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sungam
Apr 24, 2005, 5:03 PM
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ctardi
Apr 24, 2005, 5:08 PM
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Yes, trad is short for traditional. It's how origional climbing was done. By placing protection peices in the rock as you go up, but not compleeting the climb untill you do it without falling on any of them. No hangdogging, no bolts, no top roping.
Do some reading up on http://www.tradgirl.com
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gunksgoer
Apr 24, 2005, 5:15 PM
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ctardi's discription is mostly correct, but id disagree with the no hang dogging and no bolt thing. most individual areas have their own ethics, s its hard to give a specific definition, but i clip bolts on trad routes all the time. ive also seen many a trad route hangdogged before being sent. their cant be a true "definition" of traditional climbing because of variation, you will just get a feel for what it entails.
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a_scender
Apr 24, 2005, 5:23 PM
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I think that more generally trad climbing is considered to be climbing where you are mostly or completely placing your own gear for protection from falling. It doesn't mean that there will be no bolts, nor does it mean that you can't fall or hangdog. If someone refers to a trad climb or trad area they most likely just mean that you need a rack to climb there. That's my understanding of it anyway.
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johnclimbrok
Apr 24, 2005, 5:23 PM
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it's short for Totally Rad
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mr-pink
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Apr 24, 2005, 6:44 PM
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yeah, totally rad! :D
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ron_burgandy
Apr 24, 2005, 6:44 PM
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To me, if it is an all bolted trad line then it is not really a trad line... it is merely a trad line with bolts... BUT it can be climbed trad or it can be climbed sport, and if you think you are special use the bolts and the natural protection.
Always sad to see a perfectally protectable line be slammed with bolts...
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jt512
Apr 24, 2005, 7:04 PM
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In reply to: To me, if it is an all bolted trad line then it is not really a trad line... it is merely a trad line with bolts...
Can't argue with logic like that.
In reply to: BUT it can be climbed trad or it can be climbed sport, and if you think you are special use the bolts and the natural protection.
Bolted trad lines don't have natural protection (almost by definition), at least not in the bolted sections, and some have no natural pro at all. That would be why they have the bolts, eh?
-Jay
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climbhoser
Apr 24, 2005, 9:07 PM
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I can't believe someone would wager that an all bolted climb is a "trad" climb. F*&^ NO it isn't! It's then a sport climb! I don't care if the runouts are thirty feet between bolts, the comfort of clipping a fixed piece vs. the effort required to place your own protection is what makes it a sport climb instead.
If you think back the guys who started climbing often placed pitons on lead with no-falls for the leader being the ultimate mantra. Heck, on hemp rope you can understand, right?
Nowadays traditional climbing is placing one's own protection. If there's a bolt or pin on a climb that doesn't demerit it from being a trad climb, but it definitely takes away from what a trad climb really is. The more the bolts, the less a trad climb it is until you start seeing "mixed" climbs. I would say a mixed climb is when you have 30% or more of a climb bolted. Of course, this is sort of subjective, and many diehards would say a mixed climb is so if there's even 1 bolt!
If there's no natural pro and bolted, it's a sport climb, no matter how insane. Bachar Yerian? Runout sport climb. Bastardly runout....
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neurostar
Apr 24, 2005, 9:46 PM
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Yea, I've never heard an all bolted climb called "trad". I'd go with mixed if it has any bolts, and trad if you have to place all your own pro.
And all bolted? That's sport.
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chriss
Apr 24, 2005, 10:04 PM
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There was a time when "traditional" climbing was done from the ground up. This is the way mountains were done, so this was the way "practise" climbs were done. Protection (any type) was put in on lead. Even aid climbing was considered traditional. No preview, no beta, no cleaning, no TR, no.....
Obviously times have changed.
chris
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maculated
Apr 24, 2005, 10:51 PM
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In reply to: I can't believe someone would wager that an all bolted climb is a "trad" climb. F*&^ NO it isn't! It's then a sport climb!
Okay, history lesson boys and girls .. .
Before there were deliniations like "traditional" and "sport climbing" there was climbing. Just climbing. This is in the days before the Bosch Annihilator, Camalot C4s, and pre-assembled quick draws.
Well, things got a lot cushier as more people entered the pastime and companies figured they could make money and we got better stuff. People were still hanging on to the old ethics of ground up approaches and Robbins and his crew were trying to get US ethics stabilized.
It got to be that, basically, it was okay to bolt a route if there was not protection around, but it maintained the bold style of ascent of more "traditional" climbing.
Here's where you get your division. People that have been climbing longer than climbhoser (I'll wager) were just "climbing." There was no deliniation between sport climbing and "traditional" climbing.
