When do you double up protection?
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Does this damned argument have to start up in every thread? |
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Ted Pinson wrote: Does this damned argument have to start up in every thread? "The floggings shall continue until morale is improved." |
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Thanks to those that gave meaningful responses, at least a few got in before this turned into a debate on what is trad climbing. |
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At the risk of sidetracking the thread back to the OP, Brady3, to state the obvious, put some effort into getting some partners who are stronger climbers than you. Everyone needs the opportunity to climb with better climbers, it's the only way some of us will really progress. You are "paying your dues" admirably with your current partners. Upping your game doing more following will benefit them also. |
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FrankPS wrote: "Morale"?? Lol, Frank! If a good flogging improves your spirits, well, who am I to nay say? Best, H. |
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Seemingly what most of us might call a "send" healje seems to use as the definition of Trad climbing |
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Hangdogging is cheating, sport or trad. |
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The discussion of "ethics" or "bad form" matters not. Hanging on gear on your rope while freeclimbing is foolish. |
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Brady3 wrote: I've been climbing trad for a few years now, but I've always been nervous to push my leading. I rarely try leading a climb that I have not top-roped before because I don't want to get to an unexpected runout, and I have backed off several do to fear of falling. I trust my gear, I've hung on it plenty and think I'm pretty good at determining when a piece isn't great to know when to back it up.OP, you open with this information, but then follow up with: I got up to the roof just below the crux and stuck in a cam low in the crack and rested on it, while hanging there I decided to go ahead and stick in another cam on the underside of the overhang since my next piece down was a nut in the thinner crack. I did think about how bomber the cam was that I was hanging from and how the extra cam was probably not necessary, but I knew I didn't need that size cam higher up on the route so I might as well go ahead and stick it in, but I still almost didn't. I then went for the crux move and took a short expected fall (my first on trad), then rested some more and went for it again and almost grabbed the jug at the top of the crack before my jam slipped. Next thing I knew I was hanging horizontal on the face by the thin crack with my leg hooked over the rope and my top cam hanging near my tie in.Either you a) are not as good at evaluating gear as you think you are, b) don't sling your gear appropriately, or c) are't meticulous enough in re-checking a piece when you climb off of it after resting. But I keep thinking back to how I almost didn't place that second cam under the roof because I really did not expect that top cam to pull (I'm guessing something with how my leg hooked the rope?). If I hadn't placed that extra cam I would have added another 8-10 feet to my fall (which with pulling the cam was only 6ish) which would have lead to me hitting a jagged bulge below the thinner crack and very well could have ended my climbing for good. The end of your post makes me feel like you took the wrong conclusions from your experience! When gear you thought was great pulls, that should not engender more confidence!!! There should always be two bomber pieces of gear between you and serious bodily harm. Sometimes, those 'pieces of gear' have to be your personal ability to climb up (or down) a section of rock without falling, which is Healyje's point. I disagree with them all the time, but John Barritt and Healyje are absolutely right about nonchanlantly hanging on gear getting you into trouble eventually. The first post in this thread proves that. All of the talk about trad vs sprad vs sport is irrelevant and detracts from the conversation. There's nothing wrong with hanging on gear when absolutely necessary - it just shouldn't be necessary very often, and if it is you likely make a poor decision, or are in full out sprad mode on a very hard climb. The decision making process should look something like this:- don't do a move you can't reverse if you are not sure there is protection up there - if you climb into a 'protection desert' and don't see an option forthcoming, downclimb to a rest. if it becomes necessary to rest on a manky piece of gear while runout above a ledge, as described previously in this thread, you have made a really poor decision. - if the route is difficult, the fall is safe, and there are two pieces of GREAT gear between you and serious bodily harm, then go for it! just do so very consciously. I would posit that most high level trad climbers follow this rule whenever possible, and know that doing hard moves with one piece of gear between them and getting hurt is a calculated roll of the dice. Falling on gear has to happen to push limits, I get that. Resting does too. It should just be done as a last resort, not as a first resort. All of the "resting apologists" in these threads imply there are no safety concerns with the practice when there absolutely are. If you run it out 20 feet and get mega pumped, slam in one cam, then hang on it . . . that's a great recipe for some unplanned broken bones. The question shouldn't be "when do I double up gear", it should be "how do I protect the entire pitch safely, placing enough gear as appropriate in each individual situation I encounter". I might trust my life to one keyholed nut, but if my last piece of gear is a purple TCU I am probably not "going for it"above that without something else, no matter how good it looks. |
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Ancent wrote: Healyje, your definition of trad climbing is wrong. Absolutely wrong. I don't care how old you are or how much you've done. Resting on gear does not suddenly make a climb "not a trad climb." That makes no sense--absolutely none--and you've been making this silly argument before. Again, if I climb a trad climb cleanly, and you rest, you still climbed a traditional climb. You did not reorient the style of climbing just because you took. We cannot climb the same climb, with the same gear and protection, and I climb it traditionally and you sport just because you hung. It's a simple logic game and you're incorrect. Maybe you didn't send it cleanly, didn't red point, or whatever, but you still were traditional climbing. If I do a trad climb as a single pitch, and you do it in two, with an intermediate belay, you're 2 pitch climb does not instantly become "not-a-trad-climb" because you rested on your anchor. You have it all wrong. See, a couple weeks back, I did a long climb in Red Rocks. I think it was 10 pitches. I trad climbed 8 of them, but I have to go back and trad climb the others, because after I fell, I didn't go back to the anchor, pull the rope, and try again. Unfortunately, I am not nearly as tough mentally as the true trad climbers of the PNW. I feel deep and enduring shame about this. If I was that bad ass of a climber, I would constantly lurk around these threads and demean those lesser than myself (like you) as NOT TRAD. It would make me feel very good about myself. I would certainly not take the hint, and shut the fuck up. |
