Is stick clipping 1st bolt cheating?

An answer to the second question: pre-clipping the first and second bolt can help you avoid racking your genitals when you fall (though that might not have been the intention when the route was bolted); also, if your belayer is light, having the rope run through two biners adds a little friction and she might not get yanked off the ground as far when you blow it between the second and third bolts.

As for stick-clips being ethical or not, I say anything that doesn't alter the rock is always fair game, claiming aside. However, if someone is stick-clipping his way all the way up a route at Rifle he can't climb and drops the damn device on me, or lets it swing in space by my head as I try to redpoint a nearby route, then it sucks.

It also sucks when the route you want to redpoint is occupied for hours by someone sticking their way up it. Rifle climbers know of what and whom I speak, though she hasn't been as bad lately.

Monomaniac wrote: *I put the bolt high to save bolts and save battery life.

Higher first bolts also help with the belay, especially dynamic type catches...

Monomaniac wrote: *I put the bolt high to save bolts and save battery life. Sport climbing without a stick clip is like visiting a whore house without condoms. *Don't know the answer to the 2nd question *Stick clips have been in use at Smith Rock since at least the mid '80's (check out Smith Rock 1986...) but I don't know if routes were 'established with preclipping in mind'. As of 1983 Watts was still cleaning his draws after every attempt, so I doubt very much he was pre-clipping the rope at that time. Of course he eventually abandoned the true "redpoint" mentality, so maybe he became a stick clip fiend as well.

Smith is an interesting place because the distance to many first bolts have increased over time due to erosion at the base, and not because they were intentionally set high for use with a stick clip. Wedding Day is one such an example, especially with the cruxy boulder start to the first bolt that spits many people off, and it is on a corner formation that saw significant erosion

redlude97 wrote: Smith is an interesting place because the distance to many first bolts have increased over time due to erosion at the base, and not because they were intentionally set high for use with a stick clip. Wedding Day is one such an example, especially with the cruxy boulder start to the first bolt that spits many people off, and it is on a corner formation that saw significant erosion

True that erosion is a factor, but the first bolt of Darkness is 22' or so off the deck. It hasn't eroded more than 2-3 feet, so that was always an extremely high first bolt.

Monomaniac wrote: True that erosion is a factor, but the first bolt of Darkness is 22' or so off the deck. It hasn't eroded more than 2-3 feet, so that was always an extremely high first bolt.

The bottom of darkness is ~5.12c climbing though so maybe they weren't expecting many people to fall before the first bolt? I know I've seen it done without a stick clip

I saw a guy at Jacks Canyon last year that, I am totally serious here, stick clipped the first 5 or 6 bolts of a route. He had some kind of super-stick clip. I thought that was a bit rediculous.

Darren Mabe wrote: Higher first bolts also help with the belay, especially dynamic type catches...

and keep the bottom of the route a little less cluttered with bolts, since you would otherwise have to put them very close together to avoid ground fall potential. Whining aboute using a stick clip for the first bolt is just silly. If somebody wants to get that anal, then the logical extreme is that one should only free solo.

Eric D wrote: rediculous.

ridiculous

cheating probably but who cares. I use one but then again I have already shattered my ankle. My GF got me one last year and I love it.

Mike Lane wrote: ... It is merely a safety tactic... In TOP-ROPING, protection is not part of the equation in determining a successful send... Its about successfully completing all the moves, and that is it. Only the SPORTO types get all wound up about rules and lingo and style (like "onsight" and "redpoint" and "project") ... But we (top-rope climbers) just don't really give a shit about rope tactics or terminology.

+1.

Oh, I might have edited that a bit...

For sport climbing with high first bolts I use the Trango Squid with a 20 ft painters pole.

trango.com/paraphernalia/Squid

Jacob Cioffoletti wrote:For sport climbing with high first bolts I use the Trango Squid

I borrowed one of these last weekend at Shelf Road on You Snooze, You Lose at Sand Gulch from this nice dude. I felt like an idiot trying to figure this gizmo out, but in the end it works awesome. I've never owned a stickclip, but I won't ever hesitate to ask to borrow one if someone has one nearby.

Coeus wrote: ridiculous

Whatevr

My ex-boyfriend left me with his stick clip squid. I use it to take the batteries out of my smoke detectors when they start dying and beep since I don't have a ladder tall enough to reach. I'm getting pretty good at it. I've never used it climbing, mostly because I've never remembered to bring it. I'm usually with climbers better than me who can go up and clip the first bolt for me anyways. Same principle though and I see nothing wrong with it if you're just climbing to have fun. I've also done the trick where the first person who leads unclips the 2nd/3rd draw on the way down and hopefully the rope stays in the first when you pull rope. Then I climb with the first precliped and preplaced draws on the rest. Nice on climbs I anticipate being really hard for me. (Except for the time when I pulled rope, it stayed in the first draw as planned but gave me a serious whipping from my ear around my neck and down my chest making welts and scabs that looked like a rabid tiger gave me hickies. I'd rather have just used the stick clip that time.)