People putting up new routes

[rat]

my opinion is grade inflation in school and on the rocks is rampant. on the few routes i've helped climb, i try to adhere to index/midnight grades for cracks and older dogtown/der/peshastin grades for slab/face. contrive-o-meter ratings can be a help.

 

filthyhank would have had to traverse quite a ways on mt. alberta to find a 4th class gully.

Edited September 10, 2008 by rat

[John Frieh]

Hey dont get me wrong... I think all the TRs and threads on here are great. If anything we need more of them (nudge nudge PP).

 

I just cant help but wonder WTF when some truly proud stuff that has been done around here doesnt end up on the newswire/climbing/etc but something, though still cool, but as nearly as impressive does get selected. Makes me wonder what the difference was... all I'm saying...

[John Frieh]

my opinion is grade inflation in school and on the rocks is rampant. on the few routes i've helped climb, i try to adhere to index/midnight grades for cracks and older dogtown/der/peshastin grades for slab/face. contrive-o-meter ratings can be a help.

 

Werd. Dont forget ice... I've seen some WI4+/5s that would be 3+ in Cody

[ivan]

this is why everything should just be rated 5.9 A2 and we can be done w/ it, no?

[wayne]

Great arguments everyone! It is all part of the great game we play. It wouldn't be as fun without the bs and the struggle we create. It is amazing that we can do it at all . Most people in this world are just trying to get near some food and merely survive. We have to go lookin for challenge!

Back on topic, I do try to take the average grade of all areas, so I may err to the softer side and I dont feel bad about that at all. I dont want anyone to be surprised or disappointed by my grades.I dont feel that my grade have been slammed at all either.

I am also a bit of a line driver. Its great to have differing opinions. People know that grades are all over the place.

[Blake]

 

I just cant help but wonder WTF when some truly proud stuff that has been done around here doesnt end up on the newswire/climbing/etc but something, though still cool, but as nearly as impressive does get selected. Makes me wonder what the difference was... all I'm saying...

 

This is an intersting point. While biking around in the San Juans last summer I randomly got a call from Erik Lambert who does the online stuff for Alpinist. He'd seen the Trip Report that Dan Hilden and I wrote on CascadeClimbers after a trip to the Gunsight range, and wanted a few pictures and a description for the website... how cool!

He told me that since Alpinist stopped printing news of new routes, they are trying to have a very active and frequently updated webpage, with user-submitted articles, weekly features, and stories about new routes. I really enjoyed the chance to write a short article, as writing (especially about mountains) is something I like to do. Dan is a photography student who was recently travelling/photographing/climbing in Peru, and was equally excited to get any experience having his photos published, even on a website read by a few thousand people. Alpinist went on to have online features about several other climbs reported here, including Darin Derinka's NW Arayete on Mt. Shuksan, Drew Brayshaw's 'Graveyard Shift' and Craig Mcgee's new climbs on Les Cornes. I don't know if Erik contacted these people, they contacted him, or everyone just used coincidental telepathy. I'm not sure why it would matter either...

 

I think it's neat that Alpinist is running news of new routes, even when they aren't some 5.13X sketchfest. The NW Arayete (III 5.8), like any route I could make it up, is far from cutting-edge. However, it sits in an incredible position, has a good story behind, and seeing it on the Alpinist Newswire inspired me to go check it out! There is no hidden conspiracy behind any of this, and nobody is ever forced to read Alpinist's site.

 

 

P.S. If we all put our Alpinist submission money together we could buy a piece of penny candy! If we had a penny...

[DirtyHarry]

I just cant help but wonder WTF when some truly proud stuff that has been done around here doesnt end up on the newswire/climbing/etc but something, though still cool, but as nearly as impressive does get selected. Makes me wonder what the difference was... all I'm saying...

 

So what's new? Some routes get publicity and media attention and others that are just as worthy, or more so, don't. Who cares? I hope that's not why you climb.

[ivan]

i've enjoyed the past few weeks climbing lines that were done decades ago but haven't been done in so long now that they're basically in FA condition

[billcoe]

 

Ujahn, Ivan, Joseph Jim and Hanmi (white helmet) looking at the majestic and at this point in time yet unclimbed 30' Northern Passage Upper 5.4+ FA Bill Coe, Eric Lindthwaite, and Jim Opdycke

 

I think I have pics at work, try to post pics later.

 

 

 

[chris]

I wonder if...

1. Most of the 5-fun climbs, especially those easily seen and or accessible, have already been climbed, and...

2. The most direct lines up the faces and aretes have also been climbed - often at 5.11 and up grades?

 

Perhaps we're now "filling in the gaps?" Climbing the not-so-often seen features, the smaller walls, and the grades are accordingly falling somewhere in the middle?

 

Also, I think the common grade has lifted too. When the elite climbed 5.12, what were the commoners climbing at? And now that the elite are climbing 5.14, shouldn't the commoner standard lift as well? Seems to me it should. It seems that most of my friends in Bishop and Lake Tahoe are quite comfortably in the 5.10-5.11 range. Shouldn't the majority of the new routes reflect that?

[G-spotter]

When Jeremy Frimer and the boys went to the Miyar Valley in India they climbed a 1,000m long ridge at 5.10a, and retreated 50m from the top and called it a new route and named the peak and everything.

