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rockies
Aug 29, 2007, 4:52 AM
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Yes, I do rest on my gear, my nuts anyway, I trust them, and it's a good way to test them. Anyway, my arms burn out and get pumped sometimes, so I have to take a rest then while stretching out my arms before continuing with the climb.
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zeke_sf
Aug 29, 2007, 4:57 AM
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rockies wrote: Yes, I do rest on my gear, my nuts anyway, I trust them, and it's a good way to test them. Anyway, my arms burn out and get pumped sometimes, so I have to take a rest then while stretching out my arms before continuing with the climb.
PTFTW!!!
I almost always rest on my nuts after my arms burn out too. It's a good way to test them for sure. On climbs, I prefer cams.
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stymingersfink
Aug 29, 2007, 5:12 AM
Post #53 of 77
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j_ung wrote: Suffice to say that, in the context of this thread, I don't have anything resembling a set of rules I always follow.
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livinonasandbar
Aug 29, 2007, 12:37 PM
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artm wrote: j_ung wrote: artm wrote: notapplicable wrote: artm wrote: zeke_sf wrote: baja_java wrote: damn straight! fucking chalk-aiders!! I hates dem damn sticky shoe people! Damn dem! Me boots have the hobnails or die!!! Get rid of that sissy modern harness too! Swami belts 4lyfe! Alright, calm down there Henry. I dont know about you but I dont like rope burn in my armpits everytime I take a fall.  What kind of sissified climber are you? I suppose you use one of those modern belay devices too instead of the tried and true hip belay? Belay!? If I fall, I dive across the nearest sharp edge to sever the rope and save my partner. Bravo! That is the true and only Hardcore style! We must all strive to follow your brave example!
Do you remember that "Off the Wall" (or whatever it's called) in Climbing or Rock & Ice years ago? Two guys are climbing across from one another on separate routes when one guy cuts loose a monster fart. His belayer calls up, "Hey, that's aid!" The other climber counters, "Not unless you light it..."
So, perhaps we shouldn't be arguing the merits of hanging on gear, but discussing the ethics of passing gas while on lead...
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trundlebum
Sep 10, 2007, 1:11 AM
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Obviously this thread has degenerated into off topic.
I would put forth that the lines between Trad and sport are somewhat blurred. With time that is to be expected.
If I were to define sport I would say "anything goes" with trad I would say there is a defined set of ethics. How you choose to climb is just that, your choice. How you choose to express to your bar mates the style in which you got up the climb is your choice as well.
I must interject that getting back into climbing after a couple decade hiatus, that there are a lot of new terms. There are as well a lot of old terms that have morphed and I must say, much to my chagrin. One example is the term "whipper". That term has been around since Salathe' days or before. It has a specific meaning, it is a fall from an ill protected traverse. Today any fall is called a whipper, I say B.S. I wince when I hear "I took a little 8' whipper when I was 4' straight above a solid piece". That is an oxymoronic statement.
In my hey day, ethics were everything. If you grabbed a piece and weighted it at all then it was called a fall. Consequently by grabbing a piece you forfeit your "onsight" bragging rights.
So you are presented with the choice, in the name of progress, should I do a route I may not pull off a clean lead of? or do I train more on the chin up bar and lesser graded routes of the same type of climbing?
I would suggest to the user "upper limits":
Push yourself in the gym, on the boulder problems and top rope routes that are way above your leading ability.
But save the ones you pine for, ones right at your upper ability level, for "clean/ onsight leads". I think you will still progress this way and in the long run feel better about your accomplishments.
One of the problems of taking hangs is that it is addictive. It becomes to easy. If you can reach out and grab the piece, then why do it? If it is a descent piece and that close, go till you fall. You never know, that one last move my produce an unforeseen stance/ rest, yah never know.
I think the main difference between sport and trad (IMHO) is that trad is a mental game. Trad is about independence, being able to climb a multipitch route bottom up, no preplaced gear and nothing left behind. This means route finding, gear placing, move sequencing for strength efficiency and stances to place gear from et.
