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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 22, 2009 - 01:37am PT
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Maybe the test of time, ethics, and style (aspired to or etched in stone) should be the degree to which natural erosion eradicates [non-protection] telltales of ones passage per decade. I suspect by that measure WoS is one of the few routes in the Valley that boasts a 'clean slate' today.
I find it simply amazing that the untraceable easing of less than half a thimble of crystals from their perches on 'natural' microledges over nine pitches can somehow be conflated to the status of a breach of ethical, technical, or stylistic sensibilities of such epic proportions. And from Pete's, Ammon's, and the Chief's direct testimony of what they found on attempting to second the route, at the very least it's more than clear that amazing lies were and continue to be spread about the ascent.
Also, there is still a boatload of beer and wine on the table available to anyone who seconds it. Maybe it will just have to wait for someone from NH or NC with less delicate sensibilities to get the job done.
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Sep 22, 2009 - 01:46am PT
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Joe-
It's really not that simple, of course.
Obviously you could drill your entire way up El Cap with 1/4" deep bathooks. The total volume of rock displaced may indeed be less than a 10 pound flake that a climber might break off on a FA in the brittle Diorite on the right side, but can there really be any comparison?
This is not to imply that WOS is a bathook ladder, but it's not the Salathe either. It's somewhere in between (and with 145 drilled holes + some enhancements in 13 pitches, WOS has a very high "density" of drilled placements). Whether or not the route crossed some invisible ethical/stylistic line is the question at hand.
Or is there just no "line", all things ok on the shared resource we call El Cap?
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dogtown
Gym climber
JackAssVille, Wyoming
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Sep 22, 2009 - 02:06am PT
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Look. I’m going to pipe up again. Number 1. Respond to my post if you have done the route. (Wings of Steel) Number 2. Respond to my post if you know Richard & Mark or me! Number 3 shut the f*#k up if you are going on something you were told or heard. I’m telling you all, flat out. I have heard so much bullshit about this route. I what to vomit ! Some from people that weren’t even born when the f*#king thing was done. Little pusses just jumping on the band wagon. And furthermore. Mark & Richard are two of the best aid climbers the Valley has ever seen. Period. Pete and I are the only ones that have ever stood up for these dudes. Pete because he has done part of the route. Me because I know them both.They are good folks. Un-like a few of you.
Dogtown.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 22, 2009 - 03:09am PT
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John, I agree with the question about 'is there a line' as that's what I've basically thought about slab climbing in general - aid or free. At Whitehorse in the mid-80s I was taken by some locals to look at some .11 slab lines. We started walking up the slab from the trail and just kept walking until it eventually it got pretty damn hard if not impossible to 'walk', and damn if we weren't even at the start of the climb yet. When we did finally get to what they called the 'start' of the climb I distinctly remember asking them the following questions:
 How long can you stand here?
How do you know this is the same start as the last time?
Why is this the start as opposed to over, down, or up there?
Is there another route within 30 feet of us right now?
If so, what's the difference between this one and that one?
How do you decide where to go?
What the f*#k do you climb on?
Your point?
You can do this stoned?
Are you guys frigging nuts!
Up to that point I'd never even considered the notion of climbing up what even at close inspection seemed like a featureless pan of rock. Man, did I get schooled in about a dozen ways that day. Definitely a matter of precise static thinking, movement, and breathe and absolutely no place for a swinging dyno monkey like myself. Same deal with Xmas Tree Pass - you call that a frigging 'line'? Hell, I bet I took off more crystals there with every single foot placement than Mark and Richard took off of nine pitches of WoS.
It may be about as close as I personally can think of to being waterboarded on rock, but clearly there are some really twisted people out there who like going down that rabbit-hole and find a peculiar Wonderland of freedom in infinite, microscopic vistas; who am I to question that? Ditto for Looking Glass and a few other places I've been. It's a miracle to me that it can be done at all.
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Tom
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
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Sep 22, 2009 - 03:38am PT
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The issue of the Wings of Steel route, even 25+ years ago, has always logically come down to a simple equation:
Somebody else, anybody, go up and do the route, and then say what they think the route is worth.\
There is no question the First Ascent took place.
To date, nobody has been able to repeat the route.
All this bear-bollocks speculation and denigration-from-the-base is worthless, except as an emotional outburst that has no place in our logical world.
Wings of Steel remains the hardest line on El Capitan. Period. It's never been repeated, although more than a few have been called.
