Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2013 - 04:54pm PT
|
Dingus McGee,
Although you've comported yourself here with equanimity and temperance, I must say you have a bit of the irascible old coot in you (please, take that last phrase both as a complement and a joke, and in equal measure) and I suspect this last bit because you were once trad. Please don't ever change; before this is over I suspect we'll do lunch!
We'll have our people get in touch with your people and move your routes to the staging area and prep them for transport to the appropriate category.
Cheers,
Roy
|
|
Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2013 - 04:55pm PT
|
A herd of TradDads:
Lennard, Grammicci, Fidelman, Accomazzo, West, Muir.
|
|
Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2013 - 05:03pm PT
|
Keesee, Fidelman, Accomazzo!
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2013 - 05:23pm PT
|
I, as belayer saw that McGee guy lead Butterballs in a very dignified, traditional manner once, whatever he tries to claim! Sorry big D, the secret is out!!
;)
|
|
Dingus McGee
Social climber
Laramie
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2013 - 05:35pm PT
|
Cleaning and clearing a crack route for a free ascent constitutes a form of previewing.
If I fall on a multipitch route do think I am going to lower and leave gear?
rules, rules, rules, California Rules straight from Kamps, Robbins etc? Now, good thing, most of us can agree on what constitutes a redpoint. Do we need anymore to communicate? You get the hint why some abandon siding up with TRAD?
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2013 - 05:37pm PT
|
You cleaned Butterballs?
|
|
Leggs
Sport climber
Home away from Home
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2013 - 05:38pm PT
|
Not so fast Leggs, good cause and everything, but hit and run is not trad.
We'd appreciate a picture or two, something erudite, overwrought, and weighty, or just some down-home smack talking?
Damn, TarBUSTER. That's funny.
Please stand by ...
|
|
Dingus McGee
Social climber
Laramie
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2013 - 05:39pm PT
|
Jaybro,
cleaning unclimbed cracks.
|
|
Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2013 - 05:39pm PT
|
Dingus McGee, man in the red shirt & proud author of many Sport Climbs with Gear,
Recently identified fraternizing with some of the guys who helped create the Rules of Bullshit Which Qualify Trad.
Young TradPup in green jacket gazes adoringly at Old Trad Pups JayBro, Greg Cameron, Ed Hartouni.
Mike Friedrichs, chipper old dad on the left, soon tore up his TradCard in disgust. .. politely asking he be removed from the prestigious roster, yet still deigned to share his wine with us, because that's just the kind of fellow he is!
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2013 - 05:43pm PT
|
This shit's too funny!
"I would never join a club that would have me as a member." - Groucho Marx (trad)
|
|
SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2013 - 05:46pm PT
|
U know I'm not trad, cuz I wasn't in the above pic. (I wuz lurking
around the back). . .
|
|
Dingus McGee
Social climber
Laramie
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2013 - 05:48pm PT
|
Tarbuster,
do you mean me(my socializing) or my route contributions as the item which I want removed from the prestigious register?
If you are cutting me off from socializing please put me back on that wonderful list.
|
|
Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2013 - 06:36pm PT
|
I feel your pain Dingus, really, I do.
You said:
Cleaning and clearing a crack route for a free ascent constitutes a form of previewing.
Yes this is true. A trad guy can only be so bitchin’ on any given day! Doing an aid ascent starting from the bottom and then going to the top, then coming back for a clean free lead from the ground is nothing The God of Trad is going to send you to hell for. It's exactly what John Bachar did on the Bachar Yerian.
This is why I mentioned way up thread that when he changed the rules enabling the use of hooks on lead in order to establish steeper free climbs, that he did it with this sneaky little caveat, which was to characterize it merely as a mixed free & aid ascent. Which is strictly the case; he maintains the first ascent was done 5.11 A0. Of course we all know the aid portion of that rating is hideously sandbagged, hanging on a hook 40 feet out would likely be new school A2+ or certainly old-school A4.
