Why is Trad so much more difficult in grade than sport?

Matt Duthie wrote:Because it's more badass, obviously! But really, just kidding. I just went out to Estes Park from Michigan for a few days, with ambitious intentions of climbing 5.10 finger cracks at Lumpy, because I'd been training on gym toprope wooden cracks for 8 months...toe/rand smears, hanging on single pinkie-down locks, practicing placing gear in those stances, etc. Got out there and did Melvin's Wheel and realized that was as hard as I could comfortably lead at 5.8+...well, shit, it's hard there, onsighting routes first climbed in 1969. Oh well. Went on and did some single-pitch 5.9 trad and climbed Piz Badille, which turned out to be the most memorable lead of the trip at 5.6 (pretty sure I led the 5.8 variation of the first pitch, including a couple 30+ foot runouts). Trad climbing is all about enjoying the responsibility for your own safety and enjoyment, and working through scary/hard moves because you have to. A pretty sweet game to play, indeed. Yes, I climb harder sport, but I prefer the lower numbers and greater entertainment.

I sometimes jump on 5.12 sport, V6 bouldering, but i personally truly love a long 500+ ft 5.7 trad that I am not 100% sure on how it goes! Nothing like the adventure of not being 100% sure if you are still on the correct route! I love long 2-3 pitch sections of the wall that are all like 5.5-5.8 because it is a choose your own adventure and make your own route.

Shelton Hatfield wrote: Agreed. If your harness is 20 lbs heavier when you rack up for a trad lead vs a sport climb, you might be doing it wrong.

Depends on what you are climbing. If you like offwidths, those big bros and the 5 and 6 camalots weight a lot. Either that or you have to bring steel balls which probably weigh a lot was well...

Stagg54 wrote: Depends on what you are climbing. If you like offwidths, those big bros and the 5 and 6 camalots weight a lot. Either that or you have to bring steel balls which probably weigh a lot was well...

Yeah, if you like racking 15 pieces of wide gear. Or maybe you brought your hammer and pin rack in case it seams out higher up. Or maybe, as you and so many others have suggested, your balls are incredibly dense, like two small neutron stars. You all know courage doesn't actually originate in the testicles, right?

I don't think the grades are different. A 5.9 is a 5.9 whether it's protected by bolted or trad gear. But a trad 5.9 usually feels much harder than a bolted 5.9.

Just think about the requirements for clipping bolts versus placing trad gear.

First off anybody can clip a bolt. It requires virtually no skill at all.

Placing bomber trad gear on the other hand requires a boatload of knowledge and skill by comparison:
You have to know how and when to place a nut, hex, cam, tri-cam, etc.
You need to be able to tell at a glance what size piece of fits in what size crack and which piece fits best for the type of crack.
You have to know when to extend a cam from walking or to lessen rope drag etc. You need to know how to prevent a reverse zipper.
You have to decide when to place gear which is determined by the options provided you. So you have to be able to "see" where your possibilities are and pick the best ones at the right time.
You need to be able to keep track of the gear you have placed so that you don't run out of a key piece of gear when you need it higher.
Etc etc
You have to find a suitable placement, pick the right piece, take it off your harness, place it correctly, test it and if good then clip to it. If it's not the right piece you have to choose another one and repeat the same process. This takes time and the whole time you have to hold on and keep from falling.

Removing a quickdraw from you harness and clipping a bolt is simple and takes seconds.

Second, Trad gear is much heavier than a few quickdraws. Nuts, cams, spare biners, lockers, cordelettes, shoulder slings, double length slings, alpine draws, nut tools, self rescue gear, all this adds up in weight. A few quickdraws hardly weigh anything.

Third, Bolted routes are typically single pitch and usually half a rope length long so not many draws are required. Trad routes are often an entire rope length and can be wandering so can require extending pieces and can take quite a bit of gear to protect adequately. Trad routes are typically multipitch which requires more endurance too.

Fourth, Bolted routes already have bolted anchors that somebody drilled and placed for bolt clippers. Clipping a couple of draws takes a few seconds.

Trad routes generally require finding 3 bomber gear placements in a small area then the skill to build an anchor with all three and tie them all together. This requires a greater amount of time and skill and gear.

