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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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in virtually any other sport if you can't jump the bar or hit Wes wrote: "...the pitch or sink the shot, who goes altering the venue so it better fits their skillset?
Sorry dude, it is absolutely different than any other sport. If you can't jump the bar, etc... they generally adjust it until you learn the skills necessary to advance. Unfortunately, you can't do that on real rock without screwing it up. Imagine a little league soccer game played on a full size court... now imagine if all the really good, inspiring flat playing surfaces had already been designed to be full size courts... what a way to help the sport along. Also, read the history of baseball, the changing distance of the pitching mound from the plate, etc... as skills changed, so did the rules.
Nope, you've missed the point again, Wes. In sports, if you can't do something, if you can't hang with a certain level of competition, you compete at a lower level till you have the skills, then you move up. You don't alter the highest level so you can get there sooner and with less effort. And when a certain sport changes the rules, it doesn't mean, say, that a single A ball player can suddenly play in the Major Leagues.
What you're sugesting is that there should be no division of expertise in climbing, even though levels of expertise exist in virtually every other sport. They do in climbing, too, but apparently you and Joe don't like them. It's a natural progression, Wes--if a certain runout route is too much for you, you work on less run out stuff till you have the skill and confidence, then you move up to the next level. There are no shortage of well protected climbs on which to slowly work up into the bolder stuff. You simply don't go alterning a bold route to increase your learning curve. You do as is done in any other sport--work into it through a persistent effort on easier stuff, of which there is plenty. If you're not of a mind to ever tic the bold stuff, accept it and move on--don't look to alter the route into your own image.
Like I said, Sportmanship.
And so far as adding bolts that other climbes can skip--this is foolishness. The bolts will simply bring the climb down to the level of those who don't want to accept the challenges set down by the first ascent. I personally think this ethic should only apply to high end routes. For instance, I've done 5.10a first ascents that were horrendously run out, and added bolts because otherwise no one would ever climb them. Ten Carrot is such a route--we added two bolts after the first ascent. But on the upper end stuff, it's a different story.
JL
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2006 - 01:09pm PT
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"You're telling everyone not at your level to sack up at their level, without doing it yourself at yours."
Dude, that's a pretty f#cking bold assertion given who you're swapping bits with here...
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Russ Walling
Social climber
Out on the sand, Man.....
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{{{{{{{joe..... joe............. joe............ }}}}}}}}}}}
{{{{{{{{{come back............ back...................back.............}}}}}}}}}}}
You hear that echo? That is me yelling into your pussy.
Seriously Joe, you don't really believe all the stuff you are saying, do you? Do you act on these mad thoughts or are you just blowing smoke? A list of examples might be nice so I can turn the corner, hike up my bloomers, and go give some of them a try if they are easy enough.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Well, I've finally got the solution.
Steve Grossman addressed the problem of missing pin protection on Kevin's Welcome thread. Now I've got a plan for safer X and R rated slab climbing.
It's a special suit that will be modified with sticky rubber in the the key areas.
Problem solved, if you live through the first couple bounces, you're good to go.
Peace
Karl
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Greg Barnes
climber
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"5.12 climbers putting up 5.10 death routes"
Numbers are BS. 5.10 death routes ARE generally the province of 5.12 climbers. Or of very psychologically strong 5.10 climbers. And probably not the domain of most modern 5.14 sport climbers. Too much emphasis on the rating, not enough on the whole picture.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Joe said: "5.12 climbers putting up 5.10 death routes is Major Leaguers competing at the single A level."
Now I know Joe, I've climbed with Joe (long after I officially quit being a serious climber) and respect Joe, so I'm not going to go off here. But the above statement basically shows the difference in our perspectives. From Joe's perspective, a "level" is determined solely by technical difficulty, by the decimal rating of the physical moves. From the "old-school" perspective, the "level" was both a combination of the physical and the mental. As mentioned earlier, elimination of the mental (sport climbing) factor, in terms of risk management, is a recent trend.
