I don't get the sense that's what Joe is saying. I get the sense that a "flash" or "redpoint" doesn't necessarily negate the "traditional" style of the ascent when the ascent is achieved. Once you fall, you already have a fair amount of knowledge. Shoot, you even know something about the move you fell on now because, well, what you did before clearly wasn't right, yet pulling the rope and giving it another go, according to what I'm hearing from Joe, still means it is "trad."

??? Joe is not saying Trad = Onsight

Why is this so impossible to comprehend?

GO

How does falling equate to failing to climb the route. if you stand on top of the route, you've climbed it. It's really that simple.

I think that it is like a maths problems. You can have the solution, but what is important is what you have done to found the solution. In school, you have been note for the way you solve the problem. In climbing, solving the problem without a fall is pure. With one fall, is less good and when you did 50 fall to be at the top, you understand that any body can make it if he have time to work at it.

Falling is an easy criteria to eyeball, but solving a problem is not about falling. How can we evaluate the knowledge of a climber: one solo the crux and made and R or X ascent, and the other place good pro? If you are a trad climber, you will place good pro and run it out some times. if you are a sport, you will run it out or need bolt. In climbing style, the sport climber can be stronger than the trad. etc.

How good I am? I think that it is the most important question. I think that on a scale from one to ten, the purest style is soloing a route with no protection. At the other hand, it is aid. You have no protection in soloing and with aid you have a pro every four feet. Trad try to be as much as a soloist climber to free the route and sport use as much aid point as he can to avoid the fall and stand at the summit.

How good I am? or how much my ethic of climbing destroy the ethic of the other? It is where respect is important and why we should make a distinction between trad and sport. Some sport climber lighted a fire with white gaz on a cliff to clean it!!!! They rap from the top, brush it, etc. They don't think that some climber try a route for year in trad style, they just place bolt and clame the first ascent and they never come back to the cliff. Just there own pleasure.

It is that irrespect for local climber ethic that bother many trad climber. In sport area, place as much bolt as you wish, but in trad cliff learn to trad climb...and it is not just placing a cam in the rock.

I'm more likely to hang off a piece than fall on it. I guess I'm not trad climbing. I will call it pussy-trad climbing if that would make others happier.

You seem to wrap up a person's value pretty tightly in your particular definition of the best way to climb a rock.

You'll have to excuse me if I don't hold the same opinions.

I think that it is like a maths problems. You can have the solution, but what is important is what you have done to found the solution. In school, you have been note for the way you solve the problem. In climbing, solving the problem without a fall is pure. With one fall, is less good and when you did 50 fall to be at the top, you understand that any body can make it if he have time to work at it.

Falling is an easy criteria to eyeball, but solving a problem is not about falling. How can we evaluate the knowledge of a climber: one solo the crux and made and R or X ascent, and the other place good pro? If you are a trad climber, you will place good pro and run it out some times. if you are a sport, you will run it out or need bolt. In climbing style, the sport climber can be stronger than the trad. etc.

How good I am? I think that it is the most important question. I think that on a scale from one to ten, the purest style is soloing a route with no protection. At the other hand, it is aid. You have no protection in soloing and with aid you have a pro every four feet. Trad try to be as much as a soloist climber to free the route and sport use as much aid point as he can to avoid the fall and stand at the summit.

How good I am? or how much my ethic of climbing destroy the ethic of the other? It is where respect is important and why we should make a distinction between trad and sport. Some sport climber lighted a fire with white gaz on a cliff to clean it!!!! They rap from the top, brush it, etc. They don't think that some climber try a route for year in trad style, they just place bolt and clame the first ascent and they never come back to the cliff. Just there own pleasure.

It is that irrespect for local climber ethic that bother many trad climber. In sport area, place as much bolt as you wish, but in trad cliff learn to trad climb...and it is not just placing a cam in the rock.

End justifies the means?

Murder of the Impossible?

The Games Climbers Play?

It's been going on - or mostly around in circles - for decades. Please please - someone come up with something original.

I guess I was responding more to Rob than to our Canuck friend. I was lazy with the quoting. But in a sense I am replying to a lot of the preceding posts that just keep repeating the same things that have been said many times before. People put so much energy into creating what they think are profound insightful posts when in truth it has all been said many times before. The wheel keeps getting invented over and over. But that is the nature of RC.com I guess. I do wish that people would put as much energy into learning some history as they do into pontificating here.

It's been going on - or mostly around in circles - for decades. Please please - someone come up with something original.

In responding to threads like this, my objective isn't to go around the circle one more time, but rather to attempt to insure words and meanings aren't lost or confused over time as younger folks join the fray. I'd also like to think there's some very hard-earned advice mixed in there as well.

