see far less progress, suggesting we're much closer to our limits there.
Climbing remains a relatively exotic sport. I believe that as our gene pool expands, athletes will emerge with skill and imagination to do things we can't dream of. If those who do a particular climb agree that it is more difficult than a current 5.15, it becomes a 5.16. We err when we define 5.anything as the impossible. That forces us to compress a rating system designed to measure steps in difficulty when something now impossible for us becomes possible for us or others.
John
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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Mar 26, 2009 - 04:49pm PT
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sorry to jump in here, but score keeping IS metaphysical, or merely a linguistic problem.
how would it not be? I'm not sure that it is a problem to the real point you are making, but you start out with a distinction between the physical and metaphysical.
maybe I'm just confused.
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Mar 26, 2009 - 04:52pm PT
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I don't see how you can compare swimming to other sports, especially those that are either how fast can you go, or how much weight can you move. With those competitive sports you are ultimately pushed by how much faster you have to be than your competition. It is rare that a competitor in a given generation will blow the doors off of others. Over time techniques improve as well as training and hence times continue to drop.
With climbing, it is ultimately the climber against the rock. The line is what motivates and pushes the climber. Sure there are some that climb just for the numbers, but most of us desire to climb a paticular line, and train as needed to gain the skills to ascend the line.
With the first 5.13's having been climbed in the late 70's, early 90's, and the 5.14 grade coming in the early 90's, it's taken nearly 20 years to get to 5.15. And, as the grades are truly subjective, is the difference in difficulty between a 5.13a and 5.14a the same as the difference between 5.14a and 5.15a?
Unless there is a quantum increase in technology, aka shoes, I don't see there being quantum leaps in the difficulty of climbs.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Mar 26, 2009 - 04:58pm PT
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You're right, mungeclimber. I was thinking of "meaningless" in the sense used by the writer of Ecclesiastes (i.e. ultimately vain), rather than its more customary usage (i.e. not conveying any additional information). Neither is physical, but when I think of a rating, I think of specific climbs, which, of course, are physical. Hence the source of my error. Thanks for the correction.
As for my use of "quantum" -- I simply mean a perceptible difference, as in a step function, rather than a continuous one.
John
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jstan
climber
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Mar 26, 2009 - 05:02pm PT
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JE:
I don't know that I would let trepidation get the better of me.
I agree subdivisions of grade five are helpful at levels where it is statistically well founded. And you are correct long arms, either small fingers or strong fingers can make a huge difference.
I was applying the phrase "no meaning" to the question Ed asked. How many more grades can we go? My point was that all manner of things are changing. As I pointed out they were changing in the past just as they are changing now. When we try to do a climb several times, even WE are changing. Seen locally at the point of "the next grade" there really is not a lot of substance at which one may point.
Not surprisingly, I liked the way I looked at it. This weekend if I could do something I could not do the previous weekend, then I was learning. This sounds as though it is not applicable to ED's question but is it? Why do we like larger numbers?
Because they convince us we are learning.
Using numbers to convince us of this in climbing is like standing in a bog of quicksand.
Much better to be convinced while hanging on to a piece of rock which no one has changed so that they might get up it.
I think there is no doubt as to the answer to Ed's question.
The numbers will continue without end.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Mar 26, 2009 - 05:08pm PT
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There are no limits. Only limitations.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Mar 26, 2009 - 05:09pm PT
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Thanks, John. I see that I misunderstood what you said before, and that, in fact, we agree.
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nutjob
Stoked OW climber
San Jose, CA
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Mar 26, 2009 - 05:24pm PT
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Aside from figuring out what climbs are good to keep on the radar screen, I think ratings serve to measure our own growth or progress. Some group of people will always feel a need for continued growth or progress, and so will need a rating system that grows in some fashion to mark that progress. The distinctions between grades may get smaller and smaller over time as we asymptotically approach some theoretical limit. So you might say the the subjective rating of a climb will be a logarithmic function of the objective difficulty if you could measure crimp-strength, normal force, or some other externally quantifiable means of assessing difficulty.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Mar 26, 2009 - 05:37pm PT
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In one sense, the limits were reached in the 1970s or 1980s. The hardest climbs being led on sight then, with gear being placed as the climber ascended, were perhaps hard 5.12 by current grades. The limit for such climbs now may be 5.13 - few if any lead free routes with a harder grade, placing gear, without hanging/resting/falling/inspecting/extensive beta. The exceptions seem mostly to be quite short climbs.
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
planet dogboy
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Mar 26, 2009 - 06:56pm PT
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Thanks for resurrecting this thread. A joy to read (especially when I am being paid and should be actually working).
~~~
To my small mind, the hardest FFAs of the late 70’s and early 80’s were every bit as hard as the hardest stuff being done today. I can quick think of 30 examples, but as bluering (rightly) warned me, too many words are, well, simply too many words.
Think of the FFA of The Prow (NH) or The Naked Edge -– or whatever routes from those days that you have checked out, personally (these are just quick examples from my personal geography). Imagine being the first up on the sharp end, just then, with hard rubber, lame pro, and zero beta.
With super-sticky rubber, pre-placed bolts "From Above", weeks or months of hang-dogging well, sure, the numbers will certainly rise. And a lot. But does the _just_then_ difficulty for the very best at the sharp end also rise? I think not.
