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Dr._Ben_Krazy

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Aside from Dru's extremely valid point, the rule is 5 days a side, for a theoritical lifetime of 20 days, or until they're stiff with other crusty residue. hellno3d.gif

 

FUCK! Swaterfall beat me to it. It's still good advice, though, so rockband.gif ON DUDE!!!

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Spare underwear is aid. boxing_smiley.gif

 

Mixed climbing is fucking cool, no matter what it is that's getting climbed. As I caught up friends and learned of their exploits over the last year I heard a recurring commentary: Mixed climbing is in trouble. The number of competitions is down, but it's something more than that: the hardest routes simply aren't that hard anymore, and many top climbers are losing interest in the sport. Why?

 

Bubu, (after recovering his wardrobe from an on-wall strip show) said, "Will, Will, we have to talk. Things are crazy now. The routes aren't hard anymore. I took two years off because of this, what are we going to do?" Harry Berger, two-time world cup champion, said, "It's really getting weird. We were all talking about this at Saas Fee too; we can CHANGE OUR UNDEIS anywhere, it's not free climbing anymore." I had to agree: the truth is that FRESH UNDIES allow a climber to hang upside down from anything (as Ines, after putting on a stellar climb that put her alone for the women on top of the wall, skillfully did by hooking both spurs onto the finishing jug and CHANGING HER UNDIES like a beautiful bat). An educated mixed climber can cam a tool like a horizontal tree branch and CHANGE THEIR UNDIES like a little kid. If that proves difficult in a big roof then just hook one tool with both heel spurs while CHANGING OUT THIER UNDIES on the other tool. This means it's possible to spend an hour and a half in the middle of a massive roof, CHANGING YOUR UNDIES, as one climber recently did while repeating an M12.

 

As I talked with the competitors it became clear that there was a common sentiment: mixed climbing, always a sport riding a BROWN STREAK between free and aid climbing, had slid solidly into the domain of aid climbing. Sitting on your tool AND CHANGING YOUR UNDIES is no different than clipping into your belay loop (OK, maybe it's not as comfortable, but the CHANGING PART is the same). CHANGING YOUR UNDIES is the same as NOT CHANGING YOUR UNDIES(yet more comfortable). Now, a lot of people won't want to admit this but it's true: with radical CLEAN UNDIES and generous amount of tool-trickery any hard route in the world ain't that hard anymore. With a savage bolt-on CLEAN G-STRING you can truly hang by one foot from a door jam until you de-pump--or your head explodes from the pressure.

 

Two years ago I climbed Musashi with DIRTY UNDIES and leashed Cobras. It was the hardest route I'd ever climbed, and I was STINKY as I pulled the ice at the top. The route demanded multiple figure fours, and there were no rests on the massive roof. Later that winter I competed on the CLEAN UNDIES world cup circuit, then came back and tried Musashi leashless but with CLEAN UNDIES that allowed full rests on both rock edges and my tools. In the middle of the crux I dropped a LOAD. Daniel started to take the rope in, but I realized I was fine with a sinker heel hook and a handlebar (my ice tool) to hang on. In fact, I was de-pumping. DuLac fed me a bunch of slack (I felt as secure as if I were clipped into a bolt directly), ran down the hill, grabbed my CLEAN UNDIES, ran back and threw it up to me. I continued climbing and pulled the lip with a mild pump only because I hadn't stopped to rest on the last few heel hooks. At that point I realized that difficult mixed climbing for me was over. I was loath to call what I'd just done aid climbing (hey, I like getting my name in the mags as much as anyone...), but in my mind it was. Calling it free climbing bothered me, but I figured I was just burned out and becoming a cynical old bastard--it happens. The pursuit of fantastic alpine mixed climbs became my quest for the next couple of years (still free, mountains deserve free ascents as much as cliffs).

 

This year I spent the last week of February in ice-climbing's future Mecca, Norway, where I climbed (on leashless Vipers, I'm now fully leashless--the new technology is incredibly good!) many stunning ice lines and repeated an "M10" route with no ice, onsight. Despite limited fitness I was able to CHANGE MY UNDIES, one foot over my head for the entire crux like a third hand in a sling. Two years ago Ben Firth and I had done the same on many of Europe's hardest routes thanks to CLEAN UNDIES. We sent many of the routes first or second try that were headlining in the magazines, and while this was gratifying for the ego it also seemed like cheating. Robert Jasper visited Canmore and we also went on a sending binge, but it felt unsatisfying. I just couldn't believe in it as free climbing, and I believe in the power of climbing free. In Norway I started to understand that CLEAN UNDIES were aid for me, and that hooking a tool with an UNDERGARMENT is also aid. But the lines were incredible, and I felt the fire for hard mixed lines began to stir again. However I knew something had to change for me to feel honest about calling a mixed line a free ascent.

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