On-sight

[tania]

Granted you are telling the truth about not knowing ANY beta whatsoever about a route, can you really call it an on-sight if the draws are already hung? Has the climbing community accepted definition shifted?? This season has seen a lot of pros and quite a few significant sport route on-sights. Were any of those on-sights done hanging draws???

[dustonian]

The generally accepted definition shifted a good while back, maybe 10 or 15 years ago. "Onsight", "no beta flash", who cares? It seems completely arbitrary to draw a line in the sand(stone) at draws, you are using someone else's bolts and anchor hardware too, why is that acceptable? If anything, egregious tickmarking is more of a compromise to onsight climbing than draws.

All that said, if we are talking trad, then generally speaking all removable gear needs to be placed by the climber to be considered an onsight ascent. Of course there are all kinds of exceptions to everything, such as free climbing on El Cap with its endless collection of quasi-fixed mank.

[kneebar]

In ten years perhaps a toprope send will be an onsite. Why not continue the "progress" of the "sport". Not saying i haven't clipped plenty of prehung draws. Still get the best feeling having sent something if I hung the draws on the send but that is just me, I'll hang my own mank if someone hasn't left there garbage. Okay, that's not totally true......if I can talk Yasmeen into hanging the draws I'll do it every time!

[dustonian]

Haha, Yasmeen is a beast... but she only seems to climb routes with fixed draws these days

I think it's mostly a practical concession since ~90% of traveled routes over 14a tend to have pre-hung draws. The climber can't remove them without previewing the route, and bringing along some draw lackey to clean them for you (and then put them back, or whatever climb2core says is OK this season) would be the epitome of stupid.

[camhead]

I've always wondered what the hardest onsite while hanging the draws has been, but nobody seems to know. And yeah, I have wondered how all the permadrawdrama will affect strong climbers who want to come here and onsight hard routes. We can talk about "exerienced climbers taking responsibility by inspecting permadraws" all we want, but the bottom line is that when someone starts up 40oz with the intention of onsighting or flashing it, they are not going to inspect the hardware.

[dustonian]

At a bare minimum climbers need to be visually inspecting the rope-end carabiner for excess wear and sharpness, and better yet feeling the edge of the biner while clipping... it takes 1 second and is not that difficult. Special attention should be paid to the bottom couple of draws, as these are usually but not always the worst... particularly the first. Carry a couple draws and hang your own on anything in question and remove the suspect fixed gear on the way down while cleaning your own draw. Sport climbers who are regularly clipping fixed draws should purchase some of their own steel biners/draws to replace gear as needed and/or hang temporarily on routes while projecting them.

Skipping these steps on a route you are not familiar with the hardware on is plain dumb. That said, you're right, it probably won't be too long before another rope is cut by a sharp biner in the Red.

[climb2core]

It's an onsight thread so I will try not to continue the path of derailing, but will at least mention that horrible biner that Elodie took a pic of came off 40 Oz. So, yes people are apparently that dumb.


Regarding on sighting, best form is hanging your own, but it really just matters with what you feel comfortable with at the end of the day.

[camhead]

Regarding on sighting, best form is hanging your own, but it really just matters with what you feel comfortable with at the end of the day.

seriously, name one significant hard sport onsight at the RRG in the last 5 years in which the climber hung his/her own draws (TOC, App Spring, anyone?).

And Dustin, as you mentioned, I've gotten in the habit of just stickclipping my own draw into the first bolt of pre-hung climbs that I get on; it's pretty easy, not a hassle to clean, and as I understood it, the acute angle of the rope winds up wearing down first draws way more than others. However, I think the recent Mammut article on fixed draws mentioned draws that hang in the middle of routes, and not even getting fallen on a lot:

"Extremely sharp edges form on carabiners which almost never bear the load of a fall and are rarely used as a turning point. This means that they are never "deburred" (worn to a rounded shape) and razor-sharp edges can develop."

Ok, that's all I'm going to say about this, I don't want to get into another fixed gear clusterfuck thread. Maybe I'll just start a facebook page about it

[rockman]

apples oranges.

Onsight and Flash are beta descriptors
Redpoint, Pinkpoint are gear descriptors

Thus, you could (if you sold shoes) :
Onsight Redpoint
Onsight Pinkpoint
Flash Redpoint
Flash Pinkpoint

Moral of the story is that most people need to be interrogated to find out exactly what the hell they climbed.

[climb2core]

Didn't Ondra onsight a 14c in the Flatlanger cave hanging like 30 draws in the way?