And fifth, While belaying, the follower takes longer to clean a trad route which is more exhausting for the leader as well as the follower. The leader sometimes has to belay from an uncomfortable position as well. This takes energy.

Oh yeah, and I forgot that trad climbers are typically carrying a pack with a rain jacket, headlamp, topo, warm jacket, gloves, fleece hat, water, food, first aid kit, sunscreen, approach shoes and maybe a compass. This adds additional weight and often gets in the way while climbing (especially chimneys and offwidths).

Not sure if this has been said yet, but a lot of traditional routes were put up in a time when 5.9 was literally the hardest conceivable grade that humans could climb. Because of this, some "old school" 5.7 routes feel significantly harder than a bolted 5.7 (compare White Toad in Rumney to False Modesty (sorry about the really niche example)), and there is always the notorious New England 5.9+. Grade creep happens, which either makes old trad areas feel really stiff, or newer bolted areas feel soft. Also the rack weight and the comfort thing are a factor. on top of that, a lot of trad routes are just way longer than a lot of bolted routes.

i think one of the big things that is overlooked is how much easier it is to get a LOT more volume of sport routes in versus gear routes. for example:

time: the more involved the gear route, the more time it takes to clean it, sort it, re-rack it, re-triple the runners, etc. then have your partner do the same thing... it takes so much longer. i don't care how hard you brag about how efficient your are - there is no comparison. this means fewer pitches to learn and fewer opportunities to apply that education.

stackedness at walls: there are a ton of sport climbing walls that are stacked at the grades you want to break into. you can finish one, and immediately begin another one, you get the little things dialed - where to dump your pack, what to warm up on, etc. on the front range, if you want to climb 12 or harder on gear be prepared to schwack up to some wall that has one hard route, a couple mungy 10's, and a bushy 5.6 gully. not exactly an efficient use of your time if you are serious about climbing harder.

i see all of these chuffers talking about how hard it is to learn trad and that gym climbers can't climb trad, and that there is just soooo much more to trad climbing that makes it sooooo much harder, blah blah blah. what a load of horse shit. while these folks are climbing the same 5.9's over and over i see these young gym climbers grab a sling of gear, climb confidently above the gear on a lot harder routes, a lot faster. they mop up the crag by noon and go hang at the pool the rest of the day.

the difference is in your mind. don't let your preconceived notions of trad climbs being harder create a hurdle that you don't need....

slim wrote:...one of the big things that is...how much easier it is to get a LOT more...sport routes in versus gear routes...there are a ton of sport climbing walls that are stacked at the grades you want to break into...you get the little things dialed...you want to climb ...on gear be prepared to schwack up to some wall that has one hard route, a couple mungy 10's, and a bushy 5.6 gully. not exactly an efficient...

I never really considered this but it's true for me. My local crag has hundreds of bolts but only a few good trad lines and they are not consistent in grade or style. If I want to practice a specific style or grade I have to make multiple approaches. While on the other hand it is well suited to break into any grade from 5.10 to 5.12 sport.

Sport climbing = grade inflation over the years.

I somewhat disagree with some of the comments. Certainly gear placement, length and fear are a part of it and I certainly love those parts!

But I think most trad climbers including myself have a different mentality with respect to climbing which is maybe one reason. We, being honest and speaking on behalf myself of some of my friends, tend to like it old-school, steep, hard and sometimes run-out...e.g.. bragging about how little gear we placed on a climb or how small a rack is needed etc. It is great to finish a climb with "shit that was a full body workout" or "damn that was run-out and scary, but I made it!"...it is an adventure! Why is Kor-Ingals on Castleton a classic climb for example. Climbing bolt ladders are almost funny after a day on a bigger climb :) And I certainly not putting down those close proximity bolted sport routes which are awesome for pushing limits but are not an adventure and I do all the time. I would not personally want to try my first 5.12 with bolts spaced 15-20 ft apart knowing I almost certainly will take that huge whip so much.

