RRC Archives

im lost, confused and deeply troubled....................


when did ray start defending sport over trad ?

I've always hated the glorified "trad is pure" bullshit. Nothing too pure about carrying a shit ton of new age clanky gear up a crack then rapping off of webbing.

hehe............ archives here i come !!!! i have always loved reading the old stuff over the new. anyone got any climbkentucky or kywilderness archives. this could be fun.

RRO, if you too, would start to sample the perfectly placed bolts and immmaculate chipping/scraping jobs I accomplish on my new wave, euro inspired (from the wife) cutting edge wienie sport lines, you would never, ever again beg Haas to drive 36 hours from Colorado to sample your futuristic off width trad choss piles...

There's not much PURE in drilling holes all over the rock to bring it down to one's level.

Nope. If you're truly concerned about being 100% pure you will solo. Everything else is just choosing the amount of impurities you want in your sport. Personally, it's more pure feeling climbing sport lines because you can focus simply on the movement. Redpointing a hard crack is just as pure feeling as well because I know exactly which pieces of gear to bring. The more naked I am while climbing, the more pure I feel. Why is that hard to comprehend? Bouldering feels pure as well but it's fun to get pumped and climb for more then 30 feet.

I never meant to come across as glorified "trad is pure" bullshit. I agree the free feeling of sport over trad is fun and you get to focus more on the climbing and can push the envelope of your abilities without worrying about dieing. There's just more trad climbs that force one to deal with the grade of the climb than sport climbs do. Sport climbs tend to have a bolt near the crux. Quite a few trad lines may not have any good gear near the crux. Hence, you have to be a 5.x climber to get on a 5.x trad climb. I think it just defines a 5.x climber better than say a 5.x sport route would. On a sport route you can work/hangdog a 5.x climb more easily, get the send, and call yourself a 5.x climber.

Why am I even debating this, slap me. I climb for fun.

TradMike wrote:There's not much PURE in drilling holes all over the rock to bring it down to one's level.

sort of like aid climbing eh? or leaving a sling to rap from because you couldn't meet the climb on its own terms...or using SLCD's because you couldn't climb it with passive pro..or trading in your swami for one of those comfy seat harnesses...or exchanging the EB's for some stealth rubber because...yawn..this is too easy...

in all seriousness tradmike, what is your personal definition of pure climbing? it matters not to me, because I love sport lines, but I do like to hear how others coin the experience.

never mind...you just shared..thanks.

It all comes down to the games climbers play. There are lots of them, all fun in different ways. Though I've soloed some, I never thought it made a lot of sense, fall just once, you're dead, game over.

The game I think I most enjoyed was minimalism. In the early '80s quite a few Colorado climbers went back to swami belts, quit using chalk, and climbed barefoot on harder and harder routes (Mark Wilford did the Naked Edge in Eldorado sans shoes). It was really liberating. No incessent dipping, only protecting the occasional hard move, fourth classing easier pitches. One could just float up routes in amazingly fast times. It really felt a lot like soloing (you could climb almost totally unencumbered), but for mere mortals made a lot more sense than leaving the rope behind. It felt like a pretty damned "pure" experience. Then one day I was climbing in Eldorado, and right next to us on a neighboring route was one of Boulder's young tigers. He happened to be on a 5.4 pitch, had this huge bucket of chalk, and was dipping nearly to his elbows for every single move. I knew then that the minimalist gig was up.