He was the only one who tried to keep himself squeaky clean by pulling that trick. Well, it wasn't really a trick, it was just how he got by Higgins' rules. Nobody ever said a guy can't do an aid climb and then come back and free it. This is how he did the Bachar Yerian and how he characterized it. He doesn't say the first ascent was a clean free ascent, he says it was, again, a mixed free and aid ascent. Then he also got the first free ascent. The rest of us merely took it as an advancement or relaxation, if you will, of the rules to include hanging off of hooks to drill on steep ground in order to establish steeper free climbs. We still ran it out between placements and only used the hooks to help us with our stances. It was still way ballsy … so we were likewise confident that we were doing good trad climbing, afterwards basking in one another's afterglow, preening and fluffing up the sporty collars of our trad waistcoats as we were want to do.
We also made sure we came back and did the routes in one push from the ground to the summit without hanging and on that particular day we credited ourselves with the first ascent of the routes. Categorically, by Bachar's squeaky clean interpretation of the rules, this was really just the first free ascent of a route which we had aided prior. Fair enough. If you look at routes I was involved with in the California Needles, we don't nitpick so heavily as to say: aid climbed on such and such a date, free climbed on such and such a date, we just list the latter.
The plot thickens!
Then Yaniro, who we had been haranguing for doing rappel bolting in the California Needles, this was 1983, being the ingenuous little devil that he was and is, came to us one day and said "hey guys check out my hooks"! He had this marvelous collection of hooks which he had made himself; some of which were way bigger than our hooks as if to proudly compare the size of his Dick with ours. Of course he was smiling. He loved making things anyway and produced some of the first three quarters size friends by hand cutting the parts from plates of steel with a hacksaw, by hand.
But that's not the fun part, or rather the real fun part. What he then proceeded to do in order to establish the now super classic route Sirocco, was essentially hook his way up a wall while making a bolt ladder, then when he was finished, he removed the bolts that identified his creation as a ladder so that it resembled something more like a trad route. Really, it was like an early sport route. Except for the bit about drilling unnecessary holes, well unnecessary by our standards because we thought he should be climbing free between "placements ", more power to him because he just adapted his risk-averse mentality to our "silly rules". Here's an example of a guy who just needed to get on with his rappel bolting, because he wasn't going to be doing any big runouts between hook placements and he was drilling unnecessary holes to keep himself safe while establishing routes under "our" set of rules.
Remember this is the guy who free climbed Grand Illusion in 1979, a crack climb at Sugarloaf in Tahoe. I believe it was the first 5.13 in the US? And it held stout at 5.13C if I'm correct. But he did it hang dogging, yet all on natural gear so there was no evidence of any "cheating". It was no secret what his tactics were anyhow: one and the same tactics as Hudon and Jones were implementing during this time period. It's only when bolts were being used to establish climbs that all this ethical stuff really got going. And this is why Warbler deduced way up thread that trad style has more to do with the establishment of a free climb; and most importantly, but not only, as it concerns the use of bolts.
Thanks for reading along,
Roy
|
|
Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2013 - 06:48pm PT
|
Dingus McGee asked:
Tarbuster,
do you mean me(my socializing) or my route contributions as the item which I want removed from the prestigious register?
If you are cutting me off from socializing please put me back on that wonderful list.
Oh gosh, no I'm not removing you from anything Dennis. 100% goofing off. I pray to God nobody thinks I feel I'm in a position to do any such thing as well!
The only thing I agreed to do for you was remove your routes from the list of trad ascents as you jokingly requested on the previous page and I confirmed this by humorously saying, to quote:
We'll have our people get in touch with your people and move your routes to the staging area and prep them for transport to the appropriate category.
My other statement, which you might be referring to, beneath that nice photograph of all of you, was joking around towards Mike, assuming he ever gets back in this thread, which I will re-quote below:
Mike Friedrichs, chipper old dad on the left, soon tore up his TradCard in disgust. .. politely asking he be removed from the prestigious roster, yet still deigned to share his wine with us, because that's just the kind of fellow he is!
|
|
rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2013 - 06:51pm PT
|
rules, rules, rules, California Rules straight from Kamps, Robbins etc?
I wouldn't put them in the same category. Kamps was a lot "tradder" than Robbins. It isn't a surprise that Kamps' disciple Higgins wrote the foundational piece that probably (and unfortunately) resulted in the use of the term trad.
