Dr_Flash_Amazing

More likely he's just that arrogant, and is banking on a combo of the public being too stupid and too powerless to do anything about it. Look at the shit these clowns have been pulling since day one. It's all about denying access to documents, denying knowledge of specifics, and the like. Plausible deniability and rapidly mutating obfuscation are gold for these ogres. Note: the very same President who recently ordered the bombing and invasion of two countries was heard on the radio this morning promising aid to Vietnam for AIDS prevention and treatment, stating that it isn't about how much money we're giving them, but how many lives can be saved. The question is, can you unleash Timothy McVeighs on people on one side of the planet and claim to be interested in saving lives on the other and still maintain your credibility?

Interesting. Guess it depends on whose grading scale you're using. Not that 5.15 or Vwhateverteen are terms that can actually be understood by those of us not spawned by gods.

What? Look at a grade conversion scale, Cochise. 5.15a~=V18. If it's boulder problem-short, then it's probably boulder problem-hard. Stick that in your chalk pot, you moss-shoveling pad-monkey.

As a boulder problem, that would equal an unprecedented V18. Given the length of the "route", it must be a rather burly affair.

Hell yeah, that was a great article. It's nice to read that kind of thing. It was hilarious when they talked about Rouhling's allegedly great height and mutant wingspan, and then the first thing they discover is that he's like 5'9" with a plus 1.5" ape. A very humanizing look at the guy, especially after all the slagging he's taken. Makes you wonder if all the shit about Joe Brooks is true.

Kill the Hate took an entire Spring season to do. You had to get warmed up and then up the hill to the ledge kind of early, because it gets in the sun at like 11 or something, and the small holds down low get all greasy. And since it's hard for you, you can only get like three burns in. So that's about six burns per weekend for about 2.5 months, or about 60 burns. Of course, that's not just redpoint burns, but a lot of beta figuring, but probably 40 of those are legit redpoint burns. The sad thing is that DFA would fall at the same crux move every ... single ... time. Ouch.

"With the way modern ethics are going can you "project" a trad crack?" We're all out of grade school, here, and it's rock climbing, not golf. Can't you do whatever the fuck you want with regard to ascent tactics?

The #1 slot would have to be a toss-up between Blue Light and Magic Light, with Toxic probably coming in 2nd or 3rd, as those all are or have been reliable warm-ups, with ascents numbering into the hundreds on the former two, and possibly on the latter as well. After those, the number of repeats drops into the tens or fewer, with likely suspects being Bolt From the Blue, Flat Earth, Chain Reaction, and Liquid Jade.

The old get-on-the-internet-and-spray-about-how-lame-people-are-for-not-climbing-when-you-could-be-out-climbing gambit, eh? Brilliant!

Piss off, you pebble-groping, Dave-Graham-beta-scoping, date-with-Lisa-Rands-hoping, all-holds-must-be-fully-sloping, highball-toproping, failed-to-send-and-sat-on-your-crash-pad-moping, "Dude-this-is-so-dope"-ing, pad-humping Verm wannabe.

Or do you want a "hardcore because we're too stubborn to call a spade a spade in an effort to distance ourselves from possibly being called less than hardcore by the semantics police" badge for yours?

Whatever, you stick-clipper, pocket-chipper, big-number-induced-drool-dripper, never-took-a-whipper-and-had-your-gear-zipper, only-wear-slippers, name-dropping-ego-tripper, worried-about-whose-Prana-pants-are-hipper, excessive-chalk-bag-dipper, mono-pulling-tendon-ripper, PowerBar-fueled-Gatorade-sipper, running-it-out-is-being-a-three-feet-apart-bolt-skipper, sport pansy wussface weenie.

What about DFL, hmmm?

Oh, oops. *scanning the script for next line* *AHEM!* All trad climbers are suck and only climb 5.8 because they are stupid and wear painter's pants! Go hump a hex, you Big Ditch-wet-dreaming rejects!

