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Single pitch trad climbing dumb?


Jens

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As long as I am moving upwards, I don't care what kind of climbing it is, whether wearing a crampon, rock shoe, or skin-lined ski. But something I heard the other day got me thinkin'.......

Someone made a really strong arguement (that I agreed with a lot of) that single pitch trad climbing is lamer than all the other types of climbing.

It doesn't get you up high and give you a view

Moves are rarely gymnsastic like sport routes

Even hard crack climbing has less artistry than modern face climbing (ever see a crack crux get climbed 7 different ways? Like on a modern bouldering route or sport route?)

Placing gear should be for getting a guy up the great cliffs of the world like the great trango tower.

You can't cut loose with the wild abadonen like a bolted route.

It's usually slabbier than an aid route

It doesn't have all the coolness of mixed or ice climbing

It just downright isn't sexy!

 

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As long as I am moving upwards, I don't care what kind of climbing it is,....

It just downright isn't sexy!

 

Ya gotta learn on somethin and it may as well be a single pitch trad don't ya think? Great for schoolin on. I used to laugh at "bouldering" but more and more Im appreciating the challenge, artistery, and purity of it. I can even begin to see how one could get from there into that deep and strange realm free soloing if your locks were up to the task. Jus keep bouldering higher and higher..Ha!

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Climb more trad before you make these statements. I started point to point and then realized its just an ignorant statement and doesn't deserve that much time.

 

If you cannot understand the values gained from single pitch trad climbing how do you expect to start talking about Trango summits. get your learnin on.

 

Single pitch trad, and the areas that have this kind of climbing, yet still manages to have historical relevance and yeah they're quiet sexy...

 

Gunks

Grit

Dirty South Roofs (Tennessee Wall, NRG etc..)

J-tree

Black Hills SD

 

You mention cutting loose on bolts. Trying cutting loose trad climbing w/ no bolts and having to just get X with it...

 

LISTEN TO DMUJA get your learnin. You have to take in the values of all arts of climbing.

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My vote for least fave climbing is Volcano slogging.
Most definitely!

 

jens, do you like the single pitch climbs at midnight?

How about the cookie cliff in Yos?

Ever been to freemont cyn?

 

Try a few laps a donner summit or anywhere around tahoe with trad gear.

 

Am I sensing a troll? rolleyes.gif

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Someone made a really strong arguement (that I agreed with a lot of) that single pitch trad climbing is lamer than all the other types of climbing.

It doesn't get you up high and give you a view

Moves are rarely gymnsastic like sport routes

Even hard crack climbing has less artistry than modern face climbing (ever see a crack crux get climbed 7 different ways? Like on a modern bouldering route or sport route?)

Placing gear should be for getting a guy up the great cliffs of the world like the great trango tower.

You can't cut loose with the wild abadonen like a bolted route.

It's usually slabbier than an aid route

It doesn't have all the coolness of mixed or ice climbing

It just downright isn't sexy!

 

You and your friend have clearly never done much in the way of interesting trad climbing. One would suspect from this diatribe that you and your friend pretty well just play it safe all the way around and then wonder what all the excitement is all about...

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Jens,

On your next trip south, look me up.

I have the single pitch trad route of the year for you.

615671-102_0006.JPG

You may start training now by doing a couple hundred situps a day.

We are now accepting reservations, so book early!

 

Looks brutal lance.

"Belly full of bad Lattes" perhaps? yellaf.gifhellno3d.gif

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this thread, and another, got me thinking... Wartley's Revenge, at Smith Rock, was, in the seventies, a single-pitch trad climb. I saw it listed in another thread as someone's favorite single-pitch "sport" climb. WTF? The cracks on Wartley's swallowed any chock I threw anywhere near them, and the angle is severe enough that I can't imagine anyone considering it less than "gymnastic". Would your friend argue that Wartley's is worth doing if you clip bolts, but lame if you protect it with chocks in the cracks? And if he holds this view, do you agree? After leading Wartley's in '79 (admittedly, with a few hangs), I commiserated with Bill Ramsey about my poor style. Ramsey, who had stunned the Oregon climbing community the previous October by FLASHING Separate Reality,(at that time still rated 5.12) surprised me by saying he knew of almost no-one at that time who had led Wartley's cleanly on-sight.

Of course, if a 5.11b continuously overhanging fingercrack led on wired stoppers is too lame for you, you might try Never Never Crack. Last time I looked, it had not yet been bolted for lead. I've never done this one, but I got to watch Peter Croft fail on it once... I wonder how far Skinner would have got on the Salathe if he hadn't had a sackful of Never-Never Crack - type single-pitch trad climbs under his belt? Back in the sixties and seventies, when I was learning to climb, some of us wimps even practiced protecting boulder-problems on the lead, before attempting to apply that skill to a long route near the limit of our climbing abilities. How lame is that? Truth be told, I have taken more, and longer falls on trad climbs than I have ever risked on sport climbs. Somehow, the idea of launching onto a bolt about which I know next to nothing has never inspired the confidence I feel in falling onto a placement that I have engineered myself. Your buddy's arguments may sound compelling to you, but they sound inexperienced to me.

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Wartleys' isn't bolted, and if it does I'll chop the things myself. It's too pretty a crack to lead on anything but gear.

 

and obviously Jens you've never scared yourself silly on trad. There is very little I've found that's more rewarding than trying to onsight at or a little above my limit on gear. Climbing trad at your limit is a much more mental game then sport, bouldering, or climbing multipitch below your limit.

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If it's dumb, I am absolutely stupid after this week. By the time winter is over, my IQ will be in the low single digits.

 

Sincerely,

 

Your Intrepid Joshua Tree Reporter

 

P.S. How can single pitch trad in the winter sun possibly be dumber than the "tour de vertical world" orgy of plastic you proposed to escape the wankerific weather of a Seattle winter?

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"Even hard crack climbing has less artistry than modern face climbing (ever see a crack crux get climbed 7 different ways? Like on a modern bouldering route or sport route?)"

 

Sport climbing is to tradtional rock climbing as

8378174_scaled_490x506.jpg

 

is to

 

vt2004-if14-fig2.jpg

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Back in the (Goldline) day, when for me climbing was a means to getting up stuff a lot bigger than say, a building, we were driving by Castle Rock on the way to the N. Ridge of Stuart. I made the error of referring to Castle as a "Practice Area". My much more experienced partner duly chastised me, saying that shorter, technical climbs were worthy summits in their own right. A year later, after a trip to Josh and TR-dogging my way up Brass Balls on said Castle, I had a visceral conversion to what he was talking about.

 

On a road trip spring '05, I climbed for a week in JT, and did one sport route among many pitches of gorgeous cracks. Comparing a tour of high quality single-pitches in a day to a long, multi pitch is apples and oranges. And though I love my Sporty overhangs, a day of moderate gear-battling gives me an excellent buzz and helps fill out the memory bank accounts properly.

 

But yeah, I suspect that Jens is a little "under the bridge" with this thread....

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Someone made a really strong arguement (that I agreed with a lot of) that single pitch trad climbing is lamer than all the other types of climbing.

I think the only thing that is lame is saying one form of climbing is any "better" than another: whether comparing plastic vs alpine, sport vs peak-bagging, or 5.6 vs 5.13.

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I think that single pitch-trad climbing on routes that are a challenge for me is just about as good as it gets, which might be why I think that "The Bend" at Tieton might be my all-time favorite place to climb. Love that place.

 

Long moderate routes with a mix of slab and crack climbing, and long ridge routes in the alpine are close seconds, though.

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