Is yanking on yer gear cheating?

Cheating denotes winners and losers. Just be honest about it.

Just ask your sponsors if they care. If you have no sponsor then the only person you climb for is yourself.

Style is for the bar stool.

Adam - hopefully the OP cares - and will go back for redemption with a clean send.

Climb ohn.

Wally

Not cheating until you have a girlfriend- and maybe not even then.

How about the first tug? It probably alleviates a tiny bit of bodyweight for a split second... but it also takes away some arm strength, so it's probably a zero-sum game.

Funny post!

Been there, done that...always feel guilty after, especially if you have to own up to someone else:)

Have done it more on sport routes, which I feel less guilty about...but the most recent still bugs me: on Crest Jewel last summer...I was a bit too gripped, maybe it was a bit too windy, a bit too slippery...a bit too tired...

Mike Lane wrote:Then, you give it that second tug. You know what I mean. The one where you kind of grip the sling just a little too long, use it to calm down and take a breath.

If you allow yourself to tug on gear a little bit now, you'll keep doing it more and more in the future. Then it will just be the normal bailout tactic that you "always use". Your friends and partners will start giving you shit about your "climbing style" and they will more than likely start insulting you in French. What happens when there is no gear to tug on?? You won't have developed that "GERRR" mentality when you need it, the very mind set that will save your ass when you are run out and shitting power bars.
In short if you start pulling on gear you might as well start smoking crack. It will ruin your life!

Ask the Huber brothers about their speed ascent of El Cap.

Ben- the OP was a smartass continuation of the "Is stick-clipping the first bolt cheating?".
I was mocking some of the opinions there.

Aid is aid- its cheating. That's not to say I haven't done it but only that when I have I've not claimed a "clean" ascent.

I figured, my response is tongue and cheek.
B

yes but its better then falling sometimes

To clarify, everyone knows what grabbing the sling means. I'm talking about the act of tug-testing your placement just a little too much and yet gladly accepting being bestowed an 'onsight', as these nooby trad kids just love getting all anal about unwritten rules

In your heart you know the truth!
If you really believe you sent it then you did!

There's a guy at a gear shop where I work who will go an entire route A0, I mean taking on a piece of gear, clipping in with a Metolius Personal Anchor System, and putting gear in higher and bumping up.

This is fine, it's what he does, except that, if he finishes a route that way and doesn't wuss out and lower off, he'll call it an onsight. I mean, I don't really care about how he climbs, it's recreation, the annoying thing is that I can't have a conversation with him and know what he means without asking for clarification. We've both got totally different vocabularies for climbing.

Olaf Mitchell wrote:In your heart you know the truth! If you really believe you sent it then you did!