Other People's Project - Ethics

[denalidave]

Are you saying that in this particular situation that he would be rude to climb this abandoned climb? I disagree. If someone was serious about climbing it.....they would fix a line over it.

 

and if the fixed line was on the climb for too long a time (over 6 mo's):

 

FREE STATIC LINE!

Or they will just steal it even if the project is active. That just happened at Ozone a few weeks ago and the guys putting the route up was there a day before it was stolen. Had to be a climber type that stole the static line since the anchors/rope were not accessible unless you climbed up.

[ivan]

poaching another man's line is like stealing another man's girl after he done spent all his money getting'er liqueored up enough to accept his gumbly advances, no?

[Rad]

poaching another man's line is like stealing another man's girl after he done spent all his money getting'er liqueored up enough to accept his gumbly advances, no?

 

See OPP lyrics above...

[rob]

poaching another man's line is like stealing another man's girl after he done spent all his money getting'er liqueored up enough to accept his gumbly advances, no?

 

Hey, if you spent all that money getting her ready, why would you leave her alone at the bar?

 

Just saying.

Edited May 28, 2008 by rob

[DCramer]

Jon Nelson and I spent several days in a snow storm cleaning a route at the Upper Wall. He went off to Illinois for school and I thought we’d get back to it when he came back. About a year later I was giving someone a ride back to Town (from Index) and he was telling me about how he had taken over the line. I said with so many plums it was lame that he would jump on it without even asking what our plans were. He worked on it for a while and added some bolts with the intention to add more. Someone else walked by saw the bolts and thought it was a completed route and flashed the FA. Karma is a wonderful thing.

[hafilax]

I don't understand the ego behind the first ascent of a crag line although I've never scrubbed and bolted anything. Once it's clean, it's clean. Hopefully lots of people will climb it and it will stay that way. As long as you get to try and onsight it who cares if someone climbs it before you.

 

If I ever clean a line feel free to have at it. Staking a claim on a section of rock is pretty pointless.

 

Adding bolts to someone else's climb is another thing entirely.

[sexual_chocolate]

I don't understand the ego behind the first ascent of a crag line although I've never scrubbed and bolted anything. Once it's clean, it's clean. Hopefully lots of people will climb it and it will stay that way. As long as you get to try and onsight it who cares if someone climbs it before you.

 

If I ever clean a line feel free to have at it. Staking a claim on a section of rock is pretty pointless.

 

Adding bolts to someone else's climb is another thing entirely.

 

 

i gotta say i've gotten caught up in the ego thing regarding first ascents, and it kinda sucks. it's only ego that says "yeah i got it first!". (it also sucks to have someone equally ego-laden get it first, but that's just my ego talking! ).

[kevbone]

I don't understand the ego behind the first ascent of a crag line although I've never scrubbed and bolted anything. Once it's clean, it's clean. Hopefully lots of people will climb it and it will stay that way. As long as you get to try and onsight it who cares if someone climbs it before you.

 

Think of it as your art work. You clean a piece of cliff band. And where I come from that means hours upon hours of work removing moss and grass and small bushes and huge engine size blocks. This is not only dangerous but time consuming. Bolts costs money.....a drill costs money.....by the time it is ready for leading you have put 4 weekends in a row of work in and a $100 worth of hardware (including a % of the drill). In the winter you get wet and muddy and cold. All so people like you can have a crag to climb at. I personally don’t think getting the FFA on a route you put so much work into is that much to ask. It’s not all about ego……it’s a sense of accomplishment. And hopefully……just hopefully you have created a classic……

[denalidave]

I don't understand the ego behind the first ascent of a crag line although I've never scrubbed and bolted anything. Once it's clean, it's clean. Hopefully lots of people will climb it and it will stay that way. As long as you get to try and onsight it who cares if someone climbs it before you.

 

Think of it as your art work. You clean a piece of cliff band. And where I come from that means hours upon hours of work removing moss and grass and small bushes and huge engine size blocks. This is not only dangerous but time consuming. Bolts costs money.....a drill costs money.....by the time it is ready for leading you have put 4 weekends in a row of work in and a $100 worth of hardware (including a % of the drill). In the winter you get wet and muddy and cold. All so people like you can have a crag to climb at. I personally don’t think getting the FFA on a route you put so much work into is that much to ask. It’s not all about ego……it’s a sense of accomplishment. And hopefully……just hopefully you have created a classic……