You could probably call up the Wild Iris climbing shop in Lander; they seem like helpful and friendly folks. Probably have beta on the Cirque and stuff in the general vicinity of Lander, or be able to point you in the direction of good resources for more info.

You're 12 feet tall?! Holy craps!

Perhaps you've misunderstood; DFA's middle name does not refer to the climbing term, but from a minor slice of dialog in the book 'The River Why', you wily Canadian punster.

Really? So what do you call a no-falls, first-go ascent on TR? Does the term "TR Flash" somehow give more credit to the ascent than saying "climbed it with no falls, first try, on TR"? Seems kind of logical to employ a term that climbers always use for "climbed it with no falls, first try" to convey just that, and to combine it with some other easily-conveyed specifics about the ascent, i.e. "TR". Why should "climbed it with no falls, first try" mean something different if a TR is involved? It's not as if someone who hears "TR Flash" is going to mistake your ascent for regular old flash on the sharp end.

It's pretty simple; if you TRed something with no falls on your first go, it's a TR flash, which, as MtnGrrl stated, roughly translates into normal language as "good job".

This is a funny poll/debate topic. It seems that, as with politics, we as climbers have subscribed to the narrow-minded notion that there are two and only two possible modes of climbing, with no middle ground, and to the even more outrageously silly idea that either of these areas can be defined in black and white. To pretend that there is only Trad or Sport is as silly as pretending that there is only Conservative or Liberal. It restricts dialogue and debate to a lot of stilted cliche role-playing and assumptions based on stereotypes. It makes it all too easy to forget that there are a lot of gray areas, or that it's the movement, not the means, that most people enjoy. How many people who usually place gear in the Gorge will, after toproping a four-star sport pitch, fail to find the climbing engaging and enjoyable just because they're not ten feet out from a #2 Stopper? How many dedicated bolt-clippers, after futzing their way to the top of Super Slab for the first time, don't dig on the fun ramp romping just because it didn't threaten to blow out their tendons? Take Texplorer for example. While he might find his ultimate satisfaction engaged in a naturally-protected battle of wits with an incipient seam, he sure seemed to be having a good time bouldering on the plastic blobs at the PRG the other night. Many of the best climbers in the world excel in a number of areas, and most seem to fit comfortably into Alex Lowe's now famous designation for "best climber in the world", whether they stick to one area or slay in all areas. Lisa Rands is just a boulderer, who happens to enjoy stepping up to Gritstone headpoint horror shows. Alex Huber is a bolt-clipping sport monkey, who happens to free Yosemite big walls and free-solo 5.12 alpine routes. Dean Potter is known for engaging in some unprecedented ropeless sickness on the big stone, but really enjoys ... bouldering? Hell, even someone like Chris Sharma, who, for the most part, sticks to clipping bolts and pebble wrestling, clearly transcends categorization shearly on the merit of having the most fun. Climbing shouldn't be fucked up like politics, where the end has been subordinated to nitpicking about the means, and where debate means proving that candidate X is a jerk because he's a Liberal or a Conservative, and ignoring all of his ideas because they've been framed in this false and limiting context. Climbing is an individual sport, and achievements and experiences should be looked at in the context of the individual, of growth, of enjoyment, and not through the stupid little blinders of arbitrary categories.

You gonna try and shit-talk the DFA when he ain't even around, eh, Captain Flagwave? Well, that's cool, 'cause Dr. Flash Amazing's been wiping his ass on the ol' stars 'n' bars every morning and smearing the results on the door handles of your Hummer, sport. Say, give us "left-wing kooks" a call when you wake up from your oily little military-industrial laissez faire wet dream and realize that giving the middle finger to the rest of the world does not equal good foreign policy, that bombing thousands of Muslims does not pacify potential terrorists, and that cutting educational funding in fact leaves a lot of children very much behind.

