meetVA wrote:ZSpider, LNT isn't about what you can perceive of nature it is about respecting nature and working towards not leaving an impact.
I assure you that someone would notice a tree that has fallen off a cliff, especially if it was a trad line that got done frequently. Or maybe the animal that used to be housed in that tree. Or the effect of the complete top of the cliffline being erroded away.
Spragwa is right about LNT and climbing not co-exisiting but we can try to minimize our impact.
I agree with Spragwa's assertion that the idea of climbing and leaving no trace is absurd. I was merely pointing out that it would be a lot harder to tell if the fallen tree was a natural occurence than to decide whether a wall blotched with chalk and riddled with bolts was a natural occurence.
Paul3eb wrote:i think what he's getting at is that one is obviously a human impact and one isn't. so to the general public (or even most climbers), sport climbing is more obviously impacting the environment as compared to trad where the impacts aren't always as obvious.
and spragwa is right..
Which area has more signs of impact: The table wall at left flank, or the american wall at fortress? How about the roadside attraction area vs. the ROCS area? I really think many tard climbers want to believe they are somehow better the sport climbers. Mostly because they can't pull down on anything harder then 5.9, and thus need to feed thier pride/ego somehow.
Another point of view from "American Rock" by Don Mellor (p. 113-114):
"Sedimentary rock, more than most types, is readable, has a predictability to it. In the Southwest, it is splintered into towers and cracks that run uninterrupted for hundreds of feet. Hard to climb, maybe, but at least easy to read. Look up at "Supercrack" or any of the other features at Utah's Indian Creek and there's no wondering what it will take. Same for the more predictably layered sedimentary beds of places like Foster Falls or Obed in Tennessee, or the Shawangunks in New York State. You know there's a hold up there and, not only that, based on the way the rock breaks along horizontal planes, you have a pretty good idea of what the hold is going to feel like.
Not so at the Red, where it's impossible to know what any particular hold is going to feel like or which of the hundreds of alternatives happens to be the sequence until you're hanging dejectedly on the rope, fingers throbbing from having tried every imaginable way of grasping the pockets until flame-out. The Red River Gorge is a decidedly uncooperative place for the aspiring on-sight climber. It's too complex, hard to read. It doesn't give you the time to figure out the moves. It demands to be inspected and tick-marked. It's a multifingered affair. Instead of slapping a hand onto an edge where the fingers function together as one, imagine lunging toward a bowling ball, drilled with a multitude of holes, and having to get every finger just right. Routes such as these are the bane of the on-sight climber, even one with fingers of steel."
"Those iron spikes you use have shortened the life expectancy of the Totem Pole by 50,000 years."
Wes wrote: I really think many tard climbers want to believe they are somehow better the sport climbers. Mostly because they can't pull down on anything harder then 5.9, and thus need to feed thier pride/ego somehow.
It does seem that most complaints about sport climbers come from 5.9 and below trad climbers.
Just bec people can't climb hard doesn't mean they have no right to complain.
I don't think the issue here is whether you are a trad climber or a sport climber or whether you climb 5.9 or 5.12. It's not about pride or ego or humility. All of the above have the right to tick, to complain, to whine, etc. How else will we get all these threads to go past page 1?
Time for a new pigsteak ruling: you cannot have an opinion unless you climb hard enough.
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our mind. ~Bob Marley
how about you can't have an opinion if you have ever climbed a route with tick marks on it and didn't remove them when you were done climbing the route.
The other day my son was upset that after laying off climbing he was not performing at the level he expected. H was really down on himself so like a good and wise father I reminded him of a saying I learned some years ago:
"I have enough.
I do enough.
I am enough."
to which he added without hesitation while grabbing what he thinks is his too large belly:
"I eat enough."
We then returned to climbing and having fun.
I try to be a good man but all that comes
of trying is I feel more guilty.
Ikkyu
IMO The only reason trad climbers appear to have less impact then sport is that there are few areas with high concentration of cracks in the gorge. It just comes down to numbers, there are way more sport climbers out there then tradies. Just look at the base of Rock Wars. We all share the burden we have created.