But, I think 5.9 trad is without a doubt typically physically harder than sport as noticed by top roping routes and leading them...I also agree with others though that after about 5.10+, the grades start to squish to "modern" standards. And the reason for this is mentality of climbers. Tradsters like the adventure and want it burly, where sport climbers want the numbers.

Also, if you are at an old school area or route, at one point in time 5.9 was the hardest grade you could give a route. I've been on a couple fred beckey 5.9+'s that are sand bagged as shit. not intentionally, but that was what he could grade it at the time.

Tombo wrote:Sport climbing = grade inflation over the years.

+1

It's 100% psychological for me. There are some sport routes that really shouldn't be sport routes out there because they were bolted by sport-only climbers. If you lead them on the bolts and then try them on gear they will feel different. At least the ones I have done feel different.

One particular climb comes to mind that I lead using the bolts and tried later on gear. On this climb, the crux move came right after clipping a bolt, but on gear it came a few feet above the last placement. I remember climbing up to the crux, protected by gear, and then back down to the rest after not being able to fire it 4 or 5 times then clipping the bolt and doing the move like it was nothing. The move was the same, but the mindset was different and that's what made it feel harder.

After enough time placing gear and getting used to climbing above it and even falling on it, you get used to the sensation and you begin to trust gear as much as it should be trusted. Once you get to this point, your technique is as good on all types of rock, and you can fire gear in efficiently, then the perceived difference in difficulty vanishes and 5.10 sport will feel like 5.10 trad.

JoeGaribay wrote:Fifi Patrick?!

Bad practice to do that..... hanging on gear, isn't free climbing, and is a really good way to get yourself grounded and out.

Really the grades are the same, its the way it feels to you. 5.10 is 5.10 but it might feel a tad harder when the pro is a .4, about 20 feet down.....

sport climbing makes you loose your gear head, takes a while to get it back.

David Gibbs wrote:I've heard people say that every 10lbs you lose is another letter grade. 20lbs of trad gear is two grades, right there.

What does a pack with 4 liters of water, bivy gear, and an approach over a few mountain passes add? Shit man I think I did a 5.13b last weekend! :)

Really though the weight does make a huge difference. A lot of people, myself included, are afraid of not having the right gear and having to go without pro. You end up weighing yourself down with way too much of a rack, it makes the climbing harder. Lead very easy for you low angle routes first with your nose rack, get better at eyeballing gear, then pair it down to what you need.

rgold wrote: Trad crack climbing is hard for sport climbers for another reason, which is that they typically get little or no practice in the necessary techniques.

I am going to humbly disagree. Having climbed some hard cracks and some hard sport routes, The technique of crack climbing pales in comparison to the technique of sport climbing. I don't fall off cracks because I am confused. I fall off cracks because of the pain or because I can't do the moves. Technical crack climbing is trivial and easy compared to technical sport climbing.

eric parham wrote: I am going to humbly disagree. Having climbed some hard cracks and some hard sport routes, The technique of crack climbing pales in comparison to the technique of sport climbing. I don't fall off cracks because I am confused. I fall off cracks because of the pain or because I can't do the moves. Technical crack climbing is trivial and easy compared to technical sport climbing.

How do you know the pain and inability to do the moves aren't because you lack the required technique?

rgold wrote: How do you know the pain and inability to do the moves aren't because you lack the required technique?

I don't always. I know my success on pure cracks usually comes from the right combination of fitness,tape and glue while being able to endure pain. I usually fail because it hurts to much or I don't have enough power. My success on face climbing usually comes as I refine movement. I usually rig it off sport climbs because I am confused, screw up the movement, or I have not figured out the best sequence yet, I nave not experienced what I would call" hard movement " on crack climbs nearly as often as I have on sport climbs. I have also learned much more from sport climbing that I have applied to cracks than I have learned from crack climbing that I apply to sport climbing.

Honestly Eric, I think you are confirming my claims, not contradicting them, but I'll let others decide based on what you've written.

rgold wrote:Honestly Eric, I think you are confirming my claims, not contradicting them, but I'll let others decide based on what you've written.

Maybe I am!
For me in the same grade cracks are piss easy compared to face climbing and I am a sport climber. Then again I have some weird tendencies as a climber.