None of this is part of sport climbing.
In short I think of the trad attitude as being very conservative, climbing is a relationship with you and the medium. How you conduct yourself within that relationship is part and parcel to the quality of the relationship.
Pure sport is more like pure hedonism. Like sport sex. You don't have ethics, anything goes. You don't care about your partner (in this case the medium) you don't care about a relationship. Sport routes are most often created from top down and bolted on rappel. Hangs are part of the basic program. Ethics are not.
In trad, like any good relationship, everything new is a "first time" and you can never ever repeat the "first time". Consequently you are faced with a personal decision, "do I continue to have half baked relationship with my climbing? or do I simply get up the damn thing"
So to "upperlimits" I say:
Hang all you want, just be honest with your peers (and more so,... yourself) when talking about climbs you have done.
But I would say, better yet, the simple solution is just say "damn the torpedoes" hang on everything and just refer to yourself as a sport climber that happens to bring along cams and nuts.
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kane_schutzman
Sep 11, 2007, 6:56 PM
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Hey man, my friend was leading somewhere on some sandstone(I forget the whole story) anyways, he had 3 cams in and rested on a #2 the cam somehow blew rock and he took a groud fall. This guy is a great climber too, so after hearing that I try to stay off my geat enless I absolutely have too.
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tradmanclimbs
Sep 11, 2007, 8:18 PM
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Not trusting gear because you heard someone got hurt somewhere somehow? is just plain stoopid. Every situation is diferent and needs to be handled the best way that you can. Sometimes that means yelling take and sometimes it dosen't. If the gear is so crap thet the climb is a solo you shouldn't be on it unless you can hike the grade anyways. Anyone who is so hung up on ego or peer pressure and silly unwritten rules that they won't grab gear in a dangerous situation deserves the broken bones. I was working a rt with Michale Kennedy and Charly Gray up in independance pass about 1986. We seemed to be stalled when Mike fished into his pack, pulled out a hammer, rigged some slings into makeshift aiders and announced " Time to do some TRADITIONAL climbing" He pounded in a pin, stood in the slings and presto! we were back in buisness I like to keep those techniques in my Trad bag so to speak If I think i can send without getting hurt then I go for it. If I am afraid of hitting an ankle breaker ledge or cutting my rope in a fall or running out of gas in a dangerous spot then I will clip directly into the gear and rest up. Better a healtly coward than a brave broken idiot
(This post was edited by tradmanclimbs on Sep 11, 2007, 8:23 PM)
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stymingersfink
Sep 12, 2007, 3:05 AM
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...which is all well and good, but unless the leader has already developed an experience of good and poor gear, how are they to know?
AID CLIMBING!
which is great for knowing gear placements, but it does kind of screw with your trad-lead head a bit when it's all said and done IME. It all works out in the end.
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kane_schutzman
Sep 12, 2007, 4:11 AM
Post #59 of 77
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Ok, so you do have a good point. I did know the whole story but it was awhile ago, I climbed with him though and it aint a joke. Hmm, he needed a break, so rested on the gear which put him in the hospital. There for, I try not to rest on gear enless I really really need too. Otherwise, I ll send the climb and its not about unwritten rules, man do you feel good after hanging all over gear? I sure dont, and yes sometimes that does, my ego I guess, make me keep going.
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climb_eng
Sep 12, 2007, 4:40 AM
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rockies wrote: Yes, I do rest on my gear, my nuts anyway, I trust them, and it's a good way to test them. Anyway, my arms burn out and get pumped sometimes, so I have to take a rest then while stretching out my arms before continuing with the climb.
I'm surprised... I always trust my cams and nuts in Squamish, the rock is soooo good. The Canadian rockies on the other hand, don't trust anything  . Even bolts have been known to pull blocks down with them.
