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I am pretty sure trad has morphed into gear protected routes where the gear is fairly easy to remove, be it temporarily fixed or not. Sport routes should be considered bolt protected routes. And mixed routes are a combination of both sport and trad. The New has been calling the mixed routes mixed routes for a long time and they are all over the place there. It just gets too confusing whether something is trad or sport with the old way of thinking. This route is bolt protected but it is a trad climb just plain confuses me. When I did Snake Dike, I considered that a very sporty sport route but was corrected in that it was a trad route, go figure. Headpointing is just another way of training; he still stepped up and did it on lead. I would call it an impressive trad send but that is just me.

caribe wrote:Whatever Andrew did surely wasn't a sport route. Are we really going to whine about a piton? That is insane. Rehearsing on TR first . . . so what? If you come up trad route 1 as the second and later you turn around and lead trad route 1 are you going to say that you are not trad climbing? After all didn't you rehearse trad route 1 on TR as the 2nd? The nitpicking is bullshit. I don't see what AG did as anything near the slippery slope for the purist. Any purist that has a problem with it can cowboy-up and repeat the route. Andrew Gearing has established the hardest trad route in the Red to date. There is a parenthetical description to be made about every new route established anywhere. The send looked like heroic work and we can all applaud the fact this happened in our backyard.

You are saying it better than I could. "There is a parenthetical description to be made" That is exactly what we are getting at. No one is whining.

Yellow Spur in Eldo that has some fixed pins and one bolt is considered to be a trad route - http://www.mountainproject.com/v/the-ye ... /105748657
I have clipped fixed pins at Seneca and never considered that to be mixed.

Congratulations, Andrew! It warms my heart that you're putting up these bold free lines. I guess some climbers don't get it, but adventure climbing has a special appeal for those that do. As for the TR practice, there is certainly a long tradition of top-roping sketchy one pitch routes before the lead. Someone mentioned gritstone, where it's long been done, and I top-roped The Prow, Fallout and Meteor Maker in the mid seventies then lead them in the early '80s. Again, way to go!

captain static wrote:Yellow Spur in Eldo that has some fixed pins and one bolt is considered to be a trad route - http://www.mountainproject.com/v/the-ye ... /105748657
I have clipped fixed pins at Seneca and never considered that to be mixed.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The term "mixed" as it's used in the Red River Gorge makes sense only as a note on a route's protection. It makes absolutely no sense in terms of whether a route is sport or trad. Before the first sport route was ever established in America there were literally thousands of free climbs put up that employed bolts and pins for protection and none of these routes are "sport climbs". So get over it, "mixed" means mixed protection. It doesn't mean part sport/part trad.

LK Day wrote:So get over it, "mixed" means mixed protection. It doesn't mean part sport/part trad.

Amen

to make sure I am understanding, the new line is a trad line with mixed protection?

so after the pin was hammered in, andrew lowered, pulling the nestle of brassies on the way down, and then fired it off all free? I only care because i want to understand the rules of a game that so many says has no rules....

pigsteak wrote:to make sure I am understanding, the new line is a trad line with mixed protection?
so after the pin was hammered in, andrew lowered, pulling the nestle of brassies on the way down, and then fired it off all free? I only care because i want to understand the rules of a game that so many says has no rules....

That is what I gather sir. Since when are pitons sport options? Pitons are as trad as trad gets.

I completely agree LK Day.

Ok let's see where we are at so far.....

5.14, R-rated, mixed protection, headpoint. Or as LK Day would say an "adventure" climb!!!!

Nice work Andrew! Keep it up!

caribe wrote:Since when are pitons sport options? Pitons are as trad as trad gets.

The Gift at Long Wall??