But, none have been chosen.
And until a second ascent of Wings of Steel takes place, no objective peer-reviewed information about the route is available.
So, either shut up, or put up. As in, put up ropes up that line.
Wings of Steel is the hardest line up El Capitan.
Wings of Steel is so hard, even the hardest Yosemite Hard Men can't do it.
Only Mark and Richard could do Wings of Steel.
And now?
The Best Of Yosemite won't climb their route, but will, instead, say that Mark and Richard were bad men to climb the route they pioneered.
All too transparent . . . . . .
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Handjam Belay
Gym climber
expat from the truth
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Sep 22, 2009 - 03:58am PT
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Pure comedy here. I have a number of 5.17d freesolos around the country too. ONSIGHT! until someone repeats it they are THE HARDEST ROUTES IN THE WORLD!!!
until burt bronsons climbs them naked
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Sep 22, 2009 - 04:03am PT
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Please, enough of the "do the route or shut up" arguments.
It would certainly add to the discussion if the route has had a second ascent, but it's not essential.
Taking the art analogy further, if someone flicks paint on a canvas with a beach towel, then says, "this is as good as any Jackson Pollock", that may or may not be true. But if a another artist disagrees, it's like telling that artist, "You have to first take up beach towel painting before you can talk about it." It's irrelevant.
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Tom
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
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Sep 22, 2009 - 04:31am PT
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John, respectfully, I disagree with your argument.
The WOS issue is whether or not the route is "valid", and in the absence of a second ascent, there is no way to ascertain the "validity" of the first ascent.
This is very close to the core of our communal idea that ascents, in particular, are subject to the acceptance of the group. And when there is a dispute or disagreement regarding a first ascent, our group then resorts to a second ascent to affirm, or deny.
There has been no second ascent.
There is no dispute of a record of the first ascent.
The "validity" of the route WOS is, therefore, wholly dependent on a second ascent to make things clear and logical.
Our game requires this sort of repeating of a route, at least once, in order to make logical sense and get away from nonsense verbiage about how Mark and Richard were not "qualified" to do the Hardest Route on El Capitan because they never did the Salathe, Nose, or other easier routes.
Mark and Richard did a line, their line, Wings of Steel.
And anybody who wants to put the black paint across their route has to, at the very least, repeat it, and then say, in person:
"I went up there, and this is what is up there."
Nobody has been able to repeat their route, to date. All I see is bad juju energy towards defaming Mark and Richard, and inventing slurs about the way the Wings of Steel route was first done.
It's surrealistic, to me.
I am disillusioned, but not surprised as it were, that Others are attempting to maintain their Position by pushing down and attacking two guys who just showed up and did a line up El Capitan that had never been done before.
A line/route the Others were not able to do.
And a nice, good line it was . . . and still is.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 22, 2009 - 05:01am PT
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BAD analogy, John.
The actual analogy is this: you HEAR from somebody that you know has talked to somebody else about somebody else who has apparently flicked paint onto a canvas and compared it to great art. Then you spend decades jumping on the defamation bandwagon, calling the artist you heard about thrice removed a complete poser, as#@&%e, loser, and destroyer of all that is wonderful and perfect in the world of art. You've never even seen the supposed painting, and you know nothing of the artist or the artist's original claims about the painting.
You hear that somebody else was so outraged by what the artist was trying to start that they stole the canvas, shat upon it, smeared it around, and then returned the desecrated painting to the artist.
The artist cleans the canvas off, and, you hear, recreates the painting. The audacity of this artist enrages you even more. How dare he REPEAT and then FINISH this abomination? You KNOW it is an abomination, because you have HEARD it... from, well, people. Of course, as you know, none of them has seen the finished painting, but that's no threat to your perspective, because they are the most credible people you know.
You then, publish in various art books and journals wild speculations about the artist's character, talents, background, and associations, always finishing with another heaping dose of ignorant defamation about the painting itself, which, again, you have never seen but only heard about from people who themselves have only heard about it. You succeed in keeping the artist's attempts to clear his name OUT of these same media.
Finally, the artist finds a forum in which to speak out against the decades of misrepresentation. You spend years questioning the artist's integrity, character, motivations, sanity, etc. Again, you have never seen the painting, although through all of these years you know that you can easily view it through the window of a local gallery. But you can't be bothered to even walk over there to see the painting through the window, much less get close to it and really inspect it.
