By the numbers.

[LK Day]

How hard do you climb sport?
How hard do you climb trad?

[climb2core]

5.12
5.not

[pigsteak]

onsight or redpoint? on a best day or consistently? in perfect temps or sweaty sack summer?

[SCIN]

I've climbed sport with a moderate hard-on but trad has been nothing more than a little chubbing up when I have thin shorts on.

[LK Day]

Piggie has more questions than answers, c2c climbs way harder on sport and SCIN climbs harder on sport, but not all that hard. Anyone else?

[LK Day]

Wow, this polling thing isn't as easy as it looks. But our flash poll indicates that the average Red River Weenie climbs 5.12 sport while sporting a moderate chubbie and hardly climbs trad at all. While scientifically valid, we must point out that fully one third of respondents don't understand the question.

[krampus]

Damn, everybody gives Day all kinds of shit for spraying his political opinion (however crazy it may be), then clams up when he posts about climbing. It's like were actually are on the internet or something.

Onsite:
12b sport
11b trad

redpoint:
12c sport
11c trad

I am working diligently to close the gap. There are not enough low 12 trad routs in the red though. Its like you gotta jump from 11c to 12c in one step. I'm all about the baby steps. Its hard to compare the dificulty of the two though, trad is way more full body endurance than sport so I guess you could say its harder but at the same time, once the beta is figured out the trad seems to go down quickly.

[LK Day]

Krampus - Absolutely right, by far the most efficient way to move up through the grades is in baby steps. When I lived in the Bay area in the late '70s, a climbing partner of mine was a friend of the young phenom, Peter Mayfield. Peter had composed a list of virtually every pitch in the valley, in order of difficulty, segregated by type (fingers, hands, fists, etc.) and was methodically working his way up the list. Imagine climbing every 10c thin hands pitch from easiest to hardest, then on to 10d. It had never occurred to me to be nearly so methodical, but it's a brilliant approach. The result was that Peter climbed with an easy and fluid style that was hard to imagine.
Trying to use this approach in the Red has always been problematic but no less important. In the early pre-cam era, climbing in the Red just got way too hard way too fast for most people and very few were able to make the transition from beginner to even modestly competent leader.

[One-Fall]

How hard do you climb sport?
How hard do you climb trad?

Curious as to what brought this to mind, Larry.

Consistently onsight mid 11 sport.
Consistently redpoint mid 12 sport.

My only trad lead is Bongo.
I'm not working very hard at closing the gap

[camhead]

I've done climbs while placing gear that are just as hard as climbs I've done clipping bolts. I wouldn't call that "trad," though.

Trad originally meant ground-up, onsight, and every time you fell, you lowered to the ground and tried again. Sometimes you clipped bolts, other times you clipped pins, and other times you placed gear.

By that criteria, my hardest trad climb is Tuna Town:)