Sport vs Trad

[kevbone]

I'd be completely happy just the 85% that are wholly dependent on bolts

 

Joseph. Would you say that I am dependent on bolts?

[ivan]

Aren't you ashamed of yourselves for entering this horrible wasteland?

it's only horrible if you're not huffing raw ether and amyl nitrates while adding yer own inanity to the spray-stream

 

Is that from one of the synoptic Gospels? Maybe, Acts?

one of the vedas i think - i forget the original sanskrit wording

[pope]

"Sport climbing is the only way to get strong, and that justifies our trail of trash."

 

 

What would Johnny say?

[kevbone]

 

 

No doubt, I've seen them nailed on the wall at Ozone.

not that kev needs defenders, but have you done his "methrage" route out there joe? an interesting trad counterpoint to the bolts...

 

Ivan. Bryan and I completed the first pitch to Methrage a couple of month ago. FA's still going up at the zone. JH. No bolts were added. Its all gear. Now you can to it in one pitch. Its starts in the corner to the right of the first pitch of route 66.

[kevbone]

"Sport climbing is the only way to get strong, and that justifies our trail of trash."

 

 

What would Johnny say?

 

he would say "hey look. I can pink point anything"!

[ivan]

 

 

No doubt, I've seen them nailed on the wall at Ozone.

not that kev needs defenders, but have you done his "methrage" route out there joe? an interesting trad counterpoint to the bolts...

 

Ivan. Bryan and I completed the first pitch to Methrage a couple of month ago. FA's still going up at the zone. JH. No bolts were added. Its all gear. Now you can to it in one pitch. Its starts in the corner to the right of the first pitch of route 66.

is it still a quasi-choss suicide route?

[Ponderosa]

Be Miles Davis!

 

Had climbing been of interest, the last thing thing Miles would have been is a sport climber and the venue he'd least have been interested in would be a gym - Miles was all about risking.

 

And the mere idea that there is anything avante garde about the riskless entertainment climbing the suburban hordes have glommed onto is just the sort of self-fulfilling delusion that attracts them in the first place.

 

I can't agree. My guess is he might have dabbled in all aspects of climbing as he did with music through the decades. One thing, he may have only been interested in ground-up, flash attempts...though, he may have had no problem with stepping or pulling on gear. Herbie said (& Chick told me the same) Miles was all for woodshedding, but he didn't want you to bring any pre-rehearsed moves/licks to the gig: you play the moment...often (for Miles), pre-dosed.

[kevbone]

No....actually the first pitch is fun and would make a good solo. Either down climb or tag a rope up the the middle anchor on Route 66 and lower.

[pope]

One thing, he may have only been interested in ground-up, flash attempts...though, he may have had no problem with stepping or pulling on gear. Herbie said (& Chick told me the same) Miles was all for woodshedding, but he didn't want you to bring any pre-rehearsed moves/licks to the gig: you play the moment...often (for Miles), pre-dosed.

 

Exactly, which is why Miles would have quickly grown disinterested in sport climbing, the musical equivalent of playing Come to Jesus in whole notes. Allow me to illustrate:

 

Sport Climbing =

 

 

 

Trad Climbing =

 

 

Any questions?

[pope]

"Sport climbing is the only way to get strong, and that justifies our trail of trash."

 

 

What would Johnny say?

 

he would say "hey look. I can pink point anything"!

 

 

You should research the history behind this climb:

[olyclimber]

too bad spray doesn't = reality! then someone might be winning this battle. else wise we have to rely on what is really happening. sucks to be on the losing side of things, eh?

[Ponderosa]

One thing, he may have only been interested in ground-up, flash attempts...though, he may have had no problem with stepping or pulling on gear. Herbie said (& Chick told me the same) Miles was all for woodshedding, but he didn't want you to bring any pre-rehearsed moves/licks to the gig: you play the moment...often (for Miles), pre-dosed.

 

Exactly, which is why Miles would have quickly grown disinterested in sport climbing, the musical equivalent of playing Come to Jesus in whole notes. Allow me to illustrate:

 

Sport Climbing =

 

 

 

Trad Climbing =

 

 

Any questions?

Do you normally choose to so glibly hang your ass out to be cut by posing to pontificate on subjects you're ignorant of? Jesus, man, you're not at home where you can answer the door with one hand while scratching your crack through your thread-bare boxers with the other.

[pope]

"Do you normally choose to so glibly hang your ass out to be cut by posing to pontificate on subjects you're ignorant of? Jesus, man, you're not at home where you can answer the door with one hand while scratching your crack through your thread-bare boxers with the other."

 

Sounds like you're getting ready to say something. Well, go ahead. Get on with it.

[Ponderosa]

First, foster more than a casual awareness of the player you posit upon, play jazz in an ensemble steady for a few years, re-read your statement then, wait for it.

 

Your small appliance light bulb may burn a shine of cognition.

