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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Nov 30, 2006 - 12:21pm PT
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HealyJ wrote
"And that's 'consumptive' as in consuming rock with bolts. The Pandora aspect of the impact of gyms and sport climbing has been to generate a reality distortion field of denial over the entire sport. That is evidenced by sport climbers who in general simply dimiss as non-existent many intangible aspects of rock prized by trad climbers. LNT and reverence of stone were swiftly, summarily, and sacrificially dispatched in the early 80's as sport climbing necessarily commoditized rock."
As human beings we are all infected with a "reality distortion field of denial"
* John Muir herded sheep in Yosemite Valley
*The first climbing pioneers scarred the cracks forever with pins when, if they could have just waited for, or dreamed up better methods, we'd have perfect cracks forever.
*Climbing El Cap with lots of Copperheads is unsustainable and damaging and repeated hammering of many kinds has turned many classic big wall lines into forever scared tragedies within a couple decades.
The present generation has no monopoly on selfishly using the rock for their own purposes.
The idealization of the past is a illusion.
The ego game has merely shifted from risk and boldness to difficulty.
Even with that, ironcally, many more folks are taking huge whippers in the course of their projects than were ever dreamed of in the age of boldness. Examples would be Dean Potter working that Utah crack, the 5.14 crack recently sent in Canada, and Skinner taking huge whippers working Wet Denim Daydream, which he installed retrobolts on.
The willngness to actually take these rides, rather than just risk them but avoid them by climbing well below your level, has been a contribution of sport climbing applied to trad climbing.
Just trying to be objective here. I never drilled a sport bolt, and i suck a sport climbing.
Peace
Karl
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Nov 30, 2006 - 12:41pm PT
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Broken gets it.
One of the differences between sports and most arts is the artifacts arts leave behind. Looking at "10 to 12" as an artifact doesn't tell you much of anything about a game; you don't know how much energy, drive, dedication, skill, or emotion went into that result. But looking at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, hearing Beethoven's 5th, or standing at the bottom of the first pitch of the Naked Edge have a lot in common - you get an immediate and visceral sense of both the genius of the endeavor and some insight into the creativity and dedication of the artists responsible for those creations.
Nothing in common you say? Well, I guess it does depend on how you look at it I guess...
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Nov 30, 2006 - 01:13pm PT
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I don't think the art analogy is particularly good. Climbing is it's own issue and plain enough that we don't need metaphors that don't work.
But I'll use it anyway
The issue that climbers are going to wrestle with in the future, assuming climbing stays popular and the world has a reasonable future, is this:
The "art" has been painted on public canvases and not all canvases are created equal. The best canvases were taken by the early artists, whether they cared for the people who would view their art in the future or not.
Whatever your values are regarding preservation of this old art, you better articulate them in ways that folks two generations from now will understand and respect or they will get tagged whether we like it or not.
A blanket approach is unlikely to be swallowed by kids 40 years from now, staring at some 5.9 face with one bolt nor no bolts per pitch. That's like telling them, "A drugs are equally fatal and deadly."
The "abstinence only" attitude is wildly promulgated but is already wildly ignored and the new bolts accepted if they fit within the community's value systems. The chief examples being bolt anchors replacing trees and pins, and bolts added to aid climbs by free climbers. (which mostly get condemned if overdone but not if a big enough hero does it.)
That's why I think a first ascent registry is a good idea. So when somebody thinks about retrobolting your line in 2025, they'll be able to read your words and think twice.
That is if we haven't created an everyday epic in this world
Peace
karl
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Nov 30, 2006 - 01:22pm PT
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"* The first climbing pioneers scarred the cracks forever with pins when, if they could have just waited for, or dreamed up better methods, we'd have perfect cracks forever.
*Climbing El Cap with lots of Copperheads is unsustainable and damaging and repeated hammering of many kinds has turned many classic big wall lines into forever scared tragedies within a couple decades.
