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Lena: Your opinion is probably more accurate if you are talking about the average grade of the hardest 5 routes on redpoint versus the hardest 5 on pinkpoint. nobody uses that term anymore but there it is.

caribe wrote: I think there are quite a few of these peculiar notions in the climbing community.

as the grade goes up the cost of hanging the draws on send also goes up.

My instinct on this is no. My guess is it is related to the climber not the grade. For example. Adam Ondra onsights at very high level but he is willing to give it a go hanging draws. If the high grade made it too difficult for him to hang draws he would not have bothered trying he would have just to crush second go.

Lena is tiptoeing around what I think to be true.

If you are an onsight climber. Hanging draws makes little to no difference.

If, on the other hand, Red Pointing is your game even the thought of hanging your own draws is nauseating.

I've not assumed different 'classes' of climbers; on-sighters, red-pointers, projecters...wtf?'ers. just the basic fact that ANY exertion cost some energy and however small the effort (or efficient the clip) there will/should be some difference. i'm not saying that the difference can't get blurred to oblivion by the broad variations of opinion over the style of climb and grade.

As an on-sighter/one-attempt-per-day climber I prefer to hang my draws. On the occasion that I don't I tend to by instinct reach for a draw on my harness when it comes time to clip, and that bobble costs more than hanging the draws. It's like stomping on the floor of an automatic looking for the clutch when you're used to driving a stick.

Last time I checked draws had weight! Unless you want to argue that weight is not a factor in climbing, then hanging the draws is definitely harder.

Climbing on a 9.2 rope saves you about 3 grams per meter or about 0.1 Kg on a 100 ft route compared to a 9.5. A Petzl Spirit is almost 40 g so a full quickdraw costs ya about 100 g or the same as you save with skinny rope. Ondra ain't climbing on a 9.5 or 10.1 rope for his critical red point burn on La Dura Dura or Change. He sure as hell isn't hanging the draws. Weight matters.

I believe the weight thing is kind of trivial... I've taken pre red point shits that weigh more that 6 draws (it's not like your carrying a full trad rack with you)... The extra move to hang the draw is what I believe makes a route (at or close to your red point limit) feel more difficult...

I'm not even a sport climber, and I know the answer to this one. Of course it's harder to hang your own draws, because it's extra work, both in terms of weight (which may or may not be terribly significant) and in terms of the extra time and effort required, which is likely more significant. It's science!