Anyone who doubted my claim that without such discussions, trad climbing will just turn into sport climbing has only to read the responses in this thread to see truth of the assertion.

RG covers a lot of ground, so let me break this down into a few posts:


Well, I was skeptical of that claim when you said it, and still am. I agree that this thread contains a lot of confusion, as well as a certain number of people for whom traditional climbing is such a foreign concept that even when explained in several ways, they cannot seem to get it.

But be that as it may, it's a big leap to say that that shows that sport climbing will overrun trad unless old farts speak up to stop it.

With all due respect, I think your impression is based on the fallacy that folks who learned to climb after sport climbing started can never get the appeal on their own. I strongly believe that trad climbs speak for themselves, and resonate with a certain group of people. As long as there are trad climbs, new climbers will be inspired by them, and will want to dedicate themselves to learn the skills required to do them, and will then want to go out and find other places to put those skills to the test. So more trad lines will continue to go up.

I also think that you fail to realize that while there are many sport climbers who don't know much about trad climbing, most of them do have a fair degree of respect for it. Certainly enough to leave those lines, past and future, for the climbers who are interested in doing them.

There are gray areas that will always be battlegrounds, but for the most part the chossy limestone cliffs will always be the provenance of the sport climber, and the well featured granite, sandstone, and many other rock types, will always be what draws the trad climber.

Most modern climbers have little difficulty seeing a world in which both disciplines can coexist fairly well.

It most certainly isn't required that you cut your teeth in the 70s to love trad climbing. I didn't start climbing until 1998, and that was in a gym! Yet trad is my preferred discipline, and I certainly would *never* want every route to be dumbed down to the same level.

GO

I'm well aware of the "who cares" responses we've already had and will continue to see. If you don't care, well then: you don't care; not much more to be said. But I think you should care, because at the very essence of climbing is the voluntary restraint of available means, and once one stops caring about that, the homogenization of all climbing into the Plaisir Climbing model seems inevitable, and trad climbing will be nothing more than a curious historical footnote about a period when people seemed to care inordinately about how they succeeded as much as whether they succeeded.

"your right"

This was more of a local term because many of the routes had a few bolts and required a piece or two. To me, these routes still fall into the trad category. If you fall on one of this routes above the piece you placed, your safety definitely was determined by your ability to place the gear properly. Placing gear means trad climbing.

A hangdog ascent means that at some point on the route, you continued to the top of the route after having weighted the rope. It doesn't matter whether you weighted the rope only once, after having fallen, or did so repeatedly to work out various moves.

Well, I was skeptical of that claim when you said it, and still am. I agree that this thread contains a lot of confusion, as well as a certain number of people for whom traditional climbing is such a foreign concept that even when explained in several ways, they cannot seem to get it.

But be that as it may, it's a big leap to say that that shows that sport climbing will overrun trad unless old farts speak up to stop it.

With all due respect, I think your impression is based on the fallacy that folks who learned to climb after sport climbing started can never get the appeal on their own.

I strongly believe that trad climbs speak for themselves, and resonate with a certain group of people. As long as there are trad climbs, new climbers will be inspired by them, and will want to dedicate themselves to learn the skills required to do them, and will then want to go out and find other places to put those skills to the test. So more trad lines will continue to go up.

I also think that you fail to realize that while there are many sport climbers who don't know much about trad climbing, most of them do have a fair degree of respect for it. Certainly enough to leave those lines, past and future, for the climbers who are interested in doing them.

Most modern climbers have little difficulty seeing a world in which both disciplines can coexist fairly well.

It most certainly isn't required that you cut your teeth in the 70s to love trad climbing.

The difference in a sport route versus a trad route is the protection of the route, not the attitude of the climber climbing it...

...With the definition mentioned, a route changes back and forth between trad and sport according to whom ever just climbed it...

...Another words, a route like Desert Reality at Red Rock is a sport climb to one team, but a trad route to another team...

...To me, the term trad climbing is directly related to the style of protection on the route, not the attitude the route is climbed with...

...I am saying, a route is a trad route today if it requires the leader to place gear. Regardless of how scared they are, or choose to be, the route is trad. Regardless of how much risk they choose to accept or not, the route is a trad route...

...Bottom line, a route is either a trad line or it isn't. Regardless of how the person climbing it figures it out. Onsite or red point, lowering on every fall or not. Hanging on a route might not be a traditional "attitude" about climbing, but it doesn't change the trad nature of the route...