The present generation has no monopoly on selfishly using the rock for their own purposes. "
Karl,
There is no doubt about those facts, but I come from an in-between generation born and bred of LNT and the clean manifesto far from the Valley - I didn't idealize that clean past - I lived it. Had I climbed in the Valley then my perspective might have been different, but I doubt it given I learned to climb literally days after coming off two years saturated with human destruction in Vietnam. But that past has always made me all the more incredulous to watch the rise of a new generation sport climbing rush to embrace exactly the destructive compromises of the generation before mine. Climbers prior to clean climbing didn't exactly have a lot of options besides pins - if you wanted to climb it was either pins or don't climb. Sport climbing on the otherhand has always an optional activity and one wholly dependent on defacing rock.
And again, it commodifies rock as simply a necessary canvas for expression rather than something that deserves respect for the state you found it in. Is sport climbing going away? Not likely, but I do find it a shame that folks are now so far removed from even the concept of pristine rock that they don't acknowledge, appreciate, or respect those tangible and intangible qualities being lost with every successive bolt. Sport climbing has about the same relationship with rock and the concepts of treading lightly as suburban America has with Native American culture - a quaint, but necessary sacrifice, seldom acknowledged and widely denigrated so as to not have to face the reality of what occured.
"The ego game has merely shifted from risk and boldness to difficulty."
Well, that will be a game with short-lived horizon given we are hitting the wall of the limits of human body mechanics. Sort of like there are limits to how fast a human can swim or run. You might eek out a 5.16 some day, but who's gonna claim a 5.17 on the basis of pure difficulty as opposed to just a string of lesser moves? Maybe at that point we'll see a return to a discipline of boldness as the only way to differentiate egos.
"Even with that, ironcally, many more folks are taking huge whipper in the course of their projects than were ever dreamed of in the age of boldness. "
You're kidding right? Oh, I forgot, no one took long falls in the '70s on a regular basis. I somehow seem to remember thirty and forty foot falls as being almost pedestrian. Hell, Breashears and an endless retinue of Eldo contemporaries alone were logging some pretty serious and vicious air time as I recall. And no doubt John could verify no one in the Gunks was taking big dives on those old rattly nuts back in the '70s...
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Nov 30, 2006 - 01:37pm PT
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Healyj wrote
"Even with that, ironcally, many more folks are taking huge whipper in the course of their projects than were ever dreamed of in the age of boldness. "
You're kidding right? Oh, I forgot, no one took long falls in the '70s on a regular basis. I somehow seem to remember thirty and forty foot falls as being almost pedestrian. Hell, Brashears and an endless retinue of Eldo contemporaries alone were logging some pretty serious and vicious air time as I recall. And no doubt John could verify no one in the Gunks was taking big dives on those old rattly nuts back in the '70s..."
I'm not saying big falls didn't happen, but I doubt repeated 60-70 footers like I was referring to were very common. I mostly know Yosemite and can't speak for those other areas. I am saying that boldness is far from dead.
Both boldness and difficulty seem to have limits. Get bold enough and a few folks die and others back off. Wanna see real access problems? Get bold enough that folks get regularly hurt and killed.
The pendulum swings back and forth. It would be easier to patch some 1990s bolt holes than repair the pin scars of the past. Climbing will value something else someday. How about naked, rhythmnic ascents?
Of course, both sport climbers and old trad climber have always have the option of saving the stone for better tech or better skills. Neither can resist. Perhaps sport climbing is like publishing on the internet. It allows more and less talented people to be heard. A bad and good thing in my mind.
I'm more worried about our world/energy/economic/environmental situation spoiling the rockclimbing 50 years from now than sport climbers.
Peace
Karl
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Broken
climber
Texas
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Nov 30, 2006 - 02:06pm PT
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Sport as art is an argument that has been explored extensively, no doubt.
healyje - I agree that climbing can fit that in a certain, limited context.
The Naked Edge is a beautiful and artistic line. However, it is hard for me to see that as human formed art (some would call it God, I would call it nature, geology, whatever).
That, I think, is the major problem with rock as a canvas. Beautiful climbs are dependent on a medium that is inherently beautiful, without human intervention.