That much said, I doubt even Joe really expected us to "put our money where our mouth is" and start running out the rope on on-sight 5.12, which some of us could crank back then. The argument gets absurd--that the only justification for running the rope is if moves were at our absolute max, and that otherwise we were, in fact, lightweights. Fact is, I did that once in my life and never again. During the first free ascent of Paisano Overhang (5.12C), in 1973, we didn't have any nuts big enough to fit the crack except at the very start. Richard Harrison and I took turns rapping down the thing and trying to get a 4 inch steel bong to stay put out at the lip, but since the crack is strangely expanding, we'd drive the pin and it would suddenly shoot out. I finally just set one with 3 hammer blows, not nearly good enough to fall on but possibly good enough to lower off if I ever got out there and couldn't pull the roof. Anyhow, when I eventually went for it I knew if I blew out I was gonna get pancaked on that slab below and that's mostly why I made it, from fearing a broken back at the very least. So in fact I do know something about what Joe is
recommending here, but I would have had a very short climbing career had I done that much more than that one time.
JL
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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"How hard can you climb?"
and
"How hard can you climb impeccably?"
are two very different questions; the aesthetics of each type of experience are different.
The hardest thing I've ever seen a 5.12 climber do was a 5.10.
For some people, advancing the hardest level of climbing period is training for their real goal...advancing the hardest level that they can climb impeccably.
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Greg Barnes
climber
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Joe, one of the magazine articles a bit back told of (I think) Justen Sjong bringing one of the ultra-hot-shot young sport climbers (forget his name, he had climbed 5.14+) up to work on freeing the Salathe. The kid fell off following 5.11- slab on the Freerider.
So - what were you saying about ratings again?
Maybe, just maybe, 5.12 slab requires greater technical skill than 5.15 overhang (although obviously far, far less strength)?
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G_Gnome
Boulder climber
Sick Midget Land
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Thank you Melissa. That is exactly the point isn't it? To judge a route and it's worthiness just by it's numerical grade only works for sport routes. Otherwise you had better take the larger picture into consideration or it's gonna get messy.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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The English grading system sometimes makes sense - a technical grading, plus an adjective to overall describe the route. Thus there can be extremely severe routes that aren't so technically hard (e.g. slab climbs), and technically hard but very safe routes (e.g. many "sport" climbs) that aren't considered so very severe.
The Tahquitz (Yosemite) Decimal System, which supposedly focusses on the technical difficulty of the hardest move on a pitch, and is naturally oriented to the areas it arose in, could be improved. The PG/R/X stuff helps, but is still a bit obscure - slab route are almost always in those categories, by definition. Maybe there should be an "S" added to denote that something is a slab climb, i.e. abandon all hope ye who climb here? A slippery slope.
I've always thought that slab climbing fostered precise footwork and body positioning, and strong nerves. Many such routes may be undergraded.
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Broken
climber
Texas
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Jerry Handren wrote: In the late 1980's I put up one of the early routes at Rumney, Flesh for Lulu."
Jerry -
I just want to salute you for a great route. Beautiful piece of rock and still one of the best 12a's I've ever done.
Out of curiosity, where were the two bolts? I figured that one was at the end of the 5.9+ first half and the other was somewhere on the headwall?
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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"I tend to think from my own experience that the mental factor is negligible when climbing way below my own upper level."
Well, hell, Joe. You climb as least as well as we did 35 years ago so you shouldn't have any problem with the old run out routes, which indeed were physically below our upper limit, and surely are well below yours. And I'm all for replacing the old bolts with new ones--but not adding more. Start doing that and we'd have issues . . .
JL
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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That's a valid point, Joe, but remember, these routes--the very few we are talking about here--were never done much. I also think that the lack of traffic is at least partially due to the old bolts. For instance, Stoners was retrobolted and it gets donw quite a bit. Yeah, it's one of the easier ones, with just a touch of climbing over 10a, but you get the picture.