The fact of the matter is that while young pucks like myself generally refer to trad climbing as placing natural and removable protection on lead, the fact remains that true trad climbing was just climbing.
Now, I would LOVE to know where the ethic changed, when people started to bolt routes to work and approach higher climbs through falls and hangdogging and the rest of it, but THAT is where the terminology fractured into "trad" and "sport" climbing.
Sport climbing is sport because there's not real boldness to it. I'd even venture to say that sport routes are usually safely bolted by top down methods. Protection is placed with distance of fall and safety in mind, not always at the best bolting spot for a person bolting on lead. True sport climbing is pretty darn safe. Clean falls, clean lines, close bolts. Z clipping was not a term until sport climbing came along.
So . . . trad bolted lines? You betcha. Trad bolting means "bolted in traditional style."
So what is meant by trad? Climbed in the traditional climbing style. And guess what? That included placing bolts.
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jt512
Apr 24, 2005, 11:08 PM
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In reply to: I can't believe someone would wager that an all bolted climb is a "trad" climb. F*&^ NO it isn't! It's then a sport climb! I don't care if the runouts are thirty feet between bolts, the comfort of clipping a fixed piece vs. the effort required to place your own protection is what makes it a sport climb instead.
You can make up your own definitions all day long. Won't make them right.
In reply to: If you think back the guys who started climbing often placed pitons on lead with no-falls for the leader being the ultimate mantra.
Here's a big hint: they placed bolts on lead using hand drills, too.
In reply to: Nowadays traditional climbing is placing one's own protection.
Isn't redefining the word traditional a contradiction. The word means what was done traditionally! You can't redefine tradition. Tradition is just tradition. And, the fact is, that bolts, drilled by hand on lead, have been traditionally used to protect blank sections of rock since long before sport climbing was even conceptualized. Sport climbing didn't come to America until the mid-80s, yet bolts had been used since when, the 50s maybe? So that's like 30 years of tradition behind the use of bolts in climbing.
What defines a trad route is not whether or not it has bolts, but by what the style and intent of the first ascentionist was. If the FAist led the route from ground up with no previewing, and placing bolts, if any, minimally and by hand, then that is most definitely climbing in the traditional style, and thus constitutes establishing a traditional route.
In reply to: Of course, this is sort of subjective, and many diehards would say a mixed climb is so if there's even 1 bolt!
Only a diehard n00b would make such a statement.
In reply to: Bachar Yerian? Runout sport climb.
Cool. The n00bs of n:shock:b.com have now established that both the Nose and the Bachar-Yerian are sport climbs. Wouldn't Bachar be tickled by that.
-Jay
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climbhoser
Apr 24, 2005, 11:11 PM
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I think where it truly dilineates is when you go beyond bolting out of the necessity of safety and into the comfortization of a route. I said the Bachar Yerian is a sport route...I'll grant it different ontological status as a bolted adventure route. In fact, if there's one out there that's a traditional bolted line it IS the Bachar Yerian for the ground up ethics in bolting it.
However, climbs like this are few and far between. Oh yeah, I've been climbing 10 years, so not long, you're right. I came in at the early 90s when the sport climbing craze was still in swing.
I just think of traditional climbing as embodying, as you said, a different ethic, somewhat along the lines of Royal Robbins and the other old dudes. What I said before has changed...I went through a cathartic revelation in reading MAculated's post...
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maculated
Apr 24, 2005, 11:17 PM
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In reply to: However, climbs like this are few and far between.
I invite you to come climbing in SLO. The only "sport routes" around have been established in the last five years.
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petsfed
Apr 24, 2005, 11:24 PM
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In reply to: Sport climbing is sport because there's not real boldness to it. I'd even venture to say that sport routes are usually safely bolted by top down methods. Protection is placed with distance of fall and safety in mind, not always at the best bolting spot for a person bolting on lead. True sport climbing is pretty darn safe. Clean falls, clean lines, close bolts. Z clipping was not a term until sport climbing came along.
No joke. Trad is a state of mind, not a piece of equipment.
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rgold
Apr 25, 2005, 12:01 AM
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As one of those folks most of whose climbing was done when "trad climbing" was just "climbing," I think the fundamental concept has been obscured by focusing on whether or not the leader is placing protection. The philosophy that characterized climbing in the years before sport climbing created trad climbing had as its basic goal the preservation of uncertainty in a world made ever more accessible by technology.
The preservation of uncertainty lead to three fundamental tenets:
1. The climber confronts nature as much as possible on its own terms, rather than modifying nature to suit his needs.
2. The climber strives to employ the absolute minimum of technological means.
3. Climbs, whether big or small, are treated like remote mountain routes and climbed ground up with as little knowledge as possible of what lies ahead.
