Second, you really think it'll only take 4 hours to master crack technique? Ask Randy Leavitt how long it took him to master his. Ask anyone whos ever flailed on any offwidth how long it takes to master crack technique. Supposedly, in 4 hours, I should be able to cruise any 5.12+ crack.....Again..not meant to be inflamatory, just comments and questions.

Peter Croft is a trad climber?

*This has been a really popular statement around the site these last few days, and yet it goes against every definition I have ever learned of sport and trad. Can you explain that?*

There are basically 2 kinds of free climbing on rock - crack climbing or face climbing. Here in Cali we have hundreds of relatively low angle granite domes. The routes on these domes do not necessarily follow crack systems - in fact, they rarely do. Instead you use face climbing technique, which involves frictioning and tiny edges. Of course there's usually no natural protection, so since the 1960's, starting in Yosemite and a few other places, climbers drilled bolts with a hammer and hand held drill for pro while leading the first ascent of these routes, usually from tenuous, insecure stances. These routes invariably had long distances between bolts due to the labor involved in stopping and drilling. Since the prevailing ethic of the day was ground-up, no one thought to come in from above on rappell and preplace the bolts, so in terms of style, for the first ascent anyway, these were considered trad routes.

A huge limitation of this approach, though, was the fact that you could only stop to drill on the lead if the rock was low angle enough to basically let go with both hands so you could hit the drill with the hammer. The best climbers were clearly capable of climbing the steeper faces, but the ability to protect it on the lead had not (and still has'nt) advanced. It was the Europeans, the French in particular, who, in the early to mid 80's, unhindered by the "traditional" ground up ethic, and with vast amounts of otherwise unprotectable, steep, crackless limestone, began to bolt on rappell, also using motorized drills which cut down the labor of drilling and with it the justification for sparse bolting, and "sport" climbing, for lack of a better term, was born.

It's pretty easy, though, to confuse a bolt protected "trad" route with a bolt protected "sport" route. Both are bolted face climbs - really the only difference, in this country anyway, is the bolted trad route tends to be low angle and runout, and the bolted sport route, steeper and not runout. But there are bolted trad routes that are not runout, and bolted sport routes that are. In my opinion the difference between sport face climbing and trad face climbing is not really protection, but difficulty.

Up to about medium 5.12, the modern sport route is little different from the hardest bolted trad routes of the pre-sport era - it basically took sport tactics (bolting on rappell) to push face climbing into hard 5.12 and beyond. The new ethic (or rather, lack thereof) meant that the extremely difficult, gymnastic moves that were practiced on boulders could now be used for the first time on actual climbs, and the artificial ceiling imposed by the ground up ethic could be dispensed with - the door to 5.13 face climbing was opened. There was widespread resistance to this among the old guard, who believed that all the old challenges would soon be bolted on rappell instead being left as bold ground-up projects for future generations, which did indeed happen, but when the top European sport climbers came to the US and did the hardest routes in the country with minimal effort, the final nail in the coffin of ground-up face climbing was driven. The new tactics also had the huge and unforseen benefit of opening up previously unprotectable and therefore untouched new climbing areas, a process which continues to this day.

This is hyperbole, but has basis in fact. When Huber came over here, he went to Josh to learn crack technique before going to try the Salathe. If I remember correctly it took him about four days to go from getting spanked on a 5.8, to flashing low .12s, and getting high .12s after a try or two.

JV

Achey is about as journalistically balanced as Sean Hannity, he slanted the editorial tone of that article (and many others) to suit his anti-sport agenda. It's ridiculous to state that Huber is anti-sport, he spent years hangdogging hard routes in Europe, how do you think he got so good in the first place? NOBODY gets that good without sport climbing.

Achey is about as journalistically balanced as Sean Hannity, he slanted the editorial tone of that article (and many others) to suit his anti-sport agenda. It's ridiculous to state that Huber is anti-sport, he spent years hangdogging hard routes in Europe, how do you think he got so good in the first place? NOBODY gets that good without sport climbing.

By the way, those "30 feet out on overhanging limestone" multi pitch alpine sport routes in Europe are more a product of expediency than adhering to ethics, basically on something that big it is simpler to climb up, hang from a hook and drill than it is rig a top-down civil engineering project on a 1000' wall. There really is no "trad vs sport" in Europe, there are guys in Spain and France you've never heard of who climb 5.14 sport, A5 on El Cap, waterfall ice and 8000 meter peaks.

*You threw a lot of unsubstantiated prattle out there. But without some facts, it's just your opinion. And you know what that's worth. Put up or shut up.*

Tell me what would you specifically like me to back up and I'll see what I can do for you.

*Then you take the same sportards bouldering and guess what? You find out that they really can't pull hard moves either.*

Your drivel is not worth responding to anymore. Bye

*Pot luck. Pick a point at random and back it up with with a source.*

Be more specific please

...and what do you mean, "a source"? My source is Common Knowledge

*Trad climbing or Traditional climbing refers to climbing a route that is protected by placing gear on lead.*

Nope. There are thousands of trad routes that are bolt protected - Tuolumne fo example. Bolt protected face climbing has been around way longer than sport climbing.

But the idea of top down route preparation is certainly a hall mark of sport climbing....A trad climber is a person who starts at the bottom of a climb and climbs to the top, without benefit of having prepared the route from the top down.

Rather than rehearsing the moves on a climb and hanging on the rope as in sport climbing, climbers work up to a hard route by doing many easier routes in “good style,” that is, from the ground up with no falls or hangs.