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stymingersfink
Sep 12, 2007, 5:04 AM
Post #61 of 77
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climb_eng wrote: rockies wrote: Yes, I do rest on my gear, my nuts anyway, I trust them, and it's a good way to test them. I'm surprised...
micro's, I'd bet, but that's neither here nor there. the real issue, it would seem, is that there's nothing like a little misplaced trust to get someone brokeback mountain
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paintrain
Sep 12, 2007, 5:48 AM
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We all rest on gear unless we simulclimb to the top of every buttress or have a damn long rope. Climbs are as long as the height of the rock or when someone arbitrarily puts in an anchor and you decide to clip into it. 30m ropes were the standard at one time and now we commonly climb on 70m ropes. We don't poo poo gear improvements, why do we harsh on evolved climbing tactics to improve performance.
So ethics. They seem to change with time (much like std rope lengths and gear). The free grades have gotten harder with changes in "ethics(style/tactics)" and most of those harder grades are done clean at some point. Direct aid was an accepted part of the ascent ethic at one point in climbing history as well as "the leader must not fall". Was that somehow not using good ethics/style? At the time it was the highest standard, but it has changed with better technique, improved equipment and improved tactics.
If you want to progress, you need to push yourself on harder routes. Frankly, at Indian Creek there are crack sizes I can't link two moves on when I first try them, but I flail/aid/hang my way up (the TR has to get up somehow) and then I improve my technique on TR. I then go back and do it clean when my technique improves. Sport tactics yes, but you will never get enough technique by doing 100 laps on 5.8 to get up 150ft of IC 5.10 and everything starts at 5.10 there. I could do 100 pullups a day and it won't get me up pink flamingo.
Set goals, train safely, use appropriate technique to the terrain, be honest about your accomplishments and have fun. If hanging on gear is a way for you to improve faster and fits into your tactics to improve then so be it. It is a technique, one of many in trad climbing that can be employed. If it becomes your sole technique for ascending a climb you may want to switch to aid climbing or re-evaluate your free climbing objectives.
So yes, I hang on gear on occasion, I fall on gear once in a while, I place gear in case I fall most often not testing it, and I hang on it at belays when I feel the pitch is finished.
Waxing on about ethics/style/tactics and the way it "should be done" just limits what will be done. Pick what works for you and that is the purest style and the best ethics for you.
PT
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bizarrodrinker
Sep 12, 2007, 12:43 PM
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livinonasandbar wrote: I don't like testing trad placements, either by hanging on them or falling on them.
How do you manage a "hanging" belay then?
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livinonasandbar
Sep 12, 2007, 1:59 PM
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Well, you've got me there, grasshopper... I guess it's all a matter of managing risk. Redundancy is second only to "Solid" in SRENE.
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bizarrodrinker
Sep 12, 2007, 2:05 PM
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Just bustin your nutz a bit. I know what you meant. I am the same way about gear placements. The way I see it, I never plan on using them, but they're there if something goes wrong.
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dalguard
Sep 12, 2007, 3:18 PM
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I'm very careful about resting on gear if I'd be in trouble if the piece blew. In other words, I only rest on gear if the piece is backed up or the next piece isn't far down. This last weekend I considered hanging on a piece but the next piece was a ways down so I pushed through, resulting in my taking a nice fall onto it instead of hanging on it, so maybe resting would have made sense.
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tradmanclimbs
Sep 12, 2007, 4:00 PM
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Ok I'l put this a little clearer.. If your gear is so crap that your afraid to trust it with body weight you have no buisness climbing at your limit over that gear. You would be better off free soloing the pitch as that would conserve some strength. Sometimes though you have no choice but to climb over crap gear but no one is advocating takeing a hang on crap gear. If your experience tells you that you are going to have to commit to a section of hard X rated climbing then maby it would be a smart thing to rest up before you launch into that danger zone? Resting on the ocasional piece of gear and aid climbing doesen't seem to hurt my free soloing head at all. I do know a few folks who got hurt because they refused to grab the draw and blew the clip. Ego induced injury.
