whatever happened to onsight climbing???

[chriss]

It's a short 5.9!!! WTF?!? If you can't get that in a few tries without putting chalk marks to point to every hold and foot placement you need to just stick to climbing in a gymn.

So did you get it in a few tries? Just because someone can't lead a 5.9+ clean doesn't mean they should stay in the gym.

[anticlmber]

if you dont know what an eyesore is, or what the accepted methods, or the respectable thing to do is than.
A) dont do want you are unsure of
B)if you do doit undo it afterwards(if it cant be undone dont do it)
C) if you need to tick excessivly, you are in over your head and cant multi-task very well. pick some other activity like sitting in front of the tv.
D) this isnt the gym out here, tape and tick are one in the same. ticking the "ONLY" hold in a section is just complete and utter bullshit.
if you are working a route you should learn where the holds are. if you must tick scrub them off. or do you need a big ass tick on your ass so you know where to wipe. put one on your junk and stay at home pulling it.

[Meadows]

i got on a route this weekend that Meadows offered to let me try to get the FA on so i was thinking "sweet, a real onsight attempt" but when i got on it i realized that it already had tick marks even though it was a whole 5 hours old

Some others got on it - those tickmarks, I learned, in developing are useful in learning which direction the line should go and where we should place bolts.

I think I'll go down this weekend and try to get the FA.

[rhunt]

I too love tick marks and don't at all feel guilty about ticking holds and I rarely bush them off. Personally I think a chalked cliff face is a beautiful thing. Seeing a chalked up face with bolts get my blood going and makes me excited about climbing. If you think there is a difference between a chalked hold and tick mark, I don't agree, to me they are the same thing. They do the same thing for me. A tick mark tells me where to grab a hold just a much as the darkest part of a chalked hold tells me where to grab a hold. It's all the same. I have climbed way too long at the RRC for me to experience a true pure onsight. I think if y'all really feel that strongly about tick marks you should re-think using chalk.

[Meadows]

Thankfully I don't have to tick because people like Rhunt and Pigsteak did already ... (thanks to the old guys!)

[rhunt]

welcome!

[Meadows]

BTW, for future tickers, Wes taught me something recently about responsible ticking: tick above the hold for feet and below the hold for hands. I think he got spit off a "flash" attempt for irresponsible ticking.

Tick responsibly!!!

[Paul3eb]

on american dream there's a big "R" on one of the jugs.. it's not like it's even an option for a left hand.. it's just ridiculous. hopefully the people who put it there did that as a joke because if they did it'd be pretty funny.

[tomdarch]

Some of the ticking at the Red does seem pretty silly. I totally get ticks at other areas - like a tick indicating a divot on a sloper, a tick for where to slap around an arette for some tiny crimp, or a tick to indicate a foot that's hidden from above. But most of these are fairly high-grade issues - situations where slapping or poking a toe a centimeter or so off means that you've missed the hold. The Red is freaking jug-o-rama, especially 10 and below. I'm trying to think if I've ever actually ticked a hold at the Red - I suspect not. I'm also trying to think if I've really benefited from tick marks at the Red. I'd bet that more often, I have problems on onsight/flash attempts when there are ticks on bad or nonsense holds. (Yes, I know that other people are going to use different sequences, but I've gone for ticked holds that just didn't make sense for anyone). I wonder if the below/hand, above/foot thing would have helped, but I doubt it.

When I'm trying a route for the first time, I tend to put a healthy distrust in the existing tick marks, so I don't think that they help or hurt onsight attempts beyond the normal gobs of chalk.

[Alan Evil]

It's a short 5.9!!! WTF?!? If you can't get that in a few tries without putting chalk marks to point to every hold and foot placement you need to just stick to climbing in a gymn.

So did you get it in a few tries? Just because someone can't lead a 5.9+ clean doesn't mean they should stay in the gym.

I got it with one fall on lead. My point is putting tick marks on that little bitty route is ridiculous. The kind of people that use tick marks are the kind that will do a route until they have it "dialed in." I can't imagine it taking more than a few tries to memorize the moves if it were perfectly clean so why leave it smeared with chalk? This is, after all, a national forest and a wilderness area, not a gymn. The ideal of "leave no trace" applies to EVERYONE that uses the Red, not everyone but sport climbers.

The other thing about the marks on Scabies is they didn't make much sense. It was like someone was saying to themselves, "Well, I might be able to put my toe out here so I'll mark that, and then up here since I'm seven feet tall I'll be able to use this for a hold..." Of course there's so much chalk along the edge of that flake you'd never be able to tell what was a marked hold and what wasn't but I stand by my argument that tick marking that route is stupid. If you can't "dial it in" in three or four runs, tick marking it isn't going to help. It's only got like four bolts on it and can't be more than 25 feet tall.

Personally I hate being halfway up a route, searching for the next move, and look over and see a mark next to a feature I would've tried in a moment anyway. Whoever you are that left that mark there, you suck. It's a reason to stick to trad climbing since trad climbers respect the purity of climbing free. That and because so many sport climbers suck. That's right. You know who you are. You suck.