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Alexander Blum wrote: OP, you open with this information, but then follow up with: Just to be clear, I was not advocating getting runout and hanging on one piece as a good situation to get in. I was merely trying to point a situation where I would think about taking over climbing on and falling on it as healyje was advocating. I don't like blanket statements. I agree with your comments for the OP especially the decision making process. I think the two great pieces also answers the question about doubling up pieces really well. In the general climb with pro available frequently, there isn't much need to double up pieces. When you get to a larger spacing between gear, that's normally when I decide to double up pieces at that point so that I have two good pieces between me and a much bigger fall. |
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Ancent wrote: Healyje, your definition of trad climbing is wrong. Absolutely wrong. I don't care how old you are or how much you've done. Resting on gear does not suddenly make a climb "not a trad climb." That makes no sense--absolutely none--and you've been making this silly argument before. Again, if I climb a trad climb cleanly, and you rest, you still climbed a traditional climb. You did not reorient the style of climbing just because you took. We cannot climb the same climb, with the same gear and protection, and I climb it traditionally and you sport just because you hung. It's a simple logic game and you're incorrect. Maybe you didn't send it cleanly, didn't red point, or whatever, but you still were traditional climbing. If I do a trad climb as a single pitch, and you do it in two, with an intermediate belay, you're 2 pitch climb does not instantly become "not-a-trad-climb" because you rested on your anchor.Actually, I'm absolutely not wrong. Again, the fact you're using gear isn't what defines trad climbing, the style does. And the sport tactic of resting, rather than bolts, was the principal source of friction between the two camps when sport initially hit the scene from France - sure bolts were considered an obnoxious desecration, but they were an entirely secondary objection to sport climbing. Resting your way up a climb may now be the very definition of climbing for most folks, but it most definitely isn't trad climbing and never was. Here's a classic commentary (one of many) at the time: Tricksters and Traditionalists And trust me, it became an extensive and fairly heated word war before the bolt wars with, as the article above states, lots of folks wanted FAs so annotated in guides when resting was involved Ancent wrote:Except for the fact those are simplistic replications of the very wrong notion that trad is simply climbing on gear regardless of how it's done. Ancent wrote:Now here you're absolutely right: it doesn't change the climb, it changes how you are climbing it. Without taking you're trad climbing; taking and you're sport climbing on gear. I know that's just a completely mind-bending distinction for a lot of you and I do get that that's what 'climbing' is for you, but that's the deal. Ancent wrote:Not even vaguely sure how you came up with this nonsense. A properly placed gear anchor is bomb as bolts (think I'm going to name my next FA that...). Now, bitd when you might arrive at a belay or the end of your rope with one or two pieces for the belay, sure different story and I do always still stance which is a good habit to get into because on onsight, multi-pich trad FA's you may not always get a bomb anchor, ditto for alpine. Ancent wrote:Again, no resting in trad climbing - you fall, you go back to the belay and go again, trad ethics at that point revolved around whether you also pulled the rope and reclipped or not. |
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I'm pretty sure nobody except Healyje cares whether they're "trad" climbing or not, but a lot of people prefer not to get hurt. |
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Kedron Silsbee wrote: I'm pretty sure nobody except Healyje cares whether they're "trad" climbing or not, but a lot of people prefer not to get hurt.Again climbing how you want, but not getting hurt is exactly why I stress not resting on gear and if the only choice is between resting or getting hurt then you've already seriously fucked up judgment-wise. But I do get the sense this has way less to do with getting hurt and more an aversion to taking longer falls and falling on gear in general. |
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Healyje wrote: Again climbing how you want, but not getting hurt is exactly why I stress not resting on gear and if the only choice is between resting or getting hurt then you've already seriously fucked up judgment-wise.I'd agree with this to an extent, but it seems like accidents are often caused by multiple fuck-ups. Having gotten in over my head, I see no reason to further increase my chance of getting hurt by not taking the best option available to me at the current time. But I do get the sense this has way less to do with getting hurt and more an aversion to taking longer falls and falling on gear in general. I'll admit to a somewhat irrational fear of long falls, but at the same time some falls are legitimately dangerous, and continuing to climb when you should take, rest and fiddle in more gear can expose you to those unnecessarily. |
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Healyje wrote: And what about B-Y in Tuolumne? Or you just going to ignore that because it doesn't fit neatly within the boxes and labels you've drawn up? |
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eli poss wrote: A good read regardless, but this specifically addresses the Bachar-Yerian: http://www.tomhiggins.net/index.php/style-commentaries/13-tricksters-and-traditionalists Disclaimer: not picking a side in this fight (at least not the way this is currently going); this just happens to be relevant. |
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Healyje wrote: Actually, I'm absolutely not wrong. Again, the fact you're using gear isn't what defines trad climbing, the style does. And the sport tactic of resting, rather than bolts, was the principal source of friction between the two camps when sport initially hit the scene from France - sure bolts were considered an obnoxious desecration, but they were an entirely secondary objection to sport climbing.Why would you care about the style in which other people climb? It's just a way to inflate one's own ego. Styles come and go and change over time but rock is (relatively) permanent. You should be concerned about preserving the rock and minimizing scars to it. Preserving the rock is what really matters, not demeaning others because they climb differently. |
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I was wondering if anyone would like to comment on the idea that sticking two pieces near each other, is not doubling up. Even right next to each other, if they are not connected, they are acting independently. |
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eli poss wrote: Exactly, even for the day, it was a way out there edge case which it remains to this day as does Southern Belle another edge case. |