anticlmber wrote:
there's no cracks you do for "fitness"??
nice subtle spray.
Sure, I spent years training exclusively on cracks, running lap after lap on all your least favorite sizes, and never going to the climbing gym. However, I'm pretty sure that Charlie never did. Just a guess, but a safe one.
Warming up on 10d is spray??? Maybe in 1968.
"Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."
-Tyler Durden
I don't really care about the points. I started this thread from a casual observation, not from a desire to see my "red river climbing" point total go up. I like the spray list more for the easy ability to keep track of what climbs I've been on. Although I did go sport climbing on Saturday, so I may be talking out my ass.
One argument I can't let go is that the proper technique makes climbing different disciplines equally challenging for the same grade. At the extreme case, this can be taken to said: climbng a 5.10a offwidth, with the proper technique, is as easy as climbing a 5.10a pocketed sport jug line.
I'm going to be a douch bag and quote Royal Robbins Rockcraft:
Of all the free climbing techniques, jamming is the most difficult to learn; first because it is strenuous and more important because it is totally foreign to our experience. Cling holds are unerstandable. Here is something one can grab. But jamming must be deliberately learned and fostered.
Part of my definition of what makes something difficult or not is how much effort must be spent in order to learn how to do it. SCIN, 512OW, Royal Robbins and other have said that the pulling motions on jugs are more natural movements than that required on most trad climbs. Since you have to spend more time learning and perfecting jamming movements (and chimney techniques), they are therefore more difficult. Once you have mastered them thay may feel as easy. But those of you claiming equality for sport and trad lines are ignoring the difficulty of developing those skills. Marmalade may be 5.9, but only to someone who has put in significant effort in learning the appropriate methods for climbing a fist to fist stack crack. Almost anyone fit can get up a 5.9 sport on their first day of climbing due to the natural motion of the pulling. The significant effort of learning techniques outside of your normal experience is a major part what makes trad climbing more difficult.
I've ben an engineering student for eight years now and am about to finish my PhD dissertation. If I look back to the material I learned as a junior, such as partial differential equations, thermodynamics, signals and systems, etc, I find much of the material to be "easy" due to my experience. But only because I went through the extremeley "difficult" process of learning it in the first place. It was hard as hell the first time through. You can't discount the experience. Tell someone in calc 2 that it's easy because you've completed calc 5. Anyone would say you're an asshole. 5.12 climbers (of any discipline) saying a 5.9 is easy are essentially doing the same thing.
512OW, if you can send the inhibitor in tennis shoes and still think it is easy, maybe you wouldn't mind teaching me to do the same. I'm climb about 5.9 trad onsite, but am really weak on wide technique and thin technique. I've found breaking into the ten range difficult. So far I've taught myself, but could obviously use some help. Usual offers of beers, pizza, belay bitch, apply. Unfortunately I am not a cute 22 year old girl.
absolutsugarsmurf wrote:
I think a sport line is more "defined" than a trad line .... I personally agree, that a crack is a more clear line than a sport climb.
I do trust bolts. I'd rather fall on a bolt.......... stupid as that may be.
This could be fixed be re-assesing the route grades by today's extended YDS............. I am not advocating that happen though.
Not only do I not agree with many of your insights. You do not seem to agree with the logic.
One argument I can't let go is that the proper technique makes climbing different disciplines equally challenging for the same grade. At the extreme case, this can be taken to said: climbng a 5.10a offwidth, with the proper technique, is as easy as climbing a 5.10a pocketed sport jug line.
You hit it on the head. This is exactly the point of the grading system. Have you notice? No where on earth is there a different grading system for a safe sport route compared to a safe offwidth? It is because they are very much comparable. Do these grades feel the same to me? No. I will be the first person to say a 5.12 offwidth is next to imposible for me. I can climb any 5.12 sport route any day of the week. Why? Because that is all I train on. I have been pulling on holds 4 days a week for a long time. Just because I can't do it doesn't make it harder than it really is. A 5.12 is a 5.12.
I think Royal Robbins is right. Climbing must be deliberately "learned and fostered".
As to your arguement that it takes longer to learn. Sure, for me it took longer to learn. So what? Think of it like a trick. The point of a trick is for it to look a certain way. Another point of the trick is that everyone doesn't know how it is performed. Is the trick "hard" to perform? Maybe, maybe not. Once you figure out how it is performed you are on the road to mastering that trick. Once you have mastered the trick or say 5.8 handjaming then you can tell how hard it is.
absolutsugarsmurf wrote:
I've ben an engineering student for eight years now and am about to finish my PhD dissertation. If I look back to the material I learned as a junior, such as partial differential equations, thermodynamics, signals and systems, etc, I find much of the material to be "easy" due to my experience. But only because I went through the extremeley "difficult" process of learning it in the first place. It was hard as hell the first time through. You can't discount the experience. Tell someone in calc 2 that it's easy because you've completed calc 5. Anyone would say you're an asshole. 5.12 climbers (of any discipline) saying a 5.9 is easy are essentially doing the same thing.
Beautiful. Finally. Here it is. You get it.
Is Calc 2 still Calc 2?
In other words is 5.10 still 5.10 regardless if it is trad or sport? You bet your ass.
the benefit of placing your own gear, as was pointed out to be the other day by a couple of the more accomplished traddies in the red, after relating the story of my first whipper on to gear *ahem* yasmeen *ahem* and *ahem* OW, is as follows....
you know exactly where your gear has been, who has placed it (you), how many whips it has had on it, how it is placed, it has NEVER endured the freeze/thaw cycles that all the bolts have to go through, and they dont hang out in the sun/wind/rain all day, so what is there to be more sketched about?
i am not the most experienced trad climber, but i have done enough to know that a bomber C3 or C4 #3 is as good as a bolt...you can pull a truck motor off of those cams...
all of this makes absolute sense in my mind....
the only diffrence between sport and trad is your own ability to navigate the rock...climbing is climbing...
sorry to freak you out, but i have a chronic kidney disease, and JR for some reason was getting confused by my old name, so i made it a little more conspicuous so as to not cause any confusion as to which dave I am...i am kidney dave, or KB to the people who know me (stands for kidney boy)
