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Trad Climbing:
Re: [healyje] Trad head, warriors way, and bad advice:
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iamthewallress
Feb 15, 2007, 5:36 PM
Views: 2656
Registered: Jan 2, 2003
Posts: 2463
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healyje wrote: If you seldom or never fall, then you're either progressing at a snail's pace, not climbing near your limit, or never challenging yourself.
I disagree w/ this b/c my hardest TR's are of the same grades as my hardest leads. I'm willing to fall on the TR's and push myself to the point of risking falling on well protected leads, but I get in gear or back off if I think that falling is really about to happen when I'm on the sharp end.
There are a lot of ways to push yourself without maxing out the numbers. Learning to push the edge where you can climb absolutely impeccably as though your life depends on it (like, it situations where your life does depend on it) is its own game.
The most solid soloist/R/X climber that I know (and someone who climbs at the level of doing no-falls free wall climbs) once told me when I asked why he didn't take falls more often that his life depends on him not falling so often that operating at the edge of falling is not a sensation with which he'd like to become comfortable.
I'm not saying that most people have an interest in pushing their limits on R/X or ropeless climbing. I'm just saying that climbing the hardest number ever isn't the only way to climb hard.
Also, when I see someone who rarely falls onsighting, oh, say 3 short 5.12 pitches linked together as one on El Cap trailing a haul line, I have a hard time believing that one will be severely limited in their ability to progress if they don't get intimate with whipping. In fact learning to not whip when you're at your limit just might make you send harder too.
The biggest factor that I've been able to determine in the afformentioned partner's success is heaps and heaps of hard work progressing through the grades over many (nearing 20 now) years, starting in the single digits like everyone else, never shunning a single technique, milking every ounce of daylight on every available climbing day, doing so nearly full time for a while...No short cuts in other words.
(This post was edited by iamthewallress on Feb 15, 2007, 5:47 PM)
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