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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Hey JLP, perhaps you would grace us with an mpeg of the sound beating a dead horse makes.
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Cmon Philo. You got to admit that was a cool Video... It is annoying that JLP has no real name and is elusive when asked for specific routes, names, etc. but on the otherhand there are lots of folks out there climbing really cool hard stuff. Someone just posted a TR of a long 5.11c tradclimb on the taco yesterday....
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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No doubt TradMan a cool vid.
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Big Mike
Trad climber
BC
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That video proves JL's point! I just went through Kevin Jorgeson's entire blog.. There is no mention of climbing any kind of offwidth's besides this on the black diamond site.
Worst climbing experience? In the summer of 2008, I somehow managed to get horribly off-route on the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome, on the pitch that leads to Thank God Ledge. Instead of cruising on 5.9 hand cracks, I ended up in what looked like a 15’ section of offwidth. I had heard that you needed a #4 on this route and simply assumed that this is where you needed it. So, I crawled in and started making my way up, barely. When I reached that 15’ mark, what I thought was the end of the crack was really a change in the angle of the wall. In reality, the offwidth continued for another 40 feet! With no gear and no choice, I pushed on. Bloody. Grunting. Heaving. Scared for my life! When I reached the end, I was so delirious, I was surprised not to be on Thank God Ledge. Looking around, I finally spotted where I wanted to be, down and to the left about 30 feet. Luckily for me, a series of cracks and flakes allowed a safe down climb and relinquish of the lead.
http://www.blackdiamondequipment.com/en-us/climbersskiers/regional/detail/username/kevinjorgeson
Not to say he couldn't, but he doesn't, yet... would he be considered an all-arounder?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 6, 2012 - 12:21am PT
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Largo - your post garbles together noobs, strong sport climbers, danger and sticking gear into a rock. I can't make anything of it other than you seem to be talking about noobs and noob problems in a thread about hard trad.
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The OP began with hard trad but thanks to you, we get derailed into the sport climbing camp. Trying to foist that turn onto me is what we call in psychology a "reversal," a facile kind of wank. I've made my drift simple to follow, but perhaps not simple enough LOL. So listen upp and get your head clear. It's not so very difficult to grasp. To wit:
Your understandings are based on common misconceptions about many aspects of the climbing game - specifically, that one can simplify things down to knucklehead basics and still maintain some modicum of accuracy. This is itself a sport climbing mindset - eliminate everything but the physical moves. When you don't do that, it doesn't, perforce, result in a "garbling" of noobs, sport climbers, danger, and sticking things in cracks. These, you silly punter, are the actual ingredients involved when sport climbers transition into trad.
You have trad noobs (no matter if they climb 5.14 sport), you have the relative dangers of run outs and placing/falling on hand placed gear, you have folks sticking things in to the rock. These, as most anyone here can attest, are the basics of the game. If you are confused by this, then I would suggest that trad climbing is probably not in the cards for you.
JL
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BlackSpider
Ice climber
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This definition of "all-arounder" still seems to be incredibly US/Yosemite-centric and focused on climbing a variety of different "crack" widths (crack in quotes because it includes things like off-widths and chimneys), while grouping everything else into either "slab" or "face" climbing and not crossing the subtleties of various non-crack trad styles. For instance, how many of these alleged 5.11 "all-arounders" could climb every style of British trad, ranging from the highball-boulder style of hard grit problems to the overhanging, power-endurance style of climbs that climbers such as Dave Birkett and Dave MacLeod have established? (although the climbs put up by those particular two are usually more like 5.13/14 climbs over ledge falls or death gear). Some people here seem to think if a route is made up of pockets and pinches then it's "sporto-weenie stuff".
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Trad climber
San Francisco, Ca
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This thread is about people validating different valid points yet still arguing with one another. In my meaningless opinion:
The all-round 5.11ish trad climber is not that rare and hasn't been for awhile- at least among climbers that get committed to the sport. If you include the weekend warrior set (which now includes me on a good day) then standards get lowered just by sheer numbers. Sure, dangerous, oddball and sandbagged climbs get less traffic, but your run of the mill 5.11 hands/face/fist/slab/whatever is just not cutting edge stuff for a climber that gets out all the time, is moderately committed to training and does some road tripping.
