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drewcoleman
Aug 12, 2002, 3:46 AM
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I would like to ask Dr. Piton something. Aid climbing, how hard is it? I've never tried it, mostly for money reasons. I read in one of your posts that you climbed Redicent wall, that a A5!! Rock on!!! So if you are relying on gear to pull you up, what makes it hard? I know it is mostly body weight placements. Maybe I should just meet you in Yosemite this fall. Please enlighten us all, we know you are up the with Steve Gerberding.
Drew
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passthepitonspete
Aug 12, 2002, 4:38 AM
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The thing that makes aid climbing hard is similar to what makes free climbing hard - lack of security.
See, if you climb a 5.3, chances are you will not find it too hard. You will feel secure, every handhold and foothold is good, you can rest pretty well anywhere, and you're likely not to fall off.
As you work your way up the grades, say to 5.7 or 5.8, then it gets harder - the rests are not as frequent, the holds not as good, and you kind of have to know what you're doing.
By the time you're up to 5.10 or better, there is not a lot of security, and you had best know what you are doing.
I'm not sure that is a perfect analogy, but let's work with it for now. Maybe someone else can find a better analogy.
One of the things that used to make hard aid feel a bit harder was the steepness of the rock. It used to be hard work to climb overhanging aid.
But if you climb aid the Better Way, then you realize that you really do not have to CLIMB at all!
You merely pull yourself up using the 2:1 mechanical advantage of your adjustable daisies and adjustable fifi.
There is no such thing as "strenous aid" any more.
If you find steep aid climbing strenuous, then you are not climbing the Better Way.
And that is emphatically not a Very Good Thing.
When you climb easy aid, say A1, then virtually every piece of gear is bomber. They will all hold a fall, and if you blow it, you're not going anywhere.
But as you climb harder grades, the pieces that you use to hold your weight become more tenuous.
Instead of relying on bomber wires and cams, the features become less secure, and you have to use different "stuff", scarier and less secure stuff like heads and hooks.
Now a head will hold your body weight just fine if you place it right, but the smaller heads might only hold a short fall.
So say you start stringing these things together, the more insecure the pieces, and the more of them, the "harder" the climb becomes.
An A3 might have five or ten heads in a row, with the possibility that if you blow it and take a big whipper, you could start unzipping these things.
But on A3 you'll get the occasional decent piece which will hold a truck.
Now, you could have an A2 pitch with a single sketchy hook or head move in between a couple really good pieces. That's what makes it A2 and not A1, that one sketchy move.
It becomes harder when you string more of these sketchy moves together.
For instance, on my last two solos (Zenyatta and Shortest Straw) there were a few places where I had to make eight or ten hook moves in a row.
This is exciting to say the least!
Now, the hooks were all pretty solid, if you happen to have the experience to make sure you hook in the right place! This takes practise, and if you miss the right spot, you might end up using the wrong spot, and you might end up blowing it.
Those particular sections might have been A3+ or maybe even A4, but I considered them NTB [not] because the hook placements were decent [I wasn't going to blow it, dude....] though emphatically it was DFU. [don't f*ck up]
Now, any one of those ten hook moves might well have been only A2- had it been between a couple decent pieces, but since there were so many in a row, THAT is what made it harder.
Reticent Wall and Jolly Roger were different kettles of fish altogether. Reticent has seen a LOT of traffic, but even so remains very hard. Jolly Roger turned back some of the world's very best climbers because of its wicked combo of desperately difficult free climbing and sick aid. After twenty-years, we made what was only the eight ascent.
You can click here to read about my ascent of Jolly Roger. Have a look at who climbed it before us - it reads like a Who's Who of Big Time Climbers!
Dr. Piton, of course being retired from free climbing, had the good sense to bring along a rope gun for the free climbing on Jolly Roger, which included something like a hundred foot runout on 5.10.
There was some VERY rad hooking on Jolly Roger, and some very sick heading as well. The A5 corner on Jolly Roger leaves no margin for error - if you blow it, it could well cost you your life!