[pope]

First, foster more than a casual awareness of the player you posit upon, play jazz in an ensemble steady for a few years, re-read your statement then, wait for it.

 

Your small appliance light bulb may burn a shine of cognition.

 

Sounds like you're getting ready to say something. Well, go ahead. Get on with it.

 

[olyclimber]

come one..replace your tag line with that!

 

anyway, busy day sprayers! congrats on making it through another sunny day in paradise.

[Raindawg]

Aren't you ashamed of yourselves for entering this horrible wasteland?

it's only horrible if you're not huffing raw ether and amyl nitrates while adding yer own inanity to the spray-stream

 

Is that from one of the synoptic Gospels? Maybe, Acts?

 

"Acts" is:

1) not one of the synoptic Gospels, and

2) not one of the Gospels.

 

So....go on-line and get your GED before spewing out your Biblical ignorance and spouting out big-boy words like "synoptic".

[JosephH]

I'd be completely happy just the 85% that are wholly dependent on bolts

 

Joseph. Would you say that I am dependent on bolts?

 

Not at all. I know if you had to climb and couldn't clip bolts you'd have your gear out and be trad climbing.

[JosephH]

That said sport climbing is a fundamental part of how I train for alpine climbing (the type of climbing that interests me the most). Yes one can still be an amazing alpine climber without clipping bolts ever but it takes a lot more time… something I don’t have much of. So I clip bolts… but I also trad climb, solo easy routes, dry tool choss, “ice climb” trees and lift weights occasionally It’s what works for me given how much time I have to devote to climbing. Bottom line: bolts have helped make me be a better than the climber I would be if I never ever clipped them.

 

I've always figured you were an alpine guy to whom getting to the top of things often matters. I can understand all the rest simply feeding that as a means to an end. Cool. My gig was and is completely different in that alpine holds zero interest for me partly because I'm a sandstone and basalt guy, partly because I grew up in Chicago and hate the cold, and last because I'm mainly about gymnastic movement and roofs and don't care much about getting to the top of things.

 

My biggest concern WRT to bolts is bolts in the mountains.

 

A reasonable concern, it will be interesting to check back in ten years and see how they faired.

 

That’s where I stand. I challenge each of you to do the same.

 

Not really my deal, I find sport climbing boring and I'm not interested in the hordes it generates and promotes.

 

PS: and I think we as PNW climbers have much much bigger things to worry about than bolts

 

I'm sure there were more important things to worry about than the buffalo back in the day as well.

[JosephH]

hey joseph...have you climbed in the european limestone venues??? If so, what are your impressions/experiences???

 

I haven't, but the sandstone version of them is what I came up on in bumfuck SoIll on navajo-like overhangs and big roofs. We were doing kneebars, full no-hands rests on heel hooks, etc. back in '76 on steep routes some of which were uprated by others over the years to .12s and 13s. We could have bolted them but were were totally LNT and on that type of steep, it's actually harder to get a route on top rope because it's impossible to dog on steep - you fail, you fly - no ifs, ands, or buts, and zero time to 'work the moves'. Really it's more like DWS than leading. And we also had far, far overhung roofs where the TR didn't kick in until mid-crux and they also had lots of trees out in front of them to hit; TRs could be pretty fucking dangerous. Ditto for some of our highball buildering and bouldering hijinx. Both engendered broken wrists and backs of folks attempting to second those lines and problems after we left town. And we also led a bunch of stout overhangs and roofs on gear, one memorable in particular was a big roof to an way overhanging offwidth. We did it clean with two wank CMI IBeams in the offwidth, never talked much about it, and a decade later it was done with six rap bolts on the offwidth, renamed, called 'desperate', and uprated two grades by a strong party who never new we were there. It was obscure and solitary enough that another decade could have passed and someone else could have gotten the same FA exprience we had if the second party simply hadn't bolted it. Even with the bolts to my knowledge it never saw a third ascent.

[StevenSeagal]

Well there's ethics and then there's style. Style has to do with choices one makes during a climb which cannot be detected by the next party to ascend the route. If you wish to dog on the rope and pull on gear while you're ampin' up for the big "send", that's generally a stylistic choice. In other words, choosing aid climbing as your mode probably won't affect the next guy, not unless you then claim a first free ascent without reporting your poor style.

 

 

Style actually is a mental construct that has largely to do with one's personal aesthetics and one's need to project them onto others. Pretty simple.

 

Failing an onsight ascent, one is left with the choice of practicing the route by lowering off and trying the whole thing again, or staying up there and working the difficult section specifically. Either way is practice, projecting, rehearsing- and I think both are valid. If someone dogs up a route and pulls on gear and then claims a free ascent- well that doesn't count, but whoever said it did? Are you saying this is a common thing? Regardless of what form of practice occurred, I don't know anyone who calls a free ascent anything other than climbing from the ground up without weighting the rope or pulling on gear. I'm sure we can agree on that definition, therefore your fixation on how people get to that point is perplexing to me.