I think it's usually about ego, as much of this sport is. Ego wants to get the credits when the route goes down in history in various printed forms. Ego wants to put up harder, more respectable #'s and when a sport climber put up something hard, ego downgrades the accomplishment because "clipping bolts is not real climbing" (so "they" say). Ego tends to belittle other types of climbers that don't measure up to the "climbers code", whatever that is. The more people that get into climbing, the less exclusive it is for the ones that use it to boost their own ego. Sure, it takes a lot of work, effort and money to put something up for the rest of us to enjoy, but in the end if the FA does mean that much, it must be at least a bit of ego at the center of it all. At least in most cases, generally speaking. I'm all for letting the person who puts the route up have the FA but there has to be a "reasonable" time limit, which could vary from one area to the next. Let's just not kid ourselves that ego is not a factor in the whole FA realm.

[hafilax]

I don't understand the ego behind the first ascent of a crag line although I've never scrubbed and bolted anything. Once it's clean, it's clean. Hopefully lots of people will climb it and it will stay that way. As long as you get to try and onsight it who cares if someone climbs it before you.

 

Think of it as your art work. You clean a piece of cliff band. And where I come from that means hours upon hours of work removing moss and grass and small bushes and huge engine size blocks. This is not only dangerous but time consuming. Bolts costs money.....a drill costs money.....by the time it is ready for leading you have put 4 weekends in a row of work in and a $100 worth of hardware (including a % of the drill). In the winter you get wet and muddy and cold. All so people like you can have a crag to climb at. I personally don’t think getting the FFA on a route you put so much work into is that much to ask. It’s not all about ego……it’s a sense of accomplishment. And hopefully……just hopefully you have created a classic……

What does that have to do with someone climbing it before you? If nobody told you you'd never know. How does that affect you?

 

How many times has someone scrubbed a crack and claimed a first ascent only to find out it was done decades ago? I've heard of many. The pride of a popular route would be enough for me.

[kevbone]

a "reasonable" time limit

 

define reasonable? This statment speaks more to the person who wants a time limits ego than the FA party.

 

Ego does play a part in route setting and FFA's ......maybe for some it plays a HUGE role. That is too bad......

[pink]

kinda like deflowering a chick.... gotta tap that shit first.

[denalidave]

kinda like deflowering a chick.... gotta tap that shit first.

[mattp]

You guys talk as if "ego" is some shameful thing. Ego can simply drive someone to take some pride in what they do, it doesn't necessarily mean they become a raging lunatic control freak or attention whore or whatever else it is that you think of when you talk about someone on an ego trip. Climbers develop crag routes with a variety of motivations and personal styles but in general I think we WANT folks to be personally invested in it.

[chucK]

That's a great point Matt. If people have their ego invested in it more, then perhaps they won't just slap up pieces of shit.

 

I've noticed that some FA'ers seem to be more interested in just the game of climbing something new. They find a piece of unclimbed rock and just like the fun of figuring out how to get up it. So they bash a bunch of bolts in and create one more 60' one-move wonder, then move on, to find some more untouched stone. It seems similar to powder farming. Only problem is, we don't get fresh pieces of rock every time a winter storm blows in.

 

I'd much rather have people invested in it so they're willing to try to create something of enduring quality, rather than just one more grid-bolted pitch for which most interesting thing could be the name (if you can remember it).

[Peter_Puget]

I am left wondering how asserting your right to jump on someone's project or judging someone else's route is not equally ego driven.

 

When egos clash!

 

 

 

[hafilax]

I've been reading The Rock Warriors Way so I have been thinking a lot about the ego as defined in that book. For the most part the ego inhibits. It distracts from the real focus of climbing effectively. It made me wonder how many people would send their projects if they weren't caught up in forcing everyone else to wait for them to do it or feeling some unseen pressure to do it. Seems like a lot of wasted energy. Pride and self confidence are separate from the ego in that sense.

[rob]

 

Think of it as your art work. You clean a piece of cliff band. And where I come from that means hours upon hours of work removing moss and grass and small bushes and huge engine size blocks. This is not only dangerous but time consuming. Bolts costs money.....a drill costs money.....by the time it is ready for leading you have put 4 weekends in a row of work in and a $100 worth of hardware (including a % of the drill). In the winter you get wet and muddy and cold. All so people like you can have a crag to climb at. I personally don’t think getting the FFA on a route you put so much work into is that much to ask. It’s not all about ego……it’s a sense of accomplishment. And hopefully……just hopefully you have created a classic……

 

This is why I'm not a sport climber. How can you "create" a classic? The rock is there to be climbed. If the climb has to be "created" then I'm not really that interested in getting on it.