Sport and gym climbing have drastically improved standards. I climbed with a hard sport climber guy that switched to trad and immediately absolutely crushed 5.11/5.12 trad---circa 1994. Placing gear is not rocket science. On the flip side, many current trad climbers are one fall away from ripping an entire pitch. It has more to do with common sense and mechanical aptitude than where and on what medium one learns to climb.
Climbing in places like Patagonia and the Himalaya/Karakorum require alpine mountaineering skills probably not obtained sport climbing or in a gym.
My two cents.
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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^^^werd.
By % it's rare.
By # notsomuch.
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JLP
Social climber
The internet
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These, as most anyone here can attest, are the basics of the game. Indeed, I would agree. Your book sounds like it will be for beginner-intermediate climbers, at best. Eventually they may want to learn how to actually climb.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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I think this is a dumb question.
Everyone knows that a gym environment has rules to keep it safe. They have to.
For us old farts, we often started with zero instruction and if we could hang in there, work our way up to actually working with trad gear. It wasn't a big deal, but hey, that is how we were brought up.
It isn't the fault of newer climbers that gear seems scary. They have known nothing but fat bolts closely spaced together. If they even do decide to go outside (many don't and still call themselves rock climbers), then it is weird enough to get into sport climbing.
That is one reason why you have such a massive population of boulderers. I was reading an article on the Rock & Ice website about an 11 year old girl who is fast becoming one of the best female boulderers on the planet. Anyway, bouldering does not require a rope at all.
It is a give and take kind of thing. Nobody is at fault. I don't think we were more courageous or anything. Hell, the gear was usually good. If it wasn't, you new it before you went up.
So it seems odd that these amazing climbers have this huge gap between their true ability and their ability when placing gear. There is no doubt that they are better climbers than the old farts. It is psychological. Once fierce boulder problems are now dispatched with ease.
I will say one thing about the boulderers. It is a cheap way for them to go climbing. Shoes, a pad, and a chalkbag pretty much. They then work themselves up to some pretty wild highball problems that would scare the crap out of anyone.
To me it all seems pretty clear.
I would be curious to see if there are more sport climbs than old trad climbs now. One thing about sport climbing is that it pretty much increased the amount of climbable rock by an order of magnitude. I remember driving through Rifle before sport climbing. It looked fantastic, but there was no pro. Pulled back out onto the highway and headed to Eldo or Yo or wherever.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 6, 2012 - 11:31am PT
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It has more to do with common sense and mechanical aptitude than where and on what medium one learns to climb.
My point is that the person who glibly transitions from sport climbing to trad would almost certainly have done well as a trad climber had he or she never done sport climbing. The skilled trad dood has a totally different mind set than the sport climber. Sport climbing is a terrific physical prep for trad, but without the nogan for leading on gear, route finding, and running the rope, all the mechanical aptitude and common sense won't get a leader far.
He writes:
These, as most anyone here can attest, are the basics of the game.
Indeed, I would agree. Your book sounds like it will be for beginner-intermediate climbers, at best. Eventually they may want to learn how to actually climb.
I'm co-authoring the book with Peter Croft. It takes you from our beginning noob days out at Josh and up at Squamish, to FFAs of big walls, new routes in Patagonia and Pakistan - in other words, "actual climbs."
But it's not an expose on our careers - even I don't care about that - but a means of using anecdotal narratives to bring the overall process to light, from paddling on slabs, to short fixing on one day speed ascents.
It's a bear to try and break all of this down but while these discussion (on this thread) will always be circular, that are instructive to me in seeing other's perspective, and to see what ground people defend, and why.
