RRC Archives

I'm not going to side with either side...whether or not stick clipping is good or bad...but let me tell you a story.

This weekend, I was at Jackson falls, and a girl that was with me, we'll call her Haley... was climbing Lasso the Vulture...and 11a with the crux before the first bolt. 11a is at her limit. I believe it was her first 11a she has ever tried to lead. Well, she climbed it without it being stick clipped...she ended up falling right after the first bolt. Well, she wanted to try again, ground up, so she unclipped the rope from the quickdraw, the quickdraw from the bolt...and jumped to the ground and relead it. I'm not going to say she sent it (because she didn't) but she didn't sally out...and she may be a better climber for it.

or in the hospital with a spilt spleen next time...

Just clipping a bolt at all is "sallying out".

btw, I thought the crux on lasso was at the last bolt....

pigsteak wrote: meadows, I've seen your stick clip..it easily clips the fourth bolt on any climb.

Unfortunately, it doesn't so I want to upgrade from the 3rd to the fourth.

andrew, after much forethought, I have decided to issue a ruling that is fair to all....

let's use 50 bucks as an example. the original rating is 13a. you are only able to spray and get full value if you climb it with no bolts pre clipped. every stick clipped bolt is minus one letter grade...

preclip the first, the route goes at 12d....preclip 2.....12c.....and so forth.

by my calculation, andrew gets credit for 50 bucks at 12b, and SCIN gets credit for 50 bucks at 12a.

now you two sport wienies need to sack it up and really send the route.

I'm down.

pigsteak wrote:btw, I thought the crux on lasso was at the last bolt....

A lot of sport climbers seem to claim that the 5.5 run to the top is the crux

asdf

If I have to clip more than the first bolt, then I don't attempt the red point. If I'm too afraid to do the climb, I don't do it until I'm ready for it. I climbed Wild Gift with Acer, and he soft decked with me belaying. I gave him a good catch, but he blew the third and hit his ankles. I felt bad about what happened, but I knew that he knew the risks on that clip. If you blow the third, you are likely to get injured. The two of us ended up sending the route, neither of us ever considered clipping the third from the ground. If you clipped the third, then you didn't really do the route. The clip is part of the climb, it's part of the experience of having climbed that route. Sort of like the roof over the bulge on the Gift at Longwall. Climbing the route from the ground up, clipping along the way is part of the experience of climbing that route. It's a 12a I'm very proud of having climbed. There are other 12a's that I barely remember climbing. There is something to be said about the experience of having the confidence to climb a route that you know is dangerous. It's scary, but thrilling. It's not for everyone, and most of the time it's not for me. But I remeber those moments when I had the confidence to climb those routes.