I would love to see aid difficulty get pushed, perhaps even cutting edge routes were multiple falls are taken in order to figure out the move.

aid climbers ...don't seem to suffer this need for consistency and a vanilla world where all rules are the same and everyone plays the same fucking game

Pretty funny, citing wings of steel. I'm not touching that steaming pile with a 20' pole.

But suffice it to say all the participants, all of them, are well advanced middle aged men, balding and what have you.

Kohl is getting up there too, but that isn't really the point is it?

This desperate need for conformity and consistency has its roots in one thing - spray and ego; determining pack position.

The entire argument of the original author, in the video certainly, was based upon this need, and therefore rendered lame as cat piss.

The whole thing is cat piss.

DMT

2. It is still acceptable to continue aid climbing - clean or hammered - even though a route has been freed.

Without bothering to read all 5+ pages of carefully thought out opinions and drunk ramblings, I do find it interesting that we, as a group:

1. Get really, Really, REALLY upset when someone aids a climb that was originally done free - especially when the aid involves nailing. In fact, this is so unacceptable that I can't think of an example of it taking place, though there are several examples of aid climbs that pounded their way through routes that had been attempted, but not finished, free.

2. It is still acceptable to continue aid climbing - clean or hammered - even though a route has been freed. While I can understand continuing to climb aid routes using clean techniques, it still makes me scratch my head. We seem to celebrate the rock and alpine climbers who climb routes with minimal impact (unless we're Russian), but we allow others the freedom to continue climbing a route in what may be argued a "lesser" style.

Since observation #2 is most commonly seen in the heavily climbed sacred grounds of Zion, Yosemite, and others, its not a big enough issue for me to loose a lot of sleep over. But I wonder what I would do if I found out that someone had hammered his way up one of the multi-pitch routes I've established in the Eastern Sierra.

Hmmm...

I assume that with #1 you are talking about significant climbs, because I know people who aid stuff just to practice aiding (or to learn or teach, etc). Sometimes these are on routes that are generally climbed free. Maybe #1 needs to be broken down even further into asking why a particular style is chosen, not just if it should be. Because let's face it, practicing aid on a free route is still aid-climbing the route.

As for #2, it seems to me that if we stopped folks from aiding routes that have since gone free that many of those routes would become off limits to a large swath of the climbing population. How many times has the Nose been freed? Would we really prohibit so many people to stop climbing it just because a handful of stellar athletes have freed it? I'm not so sure of that.

Point of order - its perfectly acceptable, imo and practice on the cliffs in Yosemite seems to reinforce this opinion, that CLEAN AID on freed routes is perfectly A-OK, unless you're hogging a highly prized free route on a busy day (different topic).

Its NAILING routes that have gone free, that except for a few anti-social folk, is not acceptable.

The ethics involved are more about rock and route preservation (and degrading due to iornmongery) and less to do with some spirtual bullshit that places free higher in the pecking order than aid.

Cheers
DMT

when I was in NAM we did FA's in the purest of style, we started naked from the south china sea, and hiked to Cambodia gathering only the most organic natural tools for drilling. A jaw bone from the endangered albino mudskipper for the drill, water smoothed rocks for the hammer, and hooves from water buffalo to make glue to hold the bolts in. This was the Cambodian climbing ethic that we adhered to and still do. Now the new generation is using russian adjustable friction hitches for double dyno's, and they twitter on the A-4+R pitches, which only dumb down the route. some have even used cam shackles and snap links on the 4th pitch. Next thing you know they will be melting lead heads into the 5.8 crack with a propane Jewelers torch.
You new guys need to show some respect and cowboy up!