 

If you want the FA, then climb it first.

 

I guess sport routes are different, since so much "effort" has to be put in to "create" the climb.

 

Cause, you know, it wasn't there before you "put it up".

[denalidave]

You guys talk as if "ego" is some shameful thing. Ego can simply drive someone to take some pride in what they do, it doesn't necessarily mean they become a raging lunatic control freak or attention whore or whatever else it is that you think of when you talk about someone on an ego trip. Climbers develop crag routes with a variety of motivations and personal styles but in general I think we WANT folks to be personally invested in it.

I'm not saying ego is good or bad, just a factor in most cases and that climbing tends to have a lot of big egos participating (just like any other risky sport/activity).

 

[Rad]

Rob,

 

I don't think 'sport' route developers think they created the route. Of course the rock was there first, but someone had to have the vision that a route would go free, and then clean and protect it so that others can safely climb it. Creating great routes with fixed protection is a lot harder than slapping in some bolts. Choosing an aesthetic line is not easy. Just ask MattP.

 

Fixed protection is vital to many classic routes. For example, without bolts on Merci me (or Cruel Shoes) the Grand Wall, with its stellar trad pitches, would not be climbable for people unwilling to free solo 5.8 500ft off the deck. For that matter, the bolt ladders that most aid past are also critical on that climb.

 

If you only want to climb cracks that's fine, but you're limiting yourself to a pretty narrow set of climbing experiences.

[rob]

Rob,

 

I don't think 'sport' route developers think they created the route. Of course the rock was there first, but someone had to have the vision that a route would go free, and then clean and protect it so that others can safely climb it. Creating great routes with fixed protection is a lot harder than slapping in some bolts. Just ask MattP. Choosing an aesthetic line is not easy. Cracks are natural lines of weakness in rock, whereas sport routes often follow lines of strength (bulging faces, aretes, etc) or link trad-protected features.

 

Fixed protection is vital to many classic routes. For example, without bolts on Merci me (or Cruel Shoes) the Grand Wall, with its stellar trad pitches, would not be climbable for people unwilling to free solo 5.8 500ft off the deck.

 

If you only want to climb cracks that's fine, but you're limiting yourself to a pretty narrow set of climbing experiences.

 

All excellent points, Rad. I can't argue with any of them.

 

But i was mostly responding to Kevbone's post, referring to the line as "his work" and hoping he "created" a classic.

 

If someone puts in some work to clean a route and gets it ready for a lead, I can totally understand why they would want the FA. *I* would. BUT, I don't understand why they'd just walk away and expect everyone else to stay off while they think about it. What are they waiting for? If the route is ready, send the shit. If you can't send it, step aside. If you have to wait till the next weekend or something, take the hangers with you and hope nobody else notices yr fancy new classic.

 

I just don't understand it. I guess I'm not very respectful.

 

Maybe I just need Bill to give me an old-school beating.

[Rad]

There is no denying people gain a sense of authorship over routes, for better or worse, and that authorship may be a small and vain attempt at immortality.

 

Nonetheless, that pride in one's work is often what drives people to excellence and can lead to some great achievements. The flip side is that people who don't care about their works are probably doomed to mediocrity. In my view of humanity, these apply equally to climbing, relationships, careers, and essentially all aspects of life.

 

"If your work isn't what you love then something isn't right" - David Byrne.

 

[Bishopp66]

Does anyone know who hit the first homerun? (Maybe John Hatfield from the Cincinatti Red Stockings - 1869?) I wonder how long the other players had to bunt and leg out doubles before they could actually start swinging for the fence too?

[hafilax]

I just thought of a situation where someone else sending a route would affect my experience if I found out about it. If I thought the route was at my limit but I wasn't sure, someone sending it before me would narrow the possibilities of how hard it is and would ruin a part of the discovery process of the route. Chalk and tick marks would ruin it as well. If I didn't find out about someone sending it until after I did it wouldn't affect me.

[bwrts]

[quote=sexual_chocolate

 

btw, i don't think there is any sort of "ground up" ethic at vantage, beyond what the late bill robins tried to endorse.

 

You are wrong.

There are "still" a handfull of climbers who support ground-up ethics at Frenchmens Coulee/vantage and who have practiced such ethics.

Choss or not, cracks have been pioneered this way at FC for many generations. Sport climbs on the other hand have (to my knowledge) never been done this way at FC.

The security of a crack is way better versus hangin on some crap-rock face climb yarding loose rock off while attemping to drill in the superdense basalt.