Hopefully not. Like climbing in general, there is no magic bullet solution to excelling at it, save for being named Sharma. Like all the other ideas discussed in this thread, it's just one element of a complicated little game. Noteworthy: Yuji Hirayama's onsight of Mortal Kombat several years back took 45 minutes (!!!) and involved copious downclimbing and reassessing. Obviously right there you've got downclimbing and a frightful shitheap of stamina working in tight harmony. Branch out, hone a wide variety of skills and approaches, and destroy.

The advice about really looking the rig over and getting the most thorough understanding of EVERY ASPECT of it you can is golden. Knowing how many draws you need but not thinking about possible sequences will not help you much. Look over the route thoroughly and honestly assess where the crux is, prepare yourself mentally for it being hard, and then examine the shit out of it, looking especially for sucker holds. Chances are there will be some, and every sucker that got on the route before you chalked them up, and then fell off. So identify that kind of thing, and resist the temptation to follow those holds when you get up there, since the sucker holds are usually better than the actual holds you're supposed to use. Get psyched and focused on success; work through all the moves in your head as best you can; think about clip stances, rests, and a potential sequence through the business, as well as envisioning clipping the chains. Follow-through, grasshopper. There's a fine line here between getting psyched and mentally prepared, and piling too much pressure on and hosing yourself, so relax. Just know that you're going to give it your best go, and whatever happens, happens, but this will be rooted in the knowledge that you have the route as figured out as you can, so you have a good chance of success. The fact is, while a lot of this stuff can help you up your success rate, onsighting often comes down to luck, too. Sometimes there will be some subtle, funky-ass body position required to do a move, or the sequence will be completely counterintuitive and it takes a lot of goes to even figure it out. But sometimes the shit just clicks, and of course trying a lot of these handy suggestions will up your chances of getting lucky. While not out at the crags, try doing laps on as hard of routes as you can manage at the gym, and work on climbing through your pump. Being pumped has a big mental component to it, which has to do with your brain noticing the major lactic acid flood in your muscles and doing what it can to stop whatever is causing the flood, in this case climbing. Hence you start breathing shallowly or not at all, you start getting tense, sketchy, or scared, your footwork goes to shit ... basically everything you DON'T want happening when you're already pumped. So the first thing you can do when you're doing laps (bouldering traverses are good too, if you can clear a swath through the mob) is focus on how you're feeling. When you feel the pump coming on, notice what else is happening, and take steps to consciously counteract the negative effects. Focus on breathing regularly and deeply; if you have to tell yourself out loud to breathe, do it; if you have to breathe loudly so you know you're breathing, do it; if you need your belayer to remind you to breathe, by all means have him do so. Remind yourself to relax; you're not in danger, so you don't need to be scared or start tensing up or being sketchy, you need to relax and focus on your climbing, on your footwork, on calmly and controlledly getting to the next rest. When you calmly and controlledly get to that rest, continue focusing on all those things. Find the best body position, try using different grips to find the most relaxed one, breathe slow and deep, get a good shake out, scope the next few moves. You'll soon find that you can really control the degree to which being pumped effects you, and you'll find that you can do a lot more climbing than you thought when you're pumped -- getting pumped does NOT automatically mean you're finished. Start easy with the laps routine, and find a good route or routes to use for your laps. Dr. Flash Amazing is a fan of picking something moderately challenging to climb up, then using all holds to climb down, but you can mix it up however. Sometimes you feel like a champ and can be near your limit up and down, but it's best to find the right balance between keeping yourself working and being able to keep going. If you're getting sapped, switch from a taped route to using all holds, and mix in the occasional hard move or two, getting a good rest on a jug, then busting a couple of crimps or whatever, then resting again. It's all about learning what you can do, and how to recover on a route. You shouldn't be using routes that are at your limit for this, in other words, and you should be on terrain that allows you to focus on staying in control, rather than on whether you can even do the moves. So what's the next potential onsight?

Jackpot!