Wes wrote:Trad crack climbing isn't harder then sport at all. Just different. Anyone who says otherwise is just trying to pad their ego.
Wes
I would have to respectfuly disagree. Perhaps the moves would be of the same technical difficulty ( given similar types of climb ), but with trad you have a different set of skills you have to master. Finding and placing pro and arranging safe belays are add another level of complexity.
Also you tend to have a lot more on your mind in trad. Is that nut shitty? Is that cam starting to walk? Hey God, if you get me out of this shit I'll be a good boy ( or girl ) forever!
I think once you have a crack route wired it feels the same as a sport route you have wired. For example, Days of Rage required just as much effort as Snooker *during the redpoint*. Only during the redpoint. *Working* a hard crack is usually more difficult because you don't have an obvious sequence to follow. Sure, you follow the crack, but anyone who has done hard crack lines knows that there are extremely subtle movements involved it's usually pretty tough to figure out just where to put your fingers and which fingers to use. Whereas on a tough sport line you usually have beta from 100 people and a nice set of holds to follow.
Yo Ray jack dynomite! Listen to my beat box! Bew ch ch pff BEW ch ch pfff! Sweet!
trad is only harder because the old farts climbing on gear have sandbagged the ratings system for so long it is no longer reliable. my mentors always told me that route finding and gear placement had no bearing on the rating..is that wrong?
let me calrify that....getting a s, vs, r, or x would be partially because of the gear placements, but the actual yosemite number rating was supposed to be based purely on the difficulty of the climbing.
The British Rating has two different grades: an adjectival grading and a technical grading. The adjectival grading says something about the overall difficulty of the climb. The technical grading says something about the most difficult move of the climb. So, an easy climb with a difficult move would have a relatively low adjectival grading with a high technical rating (like E4/6c). A sustained climb with long runouts and poor pro but no real difficult technical moves then has a high adjectival rating with a low technical rating (like E7/6b).
"how ironic....now he's blind after a life of enjoying being able to see."~Homer
