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Re: [guangzhou] Trad climbing, what's in a name?:
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healyje
May 4, 2011, 9:12 AM
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Registered: Aug 22, 2004
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guangzhou wrote: I'm sure I also do what you would consider Spad climbing, but I'm not sure when a route is getting dogged. (Gear or not gear) How many falls on a single pitch before a route is dogged?
Ah, I see the problem now. 'Dogging' means resting on the rope after a fall (well, these days I suppose make that after taking 99 time out 100) and then resuming climbing the route. As I said earlier in the thread, the distinction that makes trad 'trad' is its fundamental definition of ascending routes without resting on ropes. Climb it once, make a hundred attempts, but without ever weighting the rope.
What's the point, you ask? The point is that you have to be able to think and figure things out WHILE CLIMBING. Trad climbing shares that in common with bouldering, DWS and even TRing on a far overhung routes - you have to do or fly.
When you rest after falling (if one ever actually falls versus takes) and do this repeatedly 'working' the route a move at a time you're essentially aerial bouldering working on a redpoint. By 'aerial bouldering' I mean repeatedly resting on the rope studying a move and working different approaches to it - i.e. 'aerial bouldering' because you might as well be standing on the ground with that move in front of you. Then there's the 'redpoint', stringing together a bunch of [bouldering] moves you've basically worked out one at a time individually and memorized.
Cool, but it doesn't really compare to what it takes to work out the same moves while actually countering gravity climbing. That's not to say that climbing - trad or sport - doesn't get to a point in difficulty where it's all but impossible to get up a line without working it to death, pre-cleaning it, tick-marking it to death, pre-placing gear, or headpointing it to oblivion before doing that coveted 'send'.
But to be honest, I know if I hung in space long enough I could workout almost any move, and hang in front of enough of them I could pre-work and memorize my way up harder routes than I can now climb. But I don't. Why? Because I don't climb for difficulty, I climb for what lines catch my eye, interest, curiosity and sometimes unbridled obsession - but always in the context of what I can figure out on-the-fly while actually climbing - I'm not vaguely interested in what I can work, memorize, and rehearse my way up.
That's why I've always worked on onsight, groundup, FAs; I like having no frigging idea what I'm about to get into every step of the way. Lot of the time the pro is dubious, sometimes I have to find free stances to clean from, sometimes the routes are hard AND r/x and there isn't the remote possibility of dogging - or I suppose you could, but a fair percentage of takes are going to be at the end of forty or fifty feet of rope.
In the end it's a matter of to each his own I suppose, but I didn't invent or define trad climbing, merely have practiced it for 37 years and I suffer from no confusion of any kind as to what it is and isn't - either then or now.
guangzhou wrote: If I climb a 150ft pitch and fall at the 140ft mark, I decide to hang a couple of minute, then continue the climb instead of lower to the ground and pulling the rope,. The next day I come back and get on the same route and finish the pitch with no problem, did I just dog the route because I hung instead of pulling the rope on every attempt?
See above - but, yeah (though pulling the rope or leaving it clipped has been the source of opinion within trad with purists pulling it in most cases).
guangzhou wrote: If I get on the same route, fall off 25 times in a single day but lower to the ground on every fall, clean the gear and start over from scratch every-time, is this still dogging or not.
Again, I'd suggest thinking of DWS - it's pure - there is ZERO possibility of dogging or resting on a rope. That's the 'spirit' and ideal at the heart of trad climbing in a nutshell.
guangzhou wrote: To be honest, it doesn't matter much to me either way. In my opinion, both created a red-point scenario. One where I lowered and cleaned every time, one where I rested, learned the moves and then repeated the route with prior knowledge.
It's about how one gains the knowledge of a route and whether you choose to develop the mental and emotional skills necessary to figure out and learn the moves while actually climbing versus hanging out in space taking it easy. One is trad climbing the other sprad/sport.
guangzhou wrote: Neither is more acceptable or less acceptable in my book...If the ascent took place with me placing the gear, I would consider it a trad ascent.
I agree neither is more acceptable or less acceptable - but only one of them is trad climbing.
(This post was edited by healyje on May 4, 2011, 9:55 AM)
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Post edited by healyje
() on May 4, 2011, 9:55 AM
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