...But I think attempts to pass along knowledge should be liberally peppered with references to what has been stated in the past as opposed so making statements that might appear to be original thought. Someone upstream said that it is human nature to behave this way (start pontificating vs. researching) and I will agree that is true. But i also feel that the Internet exasperates that tendency - both because it is so easy to "publish" something to a wide audience while shooting from the hip (as opposed to gathering facts and writing stuff down first) and because people are conditioned to instant gratification.

And the final straw in this perfect storm is that the people who are the most vocal are the ones that get acknowledged as the experts....

Bolts have little to do with it. Traditional climbing is primarily about style of ascent. A few examples to consider;

The Edge at Tahquitz
You Asked For It in Tuolumne
B-Y in Tuolumne

All of these climbs are bolted. There sure as hell aren't sport routes.

You also continue to confuse Joe's definition of traditional climbing with an onsight. Not sure why. He's been pretty clear about it. Joe's quote from earlier in the thread;

"Direction and protection issues aside, it's pretty f#cking simple - you climb rocks without resting on the rope while doing it. Period, end of story - in the ideal and in practice, that's it in a nutshell.

Add onsight, groundup, clean protection whenever humanly possible, lowering and pulling the rope after falls and you get climbing as we knew it in the 70's at every major crag we ever climbed at."

I'm neither ponitificating, nor shooting from the hip in any of this if that was directed my way. Simply stating facts and events of the time as I experienced and learned them. People are more than welcome to search here or google for others' thoughts on the matter, I pretty much stick to my own experience and opinions.

And the final straw in this perfect storm is that the people who are the most vocal are the ones that get acknowledged as the experts....

I don't post up to be acknowledged as an 'expert' any more than I climb for for difficulty. Being and Internet expert is a pretty inane pursuit by definition.

I agree, that some bolted routes are trad, I lived and climbed through the development of sport climbing in America too. I learned on cracks and the slabs of Glacier Point Apron. Apron routes are good example of bolted routes I would not consider sport routes.

What I am saying is purely focused on the routes that require gear placement. I don't consider any route that require gear placement a sport route. PLacing gear means the route is trad.

I do agree about wo different conversation. I am writing about the route, a trad route is a trad route, period.

I do think you may be missing the point. Routes being trad or sport isn't being discussed. Bolts vs gear isn't the definition of the term either. Style and ethics mean more in defining this oldish term. Lately it is being used loosely to mean a route that may require gear, which is completely out of it's definition. Also, bolts do not make a line nontrad. It isn't a verb either. The whole point of this thread was to better define the term, and to educate some who use it to define a gear battle or sprad climbing. Both incorrect, and not just a little either.

I also needed clarity of origin, history, evolution, and definition. There is a ton of this information in this by a select few posters, with much litter in between. Thanks to those who are genuinely interested in straighteneing out the masses, or at least the two or thirty that may read it.

Burly Bob

I'll grant you that there is a lot of merit in that - even though it may be somewhat of a hopeless cause. [..] And the final straw in this perfect storm is that the people who are the most vocal are the ones that get acknowledged as the experts...
Long winded way of bringing up the whole signal to noise ratio issue.

I don't think that it is hopeless. Must say that many people will think at the difference between trad and sport. We cannot say that a route is a sport route or trad without a definition of those term?

I agree that some climber are interested that think went wrong and are blank minds. I agree that some people argue and repeat always the same think to punch the idea in the mind.

I also imagine the discussion, in a rainy days, of the people who write mountaineering freedom of the hill. It was the same discussion but the result was a bible for at least the first five edition.

Climber are smart person to stay in live in that difficult environment (with a big ego ha! ha!). And we all think that we know all as we begin to progress. writing is a test, like a fall, to know if our idea is good and reach new summit or wrong. You beheave to warn us that so many think was said that we must take time to think at the real sens of this threat. Thanks for that.

I also needed clarity of origin, history, evolution, and definition. There is a ton of this information in this by a select few posters, with much litter in between. Thanks to those who are genuinely interested in straighteneing out the masses, or at least the two or thirty that may read it.

Burly Bob

Dude, this place is hopeless. There's nothing we can do to stop the "trad" = "gear" @ rc.com.

In the US, the phrase, "trad climbing," seems to have originated in Tom Higgins essay, "Tricksters and Traditionalists," which was a manifesto against JB's use of aid/hooks for bolting. When the phrase first got used, Bachar-Yerian wasn't a trad route. Heh.

At old, snow-covered RC.com, "climbing" = "gym climbing" or "short sport route climbing." Anything else requires a modifying adjective.