In this framework, the use of bolts was controversial, both on aid routes and free routes. It was clear that any use of bolts violated the underlying principles of the sport. I recall a line in Art Gran's first Shawangunk guidebook to the effect that "all climbers realize that even a single bolt on a climb represents a defeat." Art was not arguing that bolts should not be used, but that their use represented a compromise with principle and so should be subject to introspection on the part of the first-ascent party and the scrutiny of the rest of the community.
The use of bolts on aid routes depended to some extent on the availability of technology. However, the willingness to work hard to avoid aid bolts was perhaps exemplified by Robbins on the first ascent of the Half Dome direct route, where at one point he undertook a circuitous line of multiple difficult piton placements rather than place a single bolt. If you go up there now, I think you'll find the single bolt Robbins refused to place.
In free climbing, the crackless slabs of Tuolumne and Yosemite made some kind of accomodation with the use of bolts imperative. Here the other operative principles, of minimal knowledge and ground-up approach dictated the solution. You could start at the base of a climb with a bolt kit in your pocket and no knowledge of what lay above, and could place protection bolts any place you could manage to free both hands to drill. I don't think there was anything "tradder" than some of the leads done in this style, beginning with the many revolutionary routes by Bob Kamps and culminating with the Bachar-Yerian. To call these routes sport routes is to completely misunderstand the restrictions these climbers placed on themselves, restrictions that are utterly absent from the creation of sport climbs.
Nowadays, climbers top-rope or hang-dog a route into submission and call it trad climbing because they placed the gear they are hanging on. The older generation that wouldn't recognize this as "legitimate" are already dying off, and so it will probably soon become true that trad climbing is simply sport climbing with removeable protection placed by the leader.
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piton
Apr 26, 2005, 12:55 PM
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In reply to: Bolted trad lines don't have natural protection (almost by definition), at least not in the bolted sections, and some have no natural pro at all. That would be why they have the bolts, eh?
ask sonnie trotter what he thinks about this and that smith rock climb he did... the one where he placed trad gear next to bolts
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dew4theq
Apr 26, 2005, 1:18 PM
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I like the totally rad thing. Couldn't agree more.
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bumblie
Apr 26, 2005, 1:28 PM
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In reply to: I think where it truly dilineates is when you go beyond bolting out of the necessity of safety and into the comfortization of a route. I said the Bachar Yerian is a sport route...I'll grant it different ontological status as a bolted adventure route. In fact, if there's one out there that's a traditional bolted line it IS the Bachar Yerian for the ground up ethics in bolting it. However, climbs like this are few and far between.
I'd like to invite you to Stone Mountain, NC. Most routes are bolted... and quite sporty. :wink:
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hema
Apr 26, 2005, 1:59 PM
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Out here, there are four kinds of roped climbs:
1) Sport (bolted all the way, just bring your QD's)
2) Mixed (partly bolted, rack needed or othervise really BOLD, ie. certain death wish).
3) Trad (if you don't have a rack, you're going to have to solo this one up)
4) Aid
So in my book, no such thing as all bolted trad-route, fine it might have been climbed ground up and placing all the gear during ascent (bolts, pins whatever), but if you just clip the bolts on the way up it's "sport". The ruote might not be safe (ie huge run-outs etc.), but the gear dictates it's sport (no gear needed, except QD's).
The best definition for trad-route around here would be "gear needed, be it cams or nuts or whatnot".
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crag
Apr 26, 2005, 2:05 PM
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In reply to: Now, I would LOVE to know where the ethic changed
It only changes if you let it change you. I could still climb in my PAs with my 2 piece Troll Sit Harness, BW Goldline and use nothing but my old collection of Forrest Stoppers, homemade drilled tube chocks, Chouinard Hexes, and Bonatti death gate biners...if I wanted to.
Changes in ethics only affect the masses in some sort of socialized whole. Break down the masses into little individual parts and the social constructs of the majority are less effective in their posturing for position in the glorified limelight of who’s righter or better.
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sarcat
Apr 26, 2005, 2:30 PM
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In reply to: As one of those folk........
The best post I've read in a while. Thanks,
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olderic
Apr 26, 2005, 3:03 PM
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In reply to: The best definition for trad-route around here would be "gear needed, be it cams or nuts or whatnot".
I'd not about the gear. It is about the mindset needed to deal with the challenges the climb presents. It is about understanding and acknowledging what the FA-ists did - or if you are doing the FA having some concepts of what you are trying to establish. But it's not about the gear. Although the existence of a bolt/(s) is a very measurable thing.
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