Climbing is the only sport where we can come close to comparing ourselves to those who've gone before. Chipping and retro-bolting ruin that aspect of climbing. A Red Sox fan can dream of Pedro Martinez facing Babe Ruth. But it can never come close to happening.
In climbing, however, the routes are THERE. And you can know the climber who was there before you through that route. And you can know about other climbers you meet when they discuss their experiences on that route.
If routes become free to change on a relative whim, then they lose their constancy and we lose our past.
(yes, i am aware that routes degrade and become polished and pins scars widen - but you get my point)
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Broken
climber
Texas
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Nov 30, 2006 - 02:11pm PT
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There is a wonderful article that is somewhat relevant here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html?ex=1313726400&en=716968175e36505e&ei=5090
It is long and may or may not appeal to a non-tennis or non-organized sports fan.
I cannot climb like John Bachar, just like I cannot play tennis like Roger Federer. So I can't experience either of their sports realities in the same way.
The difference, however, is that I can do a route like the B-Y and have a little bit of an experiential glimpse of what he was like as a climber.
And that glimpse can lead to inspiration in my own climbing life.
That is one of climbing's many gifts.
EDIT:
(footnote on that article - There are many footnotes worth reading marked during the text. Part of what some call David Foster Wallace's annoying style. You have to have a nytimes password - not the one you pay for, the free one - to read them. If someone wants to read them and doesn't want to sign up for some reason, let me know.)
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Ksolem
Trad climber
LA, Ca
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Nov 30, 2006 - 02:28pm PT
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I can see where climbing can be considered an art, using the term in a broad sense. A climber can be said to have done a route “artfully.” I would take this to mean something a step beyond simply “skillfully,” which would mean safely and successfully. For example I've watched Bachar solo a lot. He, in my eyes, was expressing more through the nature of his movement than simply what was required to do the route solidly, and this subtle dimension makes his climbing a pleasure to watch.
Climbing as a performance art? Is not the level of boldness (and other choices in the realm of style) of a first ascent an expression of the climber’s ideals?
Sometimes I think of climbing as a decorative art. When those bright colored double ropes are running just perfectly and all the gear goes in just right… Kind of Christo-esque in a way.
Defining what is and isn't art in our lives is tricky. I would argue that living well is an art. Certainly climbing well is.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Nov 30, 2006 - 02:39pm PT
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"The Naked Edge is a beautiful and artistic line. However, it is hard for me to see that as human formed art (some would call it God, I would call it nature, geology, whatever)."
Broken,
I don't know, I think the analogy works fine and would reply that Michelangelo didn't build the Sistine Chapel - he just painted on it. Similarly, the the Naked Edge was 'painted' on an equally magnificent, though natural, canvas.
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bob d'antonio
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Nov 30, 2006 - 02:53pm PT
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Joe wrote: I don't know, I think the analogy works fine and would reply that Michelangelo didn't build the Sistine Chapel - he just painted on it. Similarly, the the Naked Edge was 'painted' on an equally magnificent, though natural, canvas.
Yes and they used pins and bolts to do the painting. If fact...a lot of the old aid lines that were freed in Eldo used pins and bolts left from the FA.
When I did the Naked Edge back in 1979...you could almost call it a sport climb.
Joe wrote: You're kidding right? Oh, I forgot, no one took long falls in the '70s on a regular basis. I somehow seem to remember thirty and forty foot falls as being almost pedestrian. Hell, Breashears and an endless retinue of Eldo contemporaries alone were logging some pretty serious and vicious air time as I recall. And no doubt John could verify no one in the Gunks was taking big dives on those old rattly nuts back in the '70s...
I don't remember them (long falls) being pedestrian in the Gunks or Eldo...In fact, most of the routes being freed had fixed gear close the crux moves.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Nov 30, 2006 - 03:07pm PT
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Bob,
You'd certainly be a better judge of Eldo history than I. Maybe I just got lucky sitting at the top of Rain two feet from Breashears as he took not one, but two bloody sixty footers. His only comment to Wunsch in between them when Steve asked if he was going to do it again was, 'yeah, now that I know that nut's going to hold...'. Neither treated the falls with any particular note or angst on talking with them immediately afterwards.