If someone replaced all the bolts on all the routes we've talked about here--from Space Babble to Greasy but Groovy to Black Primo and so on--it's hard to imagine that nobody would climb these routes. Moreover, what made those routes so chilling in the first place was climbing them in PAs or EBs. The new sticky rubber eliminates much of the fear factor because the boots outperform the old ones by miles.
It just strikes me as criminal to start adding bolts to the old classics. Everything eventually comes back into style. Maybe we have to wait a while till the focus returns, at least a little bit, to the old stuff.
JL
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Greg Barnes
climber
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We rebolted Stoner's - "retrobolted" usually means bolts were added, while "rebolted" usually means one-for-one replacement.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2006 - 06:03pm PT
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"but it's a dead language no one speaks anymore because the authors refuse to allow them to be translated into something someone will read."
Unfortunately you'd be translating a "Ulysses" or "Crime and Punishment" into "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone "
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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When a ground-up climber starts up a route, he or she doesn't know what the moves will be like, and doesn't know where or whether it will be possible to drill. If the result is runout and scary, it is primarily because that is what nature dictated. The route is scary, not because the leader decided to create a route with injury or death potential, but because the level of risk is a natural phenomenon, not a human creation.
In sport climbing, the concept of embracing the risk dictated by the terrain is completely absent. Sport climbing only exists because those risks have typically been eliminated. The risk level is not determined by nature and then accepted by the climber, it is determined by the person who installs the bolts.
Because of this, I don't think there is any kind of valid comparison between runout traditional bolted routes, with danger an artifact of nature, and rap-bolted sport routes where danger is a human construction. Different standards ought to apply, and people should be careful, as they do not seem to me to be, to apply the appropriate standards to each activity.
I think traditionally established run-out routes should be left in their original state, because accepting the hand that nature has dealt and dealing with the consequences are at the heart of the traditional ethic. But rap-bolted sport routes are, to my mind, entirely human creations, and when someone purposely builds injury or death into a route, I think that makes them a sociopath at best. One cannot help but wonder what emotions such a person might (or ought to) experience if someone is severely hurt or killed on a section they deliberately created to be life-threatening.
To quote Greg, REbolting trad routes restores their original level of risk, and that is entirely appropriate to the nature of that activity. On the other hand, I think that RETRObolting a dangerous sport route is perfectly reasonable, because, in my opinion, whatever "ownership rights" the creator might have ought to be suspended as soon as he or she endeavors to hurt others.
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Jeremy Handren
climber
NV
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Broken asked "Out of curiosity, where were the two bolts? I figured that one was at the end of the 5.9+ first half and the other was somewhere on the headwall?"
One just above the ledge, the second could be clipped when you were standing on that little shelf about 2/3 of the way up.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2006 - 10:05pm PT
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"One cannot help but wonder what emotions such a person might (or ought to) experience if someone is severely hurt or killed on a section they deliberately created to be life-threatening."
That presupposes your average sport climber has the sack to actually launch from dogging on one bolt into the unknown without either visual confirmation or absolute knowledge of the location of a bolt soon to be close at hand. A bolt, I mean bold, assumption I suspect. Hell, just camo'ing bolts can provoke scowls. In fact, that brings up a whole other subject of how well camo'd should bolts be - there's quite a spectrum between invisible and solar powered, strobe bolts that turn off when you clip them only to turn on the next one ahead of you. But I suspect most sport climbers stop at the last bolt they can see unless they have a pretty damn good idea where the next one is.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Joe wrote
"..And there is, of course, no discernable difference between a dangerously bolted sport route and a runout trad one.
Always good when one of the most (if not the most) sage and articulate voices in a given subject backs you up 100%."
That's like saying there's no discernable difference between Aids that you got from a Male Hooker and Aid that you got from a blood transfusion. Yes and No. I bet your girlfriend would care.
So I'm betting RGold is going to give you less than %100.
peace
Karl
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