Eventually, a few people do go examine the painting. They return to report that the painting is not AT ALL as it has been described to everybody. They report that the painting is actually quite impressive in many ways. Perhaps, they say, this painting actually IS art.
You cannot accept this, even given these first-hand reports. This simply does not fit with your multi-decade world view about art and its accomplished practitioners.
Your defamation now takes a new form. Now, in the face of growing evidence against your view, you simply mock the artist's efforts to explain the painting. You search for the SLIGHTEST inconsistency in everything the artist says in his own defense. You tell him to "get over it," despite the fact that even the demonstrated FACTS fall on deaf ears. You question the artist's mental state that "after so many years" he could possibly continue to care about the facts, despite the growing realization that the defamers are the ones that cannot seem to "get over it," as they perpetually keep the distortions before the public. And you deride the artist's efforts to remind people of the known facts in the face of the ongoing efforts to distort and deny the first-hand accounts of what the painting was like.
You still haven't seen the painting, but you finally start actually talking to the artist. Trying now to be "fair," you ask him detailed questions about how much red he used, how much blue he used, how full the canvas was of this or that color, how big the canvas was, and how much of the canvas was left as white space. You ask him what brushes he used and how he used them. You ask DETAILED questions: Was the brush turning INTO the canvas or perpendicular to it for some of those strokes? From this statistical information, you smugly conclude that you know all you need to know to judge the painting. After all, YOU are such an artist that YOU can know just from the statistical data what the painting must look like. You can know just from what you have heard, without ever seeing the painting, whether or not it is art.
When people cringe at this smugness, saying, "But, really, you should LOOK at the painting," you reply, "I don't NEED to look. Let's shut up with this stupid 'looking' argument! Looking is a red herring. Looking is irrelevant."
Should I go on? Or is the absolutely ridiculous, outrageous, blatant arrogance of such an art critic apparent to you? If you don't see yourself in any part of this actual analogy, how can you possibly avoid it?
BAD analogy, John.
And how can you possibly have the arrogance to think that just from some statistics you can tell whether or not what we did was "worthy?"
I am positive that you do not know the real statistics about the Sea, yet you are confident that it is a "worthy" line. Would there be any set of stats about the Sea that could change your mind about IT's worthiness? Or, can you now be intellectually honest enough to admit that stats don't tell you much of anything about the "worthiness" or "artistry" of a route?
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Sep 22, 2009 - 05:09am PT
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Tom, I see your point, but in this case, we have a lot of information. Heck, the FA guys even wrote a book.
We know the route goes up a steep, featureless slab with lots of thin hooking. We can figure from the amount of bolts divided by the length of the route (and taking into account belay anchors) that there's a rivet or a bolt every 15-20 feet on average, with some longer runouts and ladders here and there. The hooking in-between is thin and difficult, but not much fun, according to Ammon. There's some pointed-chisel enhanced edges en route that might be hard to spot. And there's a few other sections of copperheading and other placements.
All this provides plenty of fodder for comment.
{EDIT, a few days later}: Somebody else apparently calculated a bolt or rivet every 8.3 feet on average. My numbers above weren't meant to be precise, rather, to indicate a typical span between drilled anchors that would require hooking moves. Poorly stated, and apologies if this tweaked some readers...
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Tom
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
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Sep 22, 2009 - 05:12am PT
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As I said, the only WOS closure is in the second ascent.
Everything else is ad hominem idiocy.
SHUT UP, OR CLIMB IT
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Sep 22, 2009 - 05:23am PT
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Madbolter-
"Looking" is exactly what we are doing.
It's a critique, in other words.
Didn't you start this thread?
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 22, 2009 - 05:38am PT
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I see that you are nonplussed: "All this provides plenty of fodder for comment."
The problem, John, is that what has gone on, and continues to go on is not merely "comment." I have zero problem with people saying things like, "not much fun," or, "not enough gain to pain ratio for me," or, "slabs just don't turn my crank." Whatever. But what you and a few others have done is indeed to step into the role of art critic without having seen the painting.
I guess you missed my question earlier, but it is the critical question: Do you KNOW the stats about the Sea, and could any set of stats affect your perspective that it is a worthy route?
I know that you do not know the stats, because earlier you argued against what we DO know from the route, and what was then verified by Peter. We DO know the stats, and we DO know that its stats are worse by every measure than WoS's stats (holes per foot, natural to non-natural placements, total number of manufactured placements, etc.) I even got one article published in Rock and Ice after we did the Sea ("How Many Holes?") making these very comparisons back when that information was fresh at hand. The outrage poured forth after that article, and neither Rock and Ice nor Climbing would publish us after that (even our Intifada article was rejected, because we were "too hot to touch.")
