Onsight Sport Climb: Ethics for Viewing Routes

Hey climbers! 

I've been getting more and more stoked about onsight sport climbing. I wanted to see, what are your personal ethics around viewing a route before giving it an onsight attempt? Obviously you can't get beta from your friend, watch someone else climb it, or read about how to pull the crux moves on the proj. But, what are you ethics around how you view the route ahead of time? Do you feel okay about climbing a tree by the route to get a better view of it? Use binoculars to get in close? View the route while you're climbing the route next door? Hike up the hill next to the route to get a different vantage point? Or do you strictly look at the route from the base of the route? 

I'm sure there are different takes on it, but am interested to see what people have to say! 

-Adam 

Binocs, tree climbing, drone, etc. are all legit; however, if there’s any chalk on the route, it’s not an onsight. 

Onsight = send on first touch.  Beta is only so helpful (unless it’s a secret jug), same thing with watching other people climb it.  

Rocrates wrote:

Onsight = send on first touch.  Beta is only so helpful (unless it’s a secret jug), same thing with watching other people climb it.  

Just to play devil's advocate.. isn't that the definition of a flash?

Style = how you do a route

Ethics = how your actions affect other climbers

So this is a style not an ethics question. Unless you are lie about what you did.

I agree with Jesse. Onsight = do it without watching others / getting beta. Flash = send first try with beta/viewing. Onsight flash = do both. But generally people will just say onsight to mean both, because who cares if you don’t flash it.   

Splitting hairs and semantics but fun to think about and I would say you can look at the route from anywhere, including with binoculars and still claim on onsight because you are still doing it "on sight". I think traditionally an onsight is thought of as you stand at the base and look at it, but how close to the base do you have to stand? I'd argue that it's easier to define onsight as meaning you are just viewing it and how you view it doesn't matter.

I do like the challenge that flashing/onsighting brings, but I think it is mostly about your intentions and honesty about what you are doing.  I think manipulating where you are viewing the climb from, intentionally viewing the route in depth from an adjacent climb, etc takes a little from what an "onsight" means.  That being said I would not disqualify an onsight because another climber screamed, "Thank God for that Jug after the 8th bolt!" as I was walking up to the crag.  

Flash = Send on first touch with whatever beta possible

Onsight = Sending on first touch without watching others climb, or utilizing any beta other than what you can observe naturally from the base. 

Everyone is entitled to do what they want, obviously, as I am not too concerned with what others claim to do.

Glowering wrote:

Style = how you do a route

Ethics = how your actions affect other climbers

So this is a style not an ethics question. Unless you are lie about what you did.

I agree with Jesse. Onsight = do it without watching others / getting beta. Flash = send first try with beta/viewing. Onsight flash = do both.

Splitting hairs and semantics but fun to think about and I would say you can look at the route from anywhere, including with binoculars and still claim on onsight because you are still doing it "on sight". I think traditionally an onsight is thought of as you stand at the base and look at it, but how close to the base do you have to stand? I'd argue that it's easier to define onsight as meaning you are just viewing it and how you view it doesn't matter.

I like your point on style vs ethics! good point 

I say binocs, climbing a tree, or viewing it from a nearby slope are all fair game. But viewing while climbing or descending from another route is not ok. Not exactly sure where to draw the line there; maybe at the use of a rope. So if you're willing to free solo the adjacent route to get a look then maybe that's ok, especially since that shows a badass level of commitment. 

Also, thanks for giving us another opportunity to laugh at the people who don't know what onsight and flash mean! Or who will insist that there's an "onsight flash" or a "nonsight flash" or a "flashsight" or a "fleshlight" or whatever. 

Also also thank you for not saying onsite.

I may be a bit confused here, ethics on a sport climb?

Kevinmurray wrote:

I may be a bit confused here, ethics on a sport climb?

Groan

Bob Harrington wrote:

Binocs, tree climbing, drone, etc. are all legit; however, if there’s any chalk on the route, it’s not an onsight. 

