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Ok. So what percentage of sport climbs in the red do you think you could headpoint safely? Rather than 50/50 trad/sport we could chop the Red down to 75/25. Hell, maybe 90/10. It's the new Red River Revolution.

So if you fail on an a trad onsight or flash attempt and then try for the redpoint you should no longer consider it trad? Crazy talk.

A Red River Revolution? Gonna piss a lot of people off; but would probably lend relevance to the brown point debate.

it's already been determined that sporties at the red consider it a redpoint send with the draws pre placed. it'd be no different pre placing the cams and nuts. jsut rap in, place em, and call it a red point. problem solved.

pkanenen, are you saying an onsite of a sport route, hanging the draws, would be traditional climbing? it'd be ground up, taking your gear with ya?

or if you clip a fixed pin on a trad line, then you have actually now climbed a mixed route, which makes you the worst of all worlds.....

pkananen wrote:When these discussions start happening, it's time to drop the 'trad' moniker. You may be placing gear, but you're no longer climbing in a 'traditional' style. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I personally don't have a desire to headpoint, and don't care if others do, but at that point there isn't much left that is 'traditional'. Then again, the same could be said when you come back for the redpoint attempt after you've led it once without a send.

Wow, I guess Beth Rodden isn't a trad climber then.

Say I want to do a new trad route. Is it ok to pre-place the gear and call it a FA trad climb?

pigsteak wrote:it's already been determined that sporties at the red consider it a redpoint send with the draws pre placed. it'd be no different pre placing the cams and nuts. jsut rap in, place em, and call it a red point. problem solved.

Right.

Just like all the FA's that "sent" Charlie at the Chocolate Factory. It is not that any of them couldn't have sent that route in better style. It is that cleaning and F'ing around with gear is a little tedious when you are gang banging a route.

I make a distinction between trad climbing and gear climbing or gear routes. Most of the trad routes at the red are gear routes. Gear routes are routes that are a single pitch, take removable gear as protection and have a bolted anchor. Many of the gear routes at the red will go with mostly all cams to a bolted anchor which is pretty much sport climbing. IMO trad climbs are usually multi pitch and involve at some point building your own anchor and probably rapping to get back down.

just my 2 cents

SCIN wrote:

pkananen wrote:When these discussions start happening, it's time to drop the 'trad' moniker. You may be placing gear, but you're no longer climbing in a 'traditional' style. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I personally don't have a desire to headpoint, and don't care if others do, but at that point there isn't much left that is 'traditional'. Then again, the same could be said when you come back for the redpoint attempt after you've led it once without a send.

Wow, I guess Beth Rodden isn't a trad climber then.

First of all, when I climb a route and place gear, I call it 'trad' no matter if it was onsight/redpoint/ground up/whatever. So I use the term to just describe the protection I used. At the same time, if I've been on the route top to bottom a hundred times before I redpoint, I recognize that I didn't exactly send it in a 'traditional' style. I may be placing gear, but as you said, it's plug and chug whether sport or trad. My point is that most terms in climbing are to some degree contrived, and the difference that most people make between sport and trad at the Red comes down to what their protection type is and what the holds are like, not how they approach the climb. Again, I don't really care what style or ethics people use, as I have no problem working a route and hanging on gear myself. I just admit there won't be anything that holds to 'traditional' climbing when I go back and send Windy Corner someday after hanging on it yesterday.

As for Beth, sure, she's a trad climber. I just wouldn't say she sent Meltdown in a traditional style, but that doesn't bother me.

so then would on-sighting a sport route count as a trad send?

reasons being:
a) ground-up no pre-inspection
2) one shot that's it and then you lower to try again
7) you are only using the gear that is there. (i can carry 8 #6s up subatomic fingerlock and not use them so that's still trad, right?)
yellow) if its a bolted crack (gasp!) an i lead it on the bolts would that be trad and if not then does clipping into bolts with my cam still attached to the biner make it a sport/trad route?

naked free soloing.