I've pretty much said my fill here so this is it for me. But my point in offering those initial lists was not to glorify "sandbag relics," or to even tie this or that generation to a given climb. Climbs themselves span the ages. The broader question is: How do people approach the same climbs over time? What are the constants? The universals? What are the changeless elements to the actual routes, no matter what we bring to the game - a sport climbing background or a yoga practice. Rather than get sidetracked on who comes to the trad game, and how, and wherefore, and what advantages they bring over last year's crop, the instruction lies in examining the game itself. And the basics have changed surprisingly little since Robbins and the boys first jumped on high and pulled for glory.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I think that JLP makes a number of valid points throughout this discussion, though he seems to have some chip on his shoulder regarding recognition of the accomplishments of the "younger" generation, amorphously described...
in his post:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1907316&msg=1913951#msg1913951
are a number of very good points and directions for the discussion, if we can get past his "Marvin the Paranoid Android" presentation style...
first off, climbers have only so much time to accomplish their goals, and as we oldsters know time is fleeting... "we were young, once" ourselves... in the preface to Meyers' Yellow Guide he explains why unaesthetic lines were eliminated... but the fact was there were so many new, hard lines that it seemed hardly worth the time to repeat the old, mungy ones, why put them in the guide?
secondly, the explosion of information has tamed many of these heretofore legendary lines, the beta-feasting that can be had online, emailing FA parties, etc, etc, makes many of these routes accessible, and brings down the uncertainties quite a bit... this drives up the accomplishments too, as one has the info to pick the best lines from the huge number available
thirdly, the route development of the past 60 years has exhausted most of the natural lines in areas that are accessible... it is likely that crack climbing difficulty tops out earlier than other styles... not entirely sure but it seems empirically true... there are no doubt other places on the Earth to pursue new lines, but that sort of adventure appeals to a different set of people than those we are talking about here... though amazing things get done on Baffin I. for example... way beyond the 5.11 rubric
finally, most climbers aren't putting up new routes, this is the largest difference between the 70s and today... and it is a significant one.
Thanks for the list JLP... it is interesting to contemplate it, and oddly corresponds to some thinking I've been doing lately, at least provincially...
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Jesus h Huh? The kid got off rout and thrashed up an off width. It scared the crap out of him but it seems like he did it, got back on route and it sounds like he finished the climb.. What is your effin problem with that? All arrounders are not allowed a moment of scary off route thrashing once in awhile even when they knock off RNFHD is a day?
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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I guess that one went over my head. Sure looked like you were bashing the kid for thrashing on some wide.. Like who dosen't thrash the wide ocasionaly;)
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mountainlion
Trad climber
California
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Largo cant wait for the new book with Peter Croft to come out! I learned to climb by reading your Climbing Anchors and More Climbing Anchors books. Had a mentor (for 2 climbs, he moved--I was hooked and bought my own gear began leading trad at Jtree/Tahquitz and changed my life!!!
Now I sport climb at Cantabaco in the Philippines on overhanging Limestone (all they have here). The difference between me and the locals here is that I onsight lead everything (or at least try to onsight). The other climbers mostly have the local "guides" set the top rope so they can work a route before going for the lead. They also repeat the same routes over and over. Since I have arrived I have climbed more different routes than everyone who frequents the crag (besides the local "guides"--only a group of 7-10 people but hey who's counting).
The point is it is harder to be the first to put the route up and show everyone else that it can be done. So thanks to all the previous climbers from Chuck Wilts, Royal Robbins, to your crew, to today's climbers. All worth celebrating!
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Pretty impressive indeed. It does look like they are cleaning on rappel and even doing some rap bolting :)
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Here's my thread drift. I have been at this sport/game for over 35 years.
I have onsighted some 11 trad, but by no means all flavors. I've done quite a few big walls and some medium size peaks.
I have survived many thousands of pitches, some dead easy, some downright dangerous.
If you stick around long enough, you learn to ease up on the throttle.
Heck I like driving 40 mph, it's a comfortable, survivable speed.
I'm as much a climber as the big dogs making the magazine covers.
I'm still alive.
Hooray for big dogs.
Hooray for all us regular guys too.
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