But (importantly) -- nor does it fall. The best of the best did remarkable stuff BITD; and the best of the best today still do remarkable stuff. Equally outstanding, only different, given the changes in gear and technique over time. In either case, way more than I can do, or could ever do (though perhaps with the next generation of sticky rubber and quicker reliable gear will come a miracle... all of those who breath also dream.)
A couple years ago I accidentally topped out on a V12 no more than 15 feet high (after 40+ tries - just once, couldn't repeat it for the life of me). Does that make me a 5.14 climber? Bwaaahaaahaaahaaa! And, um, now almost decades (wow...) ago I finally freed The Prow (NH), with sticky rubber, far better spring-loaded pro, and all manner of tries and beta. Does that make me as good as Jimmy Dunn? Bwaaahaaahaaahaaa! Ack! Sheeesh...
Each generation has it’s gifted and driven ones. And what they pull off is equally massive. Numbers miss the point.
Or so says your small dog,
^,,^
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Mar 26, 2009 - 07:29pm PT
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Fun thought experiment.
Maybe we should just look at other sports---ones that have been heavily competed for more than a hundred years or so with tons of record keeping. Such as swimming, various field and track events. There appears to be an asymptotic nature to the improvements: as time goes on, the improvements are tinier and tinier, closing in on what might appear to be a “limit”---what Ed is wondering about. Sometimes there are even WORSE times or heights recorded, implying that the limit was reached earlier! Horse racing looks like this sometimes.
But because our equipment and our game rules change, (as well as time passing) it might be harder to grasp what the limit would actually be more or less---the entire frame being moved.
There is real folly in predicting a limit, however. 39 years ago, Galen asserted to me that climbing had not gotten harder, ratings were getting easier---climbing was at hardest, 5.10 and that was that! Vandiver and I laughed at his face. He was absolutely adamant about this ridiculous belief. He did live long enough to see that he was incredibly wrong on this although I doubt he acknowledged it. But I will say it DID seem that we were reaching “a limit”---stuff was getting so marginal, although way harder than 5.10.
But it will seem this way always. Whether or not you improve equipment, fuss with the rules and train even better than previous generations. That nauseating feeling that “we don’t have anything new to bring to this”. In other words, what I don’t like is the idea that we are at our limit today----that is not the case and I don’t see anybody saying this here of course. That would be incredibly discouraging and an outrageous insult to our up and coming climbers, hungering for the near-impossible.
At first blush physics might seem to want to lead us to a belief there are real limits. But “limits” to what? The what is changing as well, you know. It is a given that current rubber has its particular coefficients, fingers range from .375 to 1.125” thick more or less (guessing), body/weight ratios seem to top out at Sharma-like, Fred Nicole-like guys. But the climbing activity requires more than: high strength/weight ratios, superb rubber and shoes, ingenious hardware. It requires above all else, tremendously powerful mental abilities that very much are still emerging, as Werner intimates.
We also have on the horizon, a very game-changing material that Peter Mayfield pointed out about 1.5 years ago, a kind of gecko-like molecular attraction stuff that sticks to anything, just like geckos and others use to climb glass and stuff. And material scientists are working on this stuff too....it was all over the news back then.
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Mar 26, 2009 - 07:42pm PT
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Peter,
That reminds me of a cartoon in either climbing or rock and ice from the late 80's or early 90's. The cartoon caracter was wearting a goo suit, that allowed him to climb anywhere.
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cragnshag
Social climber
san joser
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Mar 26, 2009 - 07:42pm PT
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I'm LIMITED to "easier" climbs in the Valley. I'm limited by the following (among other things):
talent
cowardice
health
time
So, for me, I'll typically climb in the 5.10 and under range unless the above LIMITATIONS change for some reason.
I could really care less about 5.12 since I don't climb at that level. When I see someone climb at that grade I'm impressed and amused.... like when you go watch Cirque Du Soliel and see acrobats do amazing feats.
So while it makes the climbing magazines when someone climbs 5.15, I'm not really all that moved. I'd much rather read an article about some guy (who has a job) climbing a 5.9 onsite and describing his experience doing so. Because that experience is closer to something that I can relate to.
Since Yosemite is not a sport area the "Limits to Free Climbing" involve so much more that just a number. The cool thing is that for every person that climbs in the Valley there are many ways to find one's own limits. And some really great stories are created when folks "reach their limits".
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GDavis
Trad climber
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Mar 26, 2009 - 08:12pm PT
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I'd have to agree with JStan, at least in part, because "Hard" has to be defined, and numbers don't account for how hard something is always.
For instance... Realization at 5.15a has more repeats than Southern Belle. If we consider that the climbing skill is comprised not just of Strength and Technique, but we add a third element of boldness, this triangle gives us a broader definition.
So then "hard" can be easier defined as "harder to repeat." When you see on climbing blogs the listed ascents, you will no doubt see top end sport climbs listed alongside breaking news of a 5.13 free bigwall. Which is harder, then? Well... that's where the fun comes in :D
This also gives room to the guy doing a barefoot onsight freesolo of a 5.12 having some weight, as well as the climbs of our forefathers/foremothers.
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