 

The Grmjsoviks* from Slovenia (* I bet I spelled that wrong) were there the next year and climbed the whole thing to the top and gave it a new name and a new grade: VII- which is Euro for 10c.

 

Jeremy got all pissy in the Alpinist comments and said something like "your line isn't new and you didn't make the first ascent and anyway it is 5.9+ not 10c"

 

Tanja Grmjsovik responded politely to him "The crux was the last pitch that you did not climb."

 

Anyways I don't know what that has to do with first ascents in the Cascades but it is a pretty funny story.

 

Another contrary example from the Andes is The Slabs of Koriancha route on La Esfinge that was rated 13a by Bubu and Silvo Karo on the FA and last I heard was downgraded to 12a or 11d depending on who you talk to.

 

I think there's a lot more inflation in the overall grades in these parts, be it I-VI or F to ED+, than there is in number grades.

 

I know when I climbed Graveyard Shift I was surprised when Alpinist asked me to write something up for them because as a route it was no big deal. Several year prior when they didn't have such a news-hungry website we sent them some details from Talchako and they said something in reply like " a new 30 pitch V 5.8 AI3 is not hard enough for us, you should have done a sitstart to bump the grade up and make it newsworthy"

[Sol]

I know What is part of my life is Sol's many trip reports inspiring Dick to post all the way from Spain. No editor just another story around the camp fire. I won't be going there. Not enough free time and honestly cragging is what I dream about. But the psych is so infectious that I've been thinking all day about checking out my latest fantasy this weekend.

 

That's awesome PP.

 

What a great thread you guys.

 

Mr. Klenke, though not always the case, the classic 5.8's and 5.9's have, for the most part, been climbed. And if they haven't, one would have to be pretty damn sure before reporting a FA, or the shit would hit the fan.

 

What's left for the new generation is the harder steeper lines in between, and really that's the type of climbing I am looking for. Lines that rival astroman, the rostrum, with no chalk, no bolts, in my backyard, that will inspire me to push my climbing to the next level. Freeing these lines takes a lot of work; you can send a dirty 5.9 without too much effort, onsight, but alpine 5.12 with a layer of kitty litter is a whole diferent story.

 

As far as lines go, choose your own adventure. I personally have pretty high standards for aesthetics and prefer the clean harder line to the often dirtier and easier line. At the beginning of our attempt on the distal phalanx, blake pondered going out ramps to the left or right of the crest, and i pretty much shut him down. There was a clean line directly up the crest which yielded a 5.l0b pitch over a roof, then a 5.9 step, and later an awesome 10a up finger cracks directly on the arete. It's the same line I would take again, like I said, choose your own adventure.

 

John, your kinda a player-hater. My wife occasionally reads some of my threads on cc.com and she couldn't help but wonder what the deal between you and blake was. i told her my geuss was that after you bailed on the gunsight traverse with blake a few times he went and sent without you and things have been a little tense since.

 

About self promotion. Sure, blake has promoted what I feel are completely newsworthy ascents in the past few years. And you know what he got in return: free gear yo! And i think that's just the shit. All my gear is falling to peices, today i have to cut up my blown-out 6 month old harness, and somehow buy a new one with the scraps of my $900 a month income. He inspired me, this winter i plan on applying for some climbing grants, hopefully getting some articles published, and promoting myself and my vision for hard cascades free climbing.

 

When i scrub my projects and hopefully send them, i'm going to spray heavily in the hopes that someones else will climb them and they won't get covered in lichen again, lost to the ages; the lines are far too quality for that.

 

Awesome season you guys, to all, and lets start training hard for the next one!

 

 

 

 

[powderhound]

I like these new route reports too. But it seems odd to me that they always seem to be 5.10 this or 5.10 that. It's as if those that put up the route don't feel like they're going to get the respect of their peers if it's just a 5.8 or 5.9. So they may make the crux pitch harder than the easiest line on it just to bump up their final rating. But there might well be insufficient detail in their topo for the next persons who go up there. The second ascensionists might get to the crux pitch and do the easier line and ask why the higher rating.

 

Anyway, it's just an observation.

 

Can you offer any direct observations of this, where you would like to downgrade someones FA in the Alpine? I would like it if someone went back to give lines a 2nd and let me know that either my grades are on or off in their opinion.

 

It could also be that climbers are feeling safer and more dialed in the mountains and therefore feel they can push it a bit more. This allows them to take a line that they might find more interesting and difficult rather than the traditional path of least resistance.

[powderhound]

Can you cite examples of routes where you think the FA's deliberately took a harder line up a feature that would otherwise have been climbed at a lower grade? On larger mountain routes I bet this is relatively rare. Sure, in the case of Mr. Monkey's recent climb they may have climbed 5.10 where they could have traversed off the ridge and found a 4th class gully, but is this a contrivance or were they simply climbing the ridge as they found it and their abilities allowed?

 

I have on a couple occasions taken a line I thought to be harder, because I find 5.10 climbing more often than not better than 5.6 climbing. The 5.10+ splitter on Royalty Ridge could have been bypassed but we couldn't pass it up, and we felt that it would be well within our ability. Two days prior I had spent four days at the city of rocks and this pitch is a bit harder than "heartbreaker."

Edited September 11, 2008 by powderhound