This subtly (well, not all that subtly) shifts the discussion from trad climbing to trad routes.

Having changed the terms of the discussion, guangzhou adduces all kinds of purported inconsistencies, each or which is an artifact of his changed perspective rather than a problem with the original propositions. See, no one ever said that a trad route somehow loses its trad status if someone hangdogs their way up it. Of course it is still a trad route, but that is not the point. We were speaking of trad climbing, which refers not only to the route but also to the actions of the climber on the route.

I guess we could argue about what makes a trad route too, at least in the case of bolt-protected routes done ground up and drilling from stances (I call them trad).

What I really don't agree about is that a climber on a trad route is automatically indulging in trad climbing---no matter what tactics are being employed---just by virtue of his or her location. To me this is akin to saying that anyone sitting on a horse is automatically a cowboy. The tactics a traditional climber permitted themselves were an integral, inseparable part of traditional climbing. A definition that ignores the means used to gain the end is irrevocably divorced from the traditions that purportedly gave "trad" its name.

I fail to see how climbing is different from many any other skilled pursuits. Sure there are always ground rules, but I'd wager they are there to make sure you become better at your pursuit than just to help you conquer a goal.

Take marttial arts for example, which if your goal is to conquer someone, guns are much more effective. But in the older days, when you need to validate your skills (or to learn new techniques), you often have to challenge/provoke someone to a fight. If you were lucky enough to not get killed or permanently injured, you might come out as a more skilled fighter. As bloody as UFC may sometime be, it's much more civilized. I doubt the old masters are rolling in their graves because we now have a much less dangerous method to gain the same knowledge/experience. On the other hand, I wonder what those old masters would think of the new age fighters that care much more about winning than self-improvement and contributing to the art.

How does that parallel with climbing? Well, I don't see why one needs to stunt his growth as a climber by doing things the old fashion way (i.e. lowering to ground after a fall instead of hangdogging). If it helps you develop into a better climber more efficiently, then all the better. Of course, making harder onsights can still be your goal, but that doesn't mean getting there by hangdogging harder routes is somehow any less pure.

By your very metaphor, you prove your point wrong.

UFC is not a "figth" it is a "sporting fight". There are rules (i.e. no nut punches, no hair grabs) which, if you were in a life or death fight would be not just an acceptable tactic, but recommended by in many martial arts styles.

I think Gabe gives an excellent description of the current state of trad. I can't say I personally agree with every part of it, but it seems close to what most people (who aren't clueless---and there are plenty of those too) believe.

The tricky part for me is the idea that an ascent made by virtue of hangdogging, top-roping, and previewing is still a trad ascent:

I don't argue that such techniques aren't accepted by today's best climbers, and that they aren't necessary in order to manage the fantastic difficulty levels these climbers are achieving. And I've already made it clear that each generation refines the rules in order to advance the difficulty standards. All that said, these ascents are sport climbing with gear and simply do not fit in the traditional mold. Period. I think Joe has explained this with great clarity already and won't try to improve on it.

As I've said before, the real problem is that such "exceptional" techniques, which may well be necessary for the extreme climbs they are used on, almost immediately percolate down the difficulty scale and end up eroding the large spectrum of traditional climbs that are still fully amenable to traditional approaches.

Here is an example from my personal experience. A year or two ago I did a route in the Gunks with someone I didn't know but who said he climbed 5.12 in the gym. I have no idea what that meant, but we did a Gunks 5.9. I led the 5.9 part and he got a 5.8 pitch that is long, vertical, and pumpy (for 5.8). (The climber's name and the route are suppressed to protect the perhaps not so innocent.)

Here's what happened: Mr. 5.12 put in a piece every 10-12 feet or so and took a nice long rest on it, exclaiming that it was steep above, he couldn't tell where the route went and whether or when he'd get in another piece, and he needed to be as fresh as possible for whatever he might encounter.

He correctly perceived precisely the challenges of trad climbing but most emphatically declined to meet any of them. 5.12 in the gym or not, this lead was completely over his head. And it took forever to boot.

Eventually, he got up. He was enthusiastic about the pitch, and mentioned he was eager to go back and "get it clean." At this point he knows all the moves, knows where the route goes, knows the gear he used, and where he placed it. The anxiety he had about actually venturing more than a few feet into unknown territory has been replaced by a detailed knowledge of all the route's features. When he does go back, his now complete knowledge of the route may indeed allow him to do it without resting on his gear.

