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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Trad:
Start from the bottom, carry gear on a sling, protect as you go, top out, pound chest and yell like Tarzan.
Fall on the way up? Lower down, pull rope, try again. Three strikes and your out. At the worst, yoyo.
Less than 50 words.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Cave Creek, AZ
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What Tarbuster said!
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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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Sure do, sounds like you have an Alter [sic] in your home you kneel at to worship our righteous fathers.
What's wrong with giving credit to those who established that ethic?
Curt
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McHale's Navy
Trad climber
Panorama City, California & living in Seattle
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You mean the geniuses that pounded steel for 20 years and only quit because the Brits started using machine nuts on cords? It's like Tarbuster said. You climb, you put in pro, you climb and put in pro.....you stop when you get to the end of the rope.....
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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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You mean the geniuses that pounded steel for 20 years and only quit because the Brits stared [sic] using machine nuts on cords?
For someone who can occasionally post something worthwhile, your ignorance here is astounding.
Curt
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McHale's Navy
Trad climber
Panorama City, California & living in Seattle
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Thanks, we found another typo. It's not that there's anything wrong with giving credit where credit is due, it's the incessant glorification of it. Climbing is a very simple sport. We're talking about what trad climbing is. It's almost too dumb to have needed invention by anyone - it just IS. It certainly was not invented in Yosemite.
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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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Thanks, we found another typo. It's not that there's anything wrong with giving credit where credit is due, it's the incessant glorification of it. Climbing is a very simple sport. We're talking about what trad climbing is. It's almost too dumb to have been invented by anyone - it just IS.
Thanks for providing our bright line definition.
Curt
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McHale's Navy
Trad climber
Panorama City, California & living in Seattle
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I found this over at rockclimbing.com in a discussion about where climbing got its start;
I remember reading a Verm story about a baboon that climbed its way into a pickle, had to do a desperate dyno to get out and proceeded to furiously masterbate upon reaching firm ground again.
Trad climbing is just a small step and leap away from this. Trad climbing is what others forms of climbing have grown from.
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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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I found this over at rockclimbing.com...
Well, there's your error.
Curt
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McHale's Navy
Trad climber
Panorama City, California & living in Seattle
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Why all the distaste (vehemence) for RC.com? I mean, this has come up before. I see familiar faces there. The rock here is nicer, that's for sure.
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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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Why all the distaste (vehemence) for RC.com? I mean, this has come up before. I see familiar faces there. The rock here is nicer, that's for sure.
I post there too. That wasn't my point. Sheesh.
Curt
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McHale's Navy
Trad climber
Panorama City, California & living in Seattle
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You mean you just did not like my selection, from all that I could have chosen? I have to admit, I did some cherry picking. I didn't go straight to RC.com though. I ended up there from a general search on Yahoo.
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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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I believe the topic under discussion is the proper definition for trad climbing, isn't it? Your cite of baboons jerking off just seems somehow off point. Then again you and I may celebrate topping out differently. I guess, like Johnny Carson used to say, it takes all kinds of people to fill the freeways.
Curt
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McHale's Navy
Trad climber
Panorama City, California & living in Seattle
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That's funny, I don't think I've heard Johnny say that. I'm starting to see your point though. We should just make a checklist of what it is and isn't. On-sight and trad have much in common. We traditionalists always have a problem with people that want to make things too easy....and safe. Things are usually so easy for us to start with we eschew almost everything a modern climber thinks they need. I like chalk, but I suppose I could live without that. I can tell this will get complicated real fast. I don't need no spring-loaded devices, but that's not even what this is about, even though they make things so much easier. It's not about belay devices. It's not whether the rope is hemp or kernmantle. It's just that 'ground up' not cheating with for-knowledge about the route thing, except in the most basic sense. In trad climbing there is much uncertainty. It certainly does NOT include hangdogging (however important that may be to advance the difficulty of climbing). I can see how hangdogging could be included in Trad, since as I've said before, it's a little silly to go all the way back down, like you need to be punished or something. I kind of rebel against that sh#t. What else....I guess you can put as much pro in as you want, but there's limits depending on length of climb and getting the damn thing done in a timely manner. I just see trad as taking a good selection of stuff on the rack and giving something a go. If it turns out the rack did not make things possible by way of being safe enough, you are allowed to come back and try again with different gear because of the knowledge you gained by being there, without topos, beta, and all that modern checklist of crap stuff. You basically are going in blind to do battle with the beast when you trad climb. That reminds me, I still think there is a future for blind-folded climbing, whether it's trad, sport or whatever. It would be like speed climbing, just another oddball thing to fill the freeways.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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McHale's Navy, Curt: you guys are such a bust up.
Apologies for the punitive action. I know, soap bubbles constitute a heavy hand. Cruel and Unusual even ...
Had to be done! Your giggles were keeping me up.
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MisterE
Social climber
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This beautifully written piece by RGold deserves reposting:
Trad climbers got stuck with the "traditional" name as a counterpoint to sport climbing. In fact, every generation of climbers has violated tradition by choosing to abandon at least some of the cherished rules of the previous generation. This is at least partially because the previous generation had already gotten about as far as possible within the context of the rules they adhered to.
Typically, the role of the previous generation has been to complain bitterly about the transgressions of the current generation and, in so doing, prevent at least some of the outrages that result from the drive of outsize egos for accomplishment.
I think sport climbing upended this conservative process by being something different and parallel to what came before, rather than an evolution of it. Although we don't like to say so in this country, the presence of risk and the way in which it is confronted lies at the heart of what is now referred to as traditional climbing. Sport climbing has banished risk, at least the forms of risk inherent in trad climbing, in favor of other aspects of climbing, and as the sport climbing mentality spreads, it becomes increasingly difficult to even communicate about the distinctions between the genres, not least because of the irrelevant formulations such as bolts vs. gear.
Consider a trad climb with a risky section. It's been done many times, but now there is a contingent of climbers who want to put a bolt there. Why? Because that part of the climb is risky! More people could enjoy it if there was a bolt, and the community has a "right" to the route.
But the risk is exactly why the trad climbers don't want the bolt there, although somehow that never seems to be made clear. Trad climbers see controlling the risk through the use of gear that may not be bomber and the practice of self-control under pressure as one of the intrinsic challenges of the sport.
Putting in that bolt destroys part of the essence of the climb for the trad climber. People may not like this and may not agree with it, but they should at least understand that there is a genuine and irreconcilable conflict between the preservation of risk and the desire for a risk-free environment.
Saying that risk is intrinsic to trad climbing does not mean that trad climbers want arbitrary risks. Trad climbing isn't a collection of stunts like how many cars you can jump your motorcycle over. The risks of trad climbing are the ones intrinsic to the environment: unknown territory ahead, no cracks for pro, no stances to drill from. This is why those who say "just don't clip the bolt" are utterly clueless. The bolt modifies the environment and makes a former intrinsic risk into a stupid stunt.
I grew up in a time when all climbing was trad climbing. I have nothing against sport climbing, and because of the decreased risk I find it increasingly attractive as I get older and more brittle. But I also would have found the sheer pursuit of difficulty in sport climbing compelling when I was young, strong, and less likely to snap on impact. I just wish the the practitioners of the two genres would learn to respect the traditions of each (yes, sport climbing is now old enough to have traditions too) and not try to impose their perspectives and preferences on the other styles of climbing. The UK is the only country that seems to have really managed to do this.
Unfortunately, there is a substantial asymmetry in the two outlooks that puts trad climbing at an enormous disadvantage. Trad climbers, by and large, are about leaving things as they are. Sport climbing is all about permanently modifying the environment to provide a certain type of experience. Someone with a Hilti will put in a bunch of bolts somewhere, and then we hear that they should be left in because who wants to start a bolt war. According to this view, the Hilti owners have free reign to do whatever they want and the rest of the climbing community just has to be resigned to it.
Of course, the sense of entitlement that allows a self-appointed guardian of communal safety to bolt trad routes will never be fully constrained to the placement of protection. Once one type of environmental modification has been embraced, the barriers to other types become fragile, and that is why we are seeing more and more chipping, even in former bastions of traditional values like the Gunks where the owners of the land explicitly forbid such actions.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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This is terrific stuff, if not a tad off topic. (Kidding, Smiley Face).
And "some say" we just prattle on with un-substantive banter.
Rich Goldstone: man of the hour, our man of letters!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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No really, all kidding aside that R Gold piece is so spot on and potentially quite beneficial; it needs a real home.
Warbler: say, if you're still following along could you do me a big treat?
Next time you put down some routes, name one for me please: Altar Ego
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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So very cool!
Thanks: someday I'm getting back in the saddle and we can go do it together. Preference would be 5.9-5.10+, you know, for practical reasons.
Of course, it's such a kick ass name, if you find some 5.11C-5.13B that calls out for the name, use your discretion!
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