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randomtask
climber
North fork, CA
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Nov 30, 2006 - 03:17pm PT
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I'm young (mid 20s) and establish routes ground up. Where does that leave me? In the cool club ( ground up) or in the uncool club ( young, w/ no respect)? Because as I read these posts I feel that a) either you are old and do ground up or b) you are young and could give a f*#k about ground up. Personally, I feel that ground up is a better experience, and yes more adventure...but if someone rapbolts a route that is their decision since the are the FA party and that is their buisness.
To each his own...
-JR
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Nov 30, 2006 - 03:34pm PT
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"Floggings will continue until morale improves".
One overlooked thing is that those who simply want to experience the moves of a route, without experiencing its challenge, can always top rope it. It may not always be convenient, but it's often possible with a bit of effort. Leading a fully (retro) bolted route may not be much more adventuresome than toproping it - but either is a far different experience from leading the route as it was created.
Not that I necessarily want to encourage top-roping, or, in its extreme form, "running laps". Another behaviour that bears examination, for the resulting polishing, route-hogging (territoriality), and (sometimes) disrespect for the rock. The polishing and route-hogging have immediate impacts on our community that are of concern.
There are many routes that I won't toprope (I'll follow them, of course), and many that are very pleasant that I'll only do occasionally, to preserve the experience.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Nov 30, 2006 - 03:45pm PT
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It is worth mentioning. I like soloing and I like top roping. Both are minimal impact.
A better acceptance of top roping might have saved some crags from many bolts
peace
Karl
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elcapfool
Big Wall climber
hiding in plain sight
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Nov 30, 2006 - 04:19pm PT
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So when I mentioned top-roping two weeks ago, you guys treated me like I was smoking crack.
It's alright, I forgive you...
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Nov 30, 2006 - 04:22pm PT
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Yeah, saving cliff tops and multipitch aside, if it really is just about movement and difficulty and not about boldness than I've never understood the fascination with clipping. Why wouldn't it be viewed as yet another fiddling distraction just like trad protection? Yet somehow it ended up imbuded as essential despite the fact that it contributes nothing to the movement, next to nothing to difficulty, and hardly passes muster as a "skill". Top roping on steep terrain has in common with bouldering the inability to dog and the attending need to "think on the fly" that comes with that.
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Anastasia
Trad climber
Mammoth Lakes, CA
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Nov 30, 2006 - 05:37pm PT
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Randomtask,
You are in the cool club because your actions respect our old hard men. If you are ever going to be in Mammoth, email us. I would be honored to climb with ya'.
AF
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randomtask
climber
North fork, CA
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Nov 30, 2006 - 06:23pm PT
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anastasia,
Thank you for the offer to climb. If I am over there ( other than snowboarding!!) I will e mail you to climb. Same goes to you if you are over on the Southern Yosemite side and want to climb. There's plenty of rock waiting for ground up FAs.!! Peace,
-JR
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Nov 30, 2006 - 06:57pm PT
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There's been a lot of calls to respect what was done in the past in run-out face climbing but precious few who are still actually doing the climbs! Even the ones who could and claim to value it.
Perhaps Eldo and Looking Glass are exceptions but I've never climbed there.
Stoners get's lots of ascents but it's only horrifying up high in a few places and not death dealing. Perhaps the right balance was struck there.
Even Bachar Yerian won't likely kill you and a fair number of 5.13 climbers go tick that one. (Bolts have been upgraded/replaced but not added)
Peace
karl
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elcapfool
Big Wall climber
hiding in plain sight
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Nov 30, 2006 - 08:16pm PT
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What the heck is there still to talk about?
Either you can do a climb the way somebody else did, or you can't. And if you can't, what in the hell gives you the right to not let anybody else try?
You claim that the old dads are ego tripping, but it is you demanding that you're good enough now, and don't see any benefit in trying to improve.
With every passing post you illustrate that you just don't get it, and have no respect for anyone but yourself.
And it's 'martial arts'
So keep talking, maybe some day you'll say something intelligent...
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