A traditional ascent? Not even close in my book. The route in its original state was completely beyond his abilities. After what he did to get up it the first time, no subsequent ascent undoes the sport climbing methods required to get him up the route.

Now don't get me wrong; he didn't do anything to alter the rock and, given that he has left the climb in the same state he found it in, has every "right" to climb it in whatever style suits him. But sorry, it ain't traditional climbing when you do that, and I think it is worth understanding that it isn't traditional climbing, and that, to use Gabe's language, his original ascent and any subsequent ascent, from the traditional point of view, are forever tainted by the methods employed.

Readers may note I have repeatedly used "traditional" rather than "trad." This is because trad climbing, in spite of all the discussion, means more and more sport climbing on gear, and there really is something else, an increasingly endangered species, that people might aspire to.

I'm well aware of the "who cares" responses we've already had and will continue to see. If you don't care, well then: you don't care; not much more to be said. But I think you should care, because at the very essence of climbing is the voluntary restraint of available means, and once one stops caring about that, the homogenization of all climbing into the Plaisir Climbing model seems inevitable, and trad climbing will be nothing more than a curious historical footnote about a period when people seemed to care inordinately about how they succeeded as much as whether they succeeded.

I don't argue that such techniques aren't accepted by today's best climbers, and that they aren't necessary in order to manage the fantastic difficulty levels these climbers are achieving. And I've already made it clear that each generation refines the rules in order to advance the difficulty standards. All that said, these ascents are sport climbing with gear and simply do not fit in the traditional mold. Period. I think Joe has explained this with great clarity already and won't try to improve on it.

As I've said before, the real problem is that such "exceptional" techniques, which may well be necessary for the extreme climbs they are used on, almost immediately percolate down the difficulty scale and end up eroding the large spectrum of traditional climbs that are still fully amenable to traditional approaches.

With all due respect, you don't know what my impressions are based on and are constructing straw man fallacies to debunk.

I do think there's a lot of truth in those words. But those who resonate may be increasingly outnumbered by those who do not. And the notion of what makes a trad line will continue to change, as it has already. How many "trad" routes in Yosemite and Red Rock have bolts at every belay, speeding up the ascent, requiring less gear be carried, and making it nearly trivial to bail at any point?

I guess we'd need some currently unavailable statistics to settle the "enough" claim. I know of a number of trad lines that have been bolted (I can't say whether by "sport" climbers or "trad" climbers). In Europe, especially in Switzerland, a huge number of trad lines have had bolts added to them and many new lines have been bolted with absolutely no regard for whether they might be done in traditional style.

<snipped European references>

In any case, tolerance for the coexistence of disciplines could only be real if "most modern climbers" had a clear understanding of the disciplines that are supposed to coexist. This thread, if nothing else, proves no such understanding exists.

Nobody said that.

I think I'm going to the Gunks tomorrow to do some climbing.

When I get back, I'll try to figure out what kind it was.

Then you are missing the point. Of course one aims for realism in martial arts, but like I said, if it's absolutely about disabling your opponent, you'd be much better carrying a gun.

Of course UFC is not real fighting, but I bet a lot of earlier fighters who faced the Gracies were glad to discover their weaknesses against grappling w/o actually getting seriously injured or killed. Aside from being illegal almost anywhere, would you rather challenge the Gracies to a duel or learn that lesson in the octagon?

Well, I don't see why one needs to stunt his growth as a climber by doing things the old fashion way (i.e. lowering to ground after a fall instead of hangdogging).

This is wrong. Not on the sense that sport climbing can't help with trad skills, but in the sense that sport climbing, like sport fighting, can train you for specific skills very similar to the ones you are looking to cultivate. But they are not all of the skills you need. Not just physically, but mentally they are different games.

Yes, but what's the difference between a scary 5.12 trad route and a scary 5.13 trad route besides the physical skills required to climb them? Which method would you think is more efficient for training to climb harder trad routes? Sticking to the trad style of climbing below your limit and lowering to the ground after every fall or mix in sport climbing and hangdogging with the occasional trad ascents to sharpen your mental skills?

.

I'm confused. Is the Bachar-Yerian a "mixed" climb, even if the second pitch is all bolts? If that is the crux pitch and its obviously a "Sport" pitch, what does that mean for the whole climb?

Can you answer me?