Back to the point. You KNOW the Sea is worthy, but how? The mere stats don't bear it out. But... of course, you don't know the stats. But, that's no problem for your world view. You can just look up there and know that the route is "worthy." And, you can just know from some stats whether or not WoS is worthy.
The issue here isn't just "comment." It's an ongoing judgment call, and my ongoing point has been that it's a judgment people are making with incorrect and even irrelevant data.
You would not imagine that you could judge a painting from talk of brush strokes and colors. You would insist on seeing HOW the colors and techniques were actually applied, because the application is everything. Yet in this case you claim that the application is nothing and that the stats are everything. That is, honestly, just amazing to me. Such smugness is simply daunting.
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Jennie
Trad climber
Elk Creek, Idaho
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Sep 22, 2009 - 05:52am PT
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Is it possible the events that went on at ground level, before the climb, have had more to do with the judgements that came forth about WoS, than what actually occurred on the rock?
I know little about the social dynamics among Yosemite climbers in the 1980’s and sincerely don’t want to offend anyone…..but, often, when perceived “interlopers” arrive on a scene and are conceived to be threatening mores and canon or shaking up the pecking order, they get heaped with disdain.
Paying homage to “the locals” kinda goes against my grain, too, but being unobtrusive and giving respect to people you meet… goes a long way. Again, I wasn’t there and don’t have license for assuming and supposing.
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Tom
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo CA
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Sep 22, 2009 - 06:02am PT
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We can figure from the amount of bolts divided by the length
FIGURE ?????
Hey! Ground-based Bad-Ass alert!
Why not try an objective ascent and appraisal of the route?
And don't "figure" the bolts divided by length.
GO UP, AND SEE WHAT IS THERE. REPEAT THE ROUTE.
Repeating the route is the only way to know, for sure, that those fags, as you claim them to be, are really fags.
I think, if you try to repeat Wings of Steel, you will show yourself to be Real Fag - - - - King of The Fags.
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Gunkie
climber
East Coast US
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Sep 22, 2009 - 09:44am PT
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JuanDeFuca said: Who in YOSAR exactly shitted on the ropes?
Forget chipping 1mm off a crystal in the midst of a 2500' granite wall, Juan knows the important stuff. I would augment the query with:
1. Did the shitters or shitter sh#t on command? A skill I find highly desirable.
2. Did the shitters or shitter sh#t in some sort of container and then carry the contents to the site? A technique that I believe we can all agree is CHEATING and highly unethical.
That is all.
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ionlyski
Trad climber
Kalispell, Montana
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Sep 22, 2009 - 10:07am PT
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I don't know Tom, if you're helping these guys any or not, with your, "nobody can do the route" challenges. I know I couldn't but I hardly doubt any of those hardmen, even at the time could probably make their way up if they so determined. How many actual attempts have been made? 2? or 3?
You're not going to goad somebody into doing something they perceive as stupid, hard or even dangerous. I am not qualified to call it stupid because I don't even aid climb. I don't know the field but the point is that the route has not gone "unrepeated" because nobody else can do it and again the ones that can are not likely to take up your challenge.
Arne
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ionlyski
Trad climber
Kalispell, Montana
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Sep 22, 2009 - 10:12am PT
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And what Rokjox said. This is fun, cuz we spectators keep having our heads yanked back & forth, from one convincing side to the other. Maybe its all just philosophy.
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho-dee-do-dah-day
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Sep 22, 2009 - 10:40am PT
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Enter-fukkin-taining as hell!
For the protagonists and antagonists alike, an abject lesson in how not to do things. In that regard WoS was a success. Carry on.
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Ray-J
Social climber
socal
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Sep 22, 2009 - 10:54am PT
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Second that...
Thought the comments about how the first
Harding route up elcap was percieved is interesting:
Too bad WOS doesn't follow a more "classic" line;
Maybe 1st ascent team concerned their "art" might
Be ignored and fall into obscurity?
Pecking order/social higher-archy exists for a reason.
We are status seeking creatures.
Wos ascenders got to do their thing, have their
Experience and live to tell.
Expecting more than that, especially after
The reaction generated (ropes) might be
A bit unrealistic. Maybe.
Anyway, great stuff.
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