It is conceivable to unzip twenty-five consecutive #0 and #1 heads, and crash into a nasty ledgy corner breaking every bone in your body and ending up a blubbering heap of bone, sinew, muscle, torn ligaments and blood-spattered brain tissue dripping down the A4 ramp beneath in giant globs and horrid gushes of torrentially red arterial blood that soaks your ghetto blaster and really makes a bad mess on your portaledge.
[If belaying this pitch, you may wish to consider keeping the fly on your ledge!]
Reticent Wall has this crazy New Wave aid rating system, which I don't fully understand, except that it's rather sandbaggy! You could well die on New Wave A2+!
The crux pitch on Reticent is New Wave A5, and you could easily rip the whole pitch, taking a fall of over three hundred feet, bouncing off the belay ledge on your way by. When we climbed it, there was nothing past the halfway point that would hold a fall - just hooks and really crappy pins that Chris didn't even dare lead on - he placed them as pro behind him as he hooked!
The crux pitch of Reticent used to be a Real Live Death Pitch.
It is probably not so hard anymore, because repeated nailing and heading and repeated ascents always make an aid climb easier.
By far the bitchin'est part of climbing Reticent was the opportunity to meet and teach Tomaz Humar, the World's Greatest Climber as considered by Climbing Magazine's Millennium Edition.
He is my most successful wall patient ever! Guy walks up and solos Reticent as his first ever big wall solo.
Sheesh.
Anyway, my suggestion is this - get up there on Reticent Wall now before it becomes too easy! In another ten years it'll be a moderate!
Don't believe me, eh?
Well, when the first ascent of The Shield was made, Charlie Porter (was it? I don't have my guidebook in front of me just now) made 35 RURP moves in a row on the Triple Cracks pitch.
That pitch is now A2! His RURP seam has been bashed out by repeated nailing to sawed-off angles and Aliens!
Such is the evolution of the aid climb.
So git up there while the gittin' is good.
You're from Kansas, eh?
Sheesh.
Poor bugger.
No wonder you mostly boulder......
I am Dr. Piton,
and Steve Gerberding I ain't.
I am just a life insurance salesman who happens to solo big walls on his holidays.
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drewcoleman
Aug 13, 2002, 12:05 AM
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Thanks for the info Dr. P, most helpful. A wide wide world aid climbing is.
Drew
[ This Message was edited by: drewcoleman on 2002-08-12 17:05 ]
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bigwalling
Aug 13, 2002, 3:48 AM
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Pete I just read a thing on the reticent today. When Chris Mac. did I think it was the fourth ascent he didn't think the crux was A5. In fact he thought some stuff could hold a fall.
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passthepitonspete
Aug 13, 2002, 3:59 AM
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The crux pitch starts out with Aliens and expando pins. No harder than A3- I'd say.
Then there were eight heads in an overhanging corner - #2 and #3 - and one of those held my short fall! Those head placements were beak placements when Steve Gerberding made the F.A.
Above that is a flake that you hook - it wouldn't hold a fall I don't think as it's loose.
Then there is a good blue Alien and fixed #3 head, then there's nothing.
The definition of New Age A5 is that there are no drilled or enhanced placements, which there aren't. Or at least there weren't on the first ascent.
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paintinhaler
Aug 13, 2002, 4:02 AM
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You need to write a book.
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apollodorus
Aug 13, 2002, 4:11 AM
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"There's no such thing as strenuous aid climbing anymore."
O'Really.
Is that because they've freed the South Face of Half Dome?
The pitch moving out of the big arch onto the face above is well known to be strenuous. It's like two 45 degree walls that come together at the crack. Harding said it was hard, so, well, there you go.
And I would offer this: P25 and P25 of the Excalibur. P24 had a section where you move up into a roof on one crack, then reach over to another. Kinda strenuous. And the left turn on P25 requires you to grab your gear in a move to get up under another roof and then move left. Call it 5.9/A0. You're working under a roof, and can't get the move easily. That sort of thing.
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arsenalcrater
Aug 13, 2002, 4:17 AM
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Great posts Dr. Piton. I'm just off of a weekend with a soft sandstone horror fest down in Sedona. Completed a project called "Organ Doner", not too far from "Ambulance Ride". I had to hook only a few aid moves, but it was a freak show nontheless. I'm not going to rate this climb until I climb it agian or someone else does. I want some Russian aiders....and I better find my binky too!!!
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