 

Need we also wear striped tube socks and gay running shorts? Because at one time, those were pretty damn cool.

 

How? I'm sure your answer is that sport climbing is the secret to their strength, a point which is frequently made. Really? Then shouldn't every bolt chaser be capable of 5.13? I know more than a few who don't come close. Furthermore, elite climbers achieved tremendous levels of fitness before sport climbing arrived, not to mention the ability to climb hard routes with difficult protection.

 

Sport climbing won't make everyone a 5.13 climber, but if you're going to assert that it hasn't helped raise the technical standards of climbing over the past 25 years, then that is just laughable.

 

Sport climbing is my least favorite mode- I prefer alpine and trad-but my experience with it is an improvement of strength, agility, technique, and sometimes it's just a fun and unstressful day out on nice steep rock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[RuMR]

Last I recall seeing Heinous Cling it looked to be a matter of safe, completely clean falls. Hell, I've done .12 top ropes that are more dangerous than that with the side benefit of being impossible to dog on.

 

in the era of the giants when you bestrode the earth with your seven league boots and forearms like popeye. them were the days, i tell ye. climbers today got no balls and is weak as kittens. bolts sap a man's strength, make him into a womanish creature and a pitiable sight. the whole world should just give up climbing and line up to watch the mighty JosephH and the indomitable Raindawg talk us to death with their endless gobbledy-gook and senile confabulations...

i just sprayed coffee out of both nostrils!!

[Ponderosa]

Aren't you ashamed of yourselves for entering this horrible wasteland?

 

it's only horrible if you're not huffing raw ether and amyl nitrates while adding yer own inanity to the spray-stream

 

Is that from one of the synoptic Gospels? Maybe, Acts?

 

"Acts" is:

1) not one of the synoptic Gospels, and

2) not one of the Gospels.

 

So....go on-line and get your GED before spewing out your Biblical ignorance and spouting out big-boy words like "synoptic".

 

Two separate questions, two separate thoughts. You made an erroneous inference...which, I'm guessing, is becoming a more frequent occurrence for you.

 

Your, and Pope's, brains are becoming as soft as sacks of dead mice.

[billcoe]

Nor do you fully understand my position on bolts (the short version: they should be rarely used.)

 

This is a radically different position than I have thought you earlier exposed. I had thought you had earlier postulated a NO BOLT philosophy. My apologies, I obviously misread something.

 

May I also add: those who attack your profession do so because they are not able to intellectually formulate a valid argument against your bolt position so they attack you personally instead: in lieu of an actual discussion on the subject. This only shows that they either have weak ideas or weak minds.

 

I will admit to you that I found Ivans point interesting and humorous, i.e. that you spend your life/vocation unearthing, preserving, cataloging (and glorifying?) some of the largest scale destruction and manipulation of rock by humans ever seen on this earth. Big respect for what you do for a living from me. I'm not attacking you at all over it, but you have to admit that the comparison of your attacks on bolting, which as you can see from my earlier pictures of the Apron bolt replacement project, the bolts cannot be seen except from close up and often you can't even see the next one from the one you just clipped: vs some of the Egyptian "royal works" projects visible from the next planetary object over -is a stark and interesting contrast?

 

Have you ever considered or reflected on this contrasting thought Don?

 

Regards to all:

 

 

For myself, there are places where bolted lines are not appropriate at all. And many of those areas have taken steps to control it. However, places like El potrero chico have no cracks and great cliffs and great climbing. For myself, I'm glad there are routes there and places like that. I find it interesting that uber clean/ethical guys like Kurt Smith, who showed up at Smith in the 80s and did a ground up FA of a 5.12 to slap the locals in the face over their thoughts on rap bolting, recognized this and later did many rap bolted lines at El Potrero.

 

 

 

You can't even see the bolts unless you take a close up shot. I don't understand the horror over having routes here myself.

[AlpineK]

Personally I think there are a variety of crags in the State of Washington. Each crag needs it's own ethical rules.

 

Castle Rock has traditionally been a ground up climbing area, however part of the reason it's such a great crag is logging (Loggers Ledge). Climbers caused a large amount of environmental impact to the crag when they showed up originally. Logging improved the crag for climbing at the expense of removing some old trees.

 

You could also look at old pictures of Index. Climbers removed a lot of habitat by scrubbing cracks and moss.

 

Both of these are predominantly trad climbing areas, yet climbers still have an impact on them. Bolts do last longer than the effects of cleaning, so they are more controversial.

 

In the end specific crags need route setting guidelines. It's great that DDD at Castle Rock got chopped since it didn't fit with the other routes at the crag, but I wouldn't say the same thing about climbs at Exit 38.

 

All crags, sport or trad, are just human interfaces with nature. We benefit from getting out on the rock, but by being there, especially on a regular basis, we will have impact (cause damage).