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cracklover
Sep 12, 2007, 6:34 PM
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tradmanclimbs, where do you get off telling people what they should or shouldn't do? "Ego induced injury?" Give me a fucking break - every climbing injury is an ego induced injury. We choose our rules as climbers, and we try to live by them. That's the name of the game. We all know that sometimes we have to make compromises, and that sometimes we get the chop no matter what.
Sheesh,
GO
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kane_schutzman
Sep 12, 2007, 7:04 PM
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In reply to: Gmburns2000:I've decked twice: 1) while resting on a cam on a pumpy, layback crack. The cam popped (bad placement) and I fell about 10 feet onto my bum. I slid a bit down the slabby belay station, but no injuries; except to my belayor who managed to get rope burn on his finger because it was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
(This post was edited by kane_schutzman on Sep 12, 2007, 7:21 PM)
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AustinWilliams
Sep 12, 2007, 8:26 PM
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In reply to: I think the main difference between sport and trad (IMHO) is that trad is a mental game. Trad is about independence, being able to climb a multipitch route bottom up, no preplaced gear and nothing left behind. This means route finding, gear placing, move sequencing for strength efficiency and stances to place gear from et. None of this is part of sport climbing. In short I think of the trad attitude as being very conservative, climbing is a relationship with you and the medium. How you conduct yourself within that relationship is part and parcel to the quality of the relationship. Pure sport is more like pure hedonism. Like sport sex. You don't have ethics, anything goes. You don't care about your partner (in this case the medium) you don't care about a relationship. Sport routes are most often created from top down and bolted on rappel. Hangs are part of the basic program. Ethics are not.
The line has been drawn, pick your side!
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livinonasandbar
Sep 12, 2007, 8:57 PM
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I inserted a link to this article earlier in this thread, but the gist of it follows:
"As the founder and head designer of Metolius, Doug Philips has spent an immense amount of time testing and improving cams over the last twenty years. Here are some tips on cam safety based on his vast experience.
No matter how good a placement looks, you can never be sure it will hold.
During my tests, about one in twenty good-looking placements pulled out when loaded. The challenge is to figure out why the cam pulled, and what could have been done to prevent this from happening."
If 1 in 20 of Doug Phillips' "good-looking" placements fail for no apparent reason, then I'm gonna be wary of my own placements.
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tradmanclimbs
Sep 13, 2007, 2:08 PM
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I am not telling anyone to do or not do anything just pointing out that if you are in troubble and think you might come off but you are afraid to grab a draw or cam or whatever because you think that it is some kind of evile breach of ethics and then you do come off and break your ankle that you are one stupid hurting SOB Additionaly if you claim that every piece of gear is suspect and if you grab that gear to rest you will most certainly rip said gear and go splat your a bit too paranoid to be a climber. Heck every piece of gear is suspect but unless you want to free solo everything at some point you have to gain some understanding and trust in how the system works.
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tradmanclimbs
Sep 13, 2007, 2:32 PM
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No disrespect intended for anyone who has gotten hurt climbing. Trust me, if I ever get hurt bad climbing i will most certainly feel like an idiot. I certainly feel pretty stoopid for wrecking my shoulder on a rope swing a few years ago.
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cracklover
Sep 13, 2007, 4:14 PM
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Fair enough, thanks for clarifying.
GO
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tradclmbr
Sep 13, 2007, 5:00 PM
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only gave this thread a quick read so maybe its been mentioned before. The real problem with resting, taking, and grabbing gear while trad leading is its habit forming and hard to push past when you get on something hard.....hand almost involuntarily reaches out and grabs gear. I find I really have to explicitly change my mental state and sometimes tell my belayer to not listen to me when I say take if Im falling prey to my own (well honed) weakness of taking on gear. Of course I only trust some belayers to know the tone of my voice and discerne between whimpy 'take' and 'TAKE'
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