It appears someone missed a closing quote.

I missed two of them. I made the corection.

For posteriority.

It appears someone missed a closing quote.

I agree with guangzhou about the psychological side of climbng. Assuming a climber is experienced and isn't alpine climbing, if they get hurt its usually because of making multiple bad choices in 95% of the cases and in 5% bad luck. With the redundancy and quality of todays gear, to have something go terribly wrong requires several bad decisions.

I agree with both of you, I use hex and nut for twenty year and I climb 5.10. I just buy cam five years ago.

On the other side, can we say that those who learn to climb bolt have more problem to find good placement because they look for somethink obvious and becaums they climb hard before learning to protect.

Someone who learn trad before sport have to protect the route well. So, they climb less harder, but they make more god decision because they have time to think at what is a good placement and what is not a good placement.

No. you keep trying to put trad climbing on some type of pedestal, but it really isn't. [..] If your argument that a climber with 2 years of experience strictly trad climbing is a better trad climber than a climber with 2 years experience split between sport and trad, then DUH thanks for stating the obvious.

Someone who learn trad before sport have to protect the route well. So, they climb less harder, but they make more god decision because they have time to think at what is a good placement and what is not a good placement.

Overall this is been one of the best discussions I have seen on this website in a long time. It's clear that people have wildly varying definitions of traditional climbing. In the end though, does it really matter what it actually means? As long as we treat the cliff with the respect it deserves, treat each other with respect, and have fun, then who really cares.

By the way Chas...I tried the "I'm just going to climb harder" philosophy last year. It worked on ice, but on rock I just wound up falling more. Granted I didn't upgrade my partners ability, so there's that sense that I'm really being out there still. My approach to climbing this year is "you fall on basically everything, so you may as well get on those really good routes and fall on them!" here I come Supper's Ready and VMC Direct!

Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch. For one thing, young farts will be needed and have always responded too. It took a whole village to stop Tony Lama from rap bolting Cerro Torre. Who would ever have thought modern climbers would contrive to climb in a worse style than Cesare Maestri?

It is abundantly clear that there are quite a lot of people out there with operating definitions of trad climbing that are tenuously related to traditional climbing at best, and many of these people have not made any kind of conscious choice to modify the old definitions, they don't know and never have known what the definitions are (or were).

That's where the old farts come in. And don't forget I've already stipulated that the old farts are doomed to fail in their efforts to preserve tradition, as they always have (with perhaps the notable exception of the Elbsandsteingebirge and analogous areas in Eastern Europe).


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.


Well, in Europe there are serious conflicts between the militant bolters and those struggling to preserve trad areas. Here is a snippet of a post on Super Topo by Luca Signorelli that gives a sense of the situation over there.

"Then there's http://www.gulliver.it...the forum is the general HQ of the local "Militant Bolting Brigade". Check some of the threads there (those with the word "trad" in it) and with the help of Google Translator you'll read some very silly stuff. It's all very conservative in a sort of extreme way ("conservative" here means "pro bolt") but there's a lot of very knowledgeable people posting there, so as long as you don't mention trad climbing and cams they will help you."

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.

It was kind of a brutal work week - I'll try to catch up on all this over the weekend...

Despite all that and free from the influence of "old farts speaking up to stop it" I still find Trad climbing really appealing

Im pretty sure I understand the difference and sorry I don't understand what you trying to ask with the last question?

Overall this is been one of the best discussions I have seen on this website in a long time. It's clear that people have wildly varying definitions of traditional climbing. In the end though, does it really matter what it actually means? As long as we treat the cliff with the respect it deserves, treat each other with respect, and have fun, then who really cares!

A nice observation and an astute one. The thread seems to have steered clear of the name-calling, trolling and flaming that totally ruin so many internet discussions.

As for whether it actually matters what trad means, I think there are two aspects. All the stuff about dogging or not dogging and all other ways of eliminating both the unknown and the level of risk may be important to some people (I've obviously made something of a fuss over it), but as matters of style that do not change the nature of the climbs themselves, such things only matter....if you think they matter. In other words, they have to do with what you personally feel is a "legitimate" accomplishment, and surely everyone is entitled to their own opinions.

But the other aspect has to do with what happens to the rock, which is a finite resource. One of the things at the core of trad climbing is dealing with what nature has offered or not offered. Sport climbing is completely different in this regard.

Although the sport climber usually (chipping and comfortizing are exceptions) deals with what nature provides in terms of holds, there is no analogous viewpoint about protection, which is usually installed so as to make the climbing as safe as climbing can be. The creation of sport climbs is typically viewed as a community service, and the creator has obligations to the community to provide a safe and enjoyable experience.

Trad climbs are not ``created'' in an analogous way, in spite of the arguments years ago that used that term. They are, or at least I think they should be, what nature has created, not what man has carved out of the raw material nature provided. If they are risky, that is part of the environment. The first ascender of a trad route is not a service provider for the climbing community, they are an adventurer who has passed a certain way, and who has hopefully left it as it was for others.

The general principle seems to me to be clear enough, but is, of course, clouded by the use of bolts on trad climbs. In the case of bolted protection, this is the one place where I think considerations of style enter the equation, and the issue, which I don't think will never be resolved among climbers, is how adventurous the ascent was.

And finally, steep crags that have lots of cracks, even if the cracks are not always ideally situated, should just be left bolt-free for a new generation of better climbers who may also have new types of more effective protection equipment. This is a simple matter of respecting the restraint of past generations and not greedily gobbling up every inch of climbable rock so that there is nothing left for the future.

This leaves the question of bolted belays, which doesn't seem to be controversial, but which massively alter the adventurousness of climbs, especially longer ones. These stations allow climbers to move faster, carry smaller racks (with natural belay anchors the party might have to use six to eight of their pieces up on belay stances), and retreat with impunity from anywhere on the climb.

A climb with all bolted belays really isn't a trad climb, although here I think I might be really in a seriously isolated minority. Moreover, the elimination of any real commitment factor draws all kinds of incompetent parties as well as late-starters and others who don't intend to do the whole route, creating an endless carnival atmosphere replete with fusterclucks all up and down the line.

If it is trad, then it is a modern version that has lost much of its contact with the exploration of wilderness that was once at the heart of climbing, and has replaced those origins with the congestion and bad vibes of our crowded freeways and public transportation systems. If the modern trad climber is searching for the same type of experience they get on an LA freeway at rush hour, then bolting all stances is what they want and need. Anyone else is out of luck.