An example you'll appreciate from the Needles: Robbins has just done his (crappy) route on the Incisor and rappelled down the North Face, stopping over and over again to see if there were stances he might be able to drill from. Many people, including myself, Kamps, and, I think, Gill, had already ventured up that route and had climbed back down in terror at the prospects we could divine. (Pete Cleveland never got over there, otherwise there would probably be a route on it now.) Anyway, Kamps was scandalized and outraged that anyone would preview such an obvious, long-standing, and previously-attempted challenge and went on about it for quite a while.
In defense of California rules, the activity we nowadays call free climbing was invented in California and eventually spread world-wide. (The Elbsandsteingebirge might have made a claim, but they allowed all kinds of shoulder stands.) At the time, a lot of people complained about the silliness of a rule that forbade you to pull on a piece sitting there in front of your nose, but now that rule is universally observed in both trad and sport climbing.
As I said earlier, all climbing is subject to communally approved rules, which from any objective standpoint are arbitrary to the point of absurdity. Those who complain about some rules might to reflect on the fact that they too have their own set and are in no position to reject rules per se.
As for the groups you might have belonged to and the ones you currently embrace, yer still welcome at my campfire with yer chisels and drills and crowbars and glue guns and whatever else you use to carve up the countryside if you need to borrow some trad gear to get up the backside of your latest blob. I lent Pete Cleveland the drill and gave him the bolts and hangers he used on Hairy Pin and would have used on Super Pin if he could have let go, and you would be no less worthy a supplicant.
|
|
John Butler
Social climber
SLC, Utah
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2013 - 07:30pm PT
|
I went climbing yesterday... not sure how the routes were put up... I feel kind of dirty
|
|
Dingus McGee
Social climber
Laramie
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2013 - 07:49pm PT
|
Rgold,
thanks for the Hospitality & invite. That is an interesting tid bit about Kamps and Robbins, Bob didn't ever seem too keen on Robbins. Maybe that explains, I never met Robbins. Remember Stu Polach and Don Near summer 1977 climbing with us? They both worked for Royal in Modesto, so I though through them I might meet Royal but he had just left the store when I arrived.
Rules?? Would I ask/impose anymore than, "It's about the Redpoint?"
Tarbuster,
yes Freddie was a dyed in the wool Vedauwoo Trad climber until, I think he came to Reese. For the next 8 years his longer vacation weekends were at Reese exclusively. We always had new long overhanging routes for he to get a second ascent and sometimes but rarely something we couldn't do and he could. His flip flop took me by surprise too.
We learned out there that steep overhanging crack jams pinch the hell out of your hands and joints whereas for face holds one just needs a little stronger grip as it gets steeper. Some routes at Reese have the option of both face holds and jams when a section of intermittent crack coexists. There is a severely overhanging climb at Reese with occasionally the two options and no Vedauwoo climber has ever onsighted it. They go for the cracks. I think it takes too long to get and release the jams compared to just hitting the holds and releasing?
|
|
Dingus McGee
Social climber
Laramie
|
|
|
Apr 14, 2013 - 08:22pm PT
|
Tarbuster,
from your history I see I preceded Yaniro and many others with sport bolting. It was 1981 at Devils Tower where I was putting up the Tower's first face route from the ground up. After about half the bolts I quit thinking like a Californian and rap bolted the rest without any stealth in word or style. I still would do from the ground up but it was at my choice.
Word got back to me from the Black Hills Needles,"Who the hell does he think he is[doing that]?" No confrontations ever. By 1984 people begin asking me about this in round about ways. They were closet rap bolters. And yes one was Pete Delanoy.
|
|
Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2013 - 08:30pm PT
|
I'm going to try to answer your earlier question about the routes you established that we were joking about in terms of having them pulled off the list. What list the reader would ask? I don't know of any lists! Ha ha
It'll be big, people will yawn, but I'm going to try anyway!
Truly the difficulty about this definition of trad lies in separating the various levels of first ascent style from how people repeat things. It's more of a rambling history lesson than anything.
|
|
Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2013 - 08:31pm PT
|
Ed Hartouni: TRAD climber!
I've heard he's also a physicist and a pretty good trad historian!
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!