Hi Bob

I think that I'd start by applying the second part of your quote - ie was it chalked? If it was, and you still claimed the onsight, then I think that probably puts you into a possibly sizeable majority of climbers - of whom I am certainly one - who are prepared to compromise a bit on this. Why? Because chalk on a route tells you something about it - which is beta, whether or not it's actually helpful; so it's a beta-flash, not an onsight - yes?. [I've said 'you' here when I probably should have said 'one'. You yourself appear to regard in-situ chalk as incompatible with an onsight - which is admirable, and probably a more rigorous approach than that taken by the majority.] If you take the obvious alternative view - that the beta only 'counts' if it makes a difference - then I suspect that you'd be more in accordance with a majority view [just guessing here] - and that's certainly pretty much my position. So I tend to weigh things up on a route-by-route basis. Here are two recent examples. On both of these occasions I first belayed a partner who led the route, then I led it afterwards - without, obviously, falling or hanging on any gear.

In the first example the route followed an easy crack up a slab, whereafter crux moves led through a smooth, overhanging groove onto the slab above; steep but straightforward climbing above that led to the belay/lower off [single pitch sport route]. Belaying at the base of the slab I had a good view of my colleague climbing the crux groove. Although that didn't tell me exactly how to climb it - and I think that we actually did it slightly differently - I still discerned, from the way that he grasped it and heaved on it, that the possible good hold that I thought I'd spotted at the top of the groove was, in fact, excellent. No matter that I would, regardless, have used it in exactly the same manner whether or not I'd known it was there; the fact that I did know reduced the overall challenge, from an onsight to a flash.

The second route was slightly different; significantly so, I think. The belay at the base was close in, below a steep flake crack. It cried out "lieback", and that's what's my colleague did. At its top was some sort of ledge, again very obvious from below. Above the ledge it moved onto just off-vertical face; all I could see were the soles of his shoes, and one hand or the other as it plucked a quickdraw off his harness. I had no idea of where a crux might be, how that related to the bolts, etc. In my turn I liebacked the initial flake just as I would have anyway, then picked my own path up the wall above. The quickdraws on the bolts made no difference to the route-finding - the bolts were perfectly visible anyway - and as all the clipping positions were easy it made no difference that the draws were already in place. [Although that's a part of the whole pinkpoint debate, which I think has already been long-argued and pretty much agreed on by now!] So in this instance, maybe an hour later on the same day, I reckoned onsight. Both these examples refer to sport climbing; there's clearly more that one can learn from watching somebody actually place a piece of gear instead of just clipping a bolt - but, again, I think that that's something that one can assess on a case-by-case basis.

Of course the whole thing becomes more complicated when it's not just you or me recording something in our personal climbing log as honestly and realistically as we can; your first name is now Adam, or Sasha, or Alex, or Tommy somebody - and your every move is subject to scrutiny; don't ask me on that one - I've no idea!

Just to return to my initial paragraph, which I think might not have been entirely clear; I acknowledge and admire that you regard the presence of chalk as negating the onsight, but my impression of general practise is that you're in a small minority with that one!

Everybody gets to onsight however they want, just be honest about it. As the saying goes,  'There is no cheating in climbing, only lying.'

Mike wrote:

Everybody gets to onsight however they want, just be honest about it. As the saying goes,  'There is no cheating in climbing, only lying.'

Eh, but words (even jargony words) still have meanings, right? I can't say I onsighted a route on my fourth attempt.

Jesse Martin wrote:

Just to play devil's advocate.. isn't that the definition of a flash?

Shoot... I have to amend my whole tick list

Glowering wrote:

Onsight = do it without watching others / getting beta. Flash = send first try with beta/viewing. 

Onsight flash = do both.

wait, what?

Rocrates wrote:

Shoot... I have to amend my whole tick list

Nah, no need. As long as you know how you climbed it, that's what really matters!

JaredG wrote:

wait, what?

A clarification may be:

Onsight = do it without watching others / getting beta. Flash = send first try (possibly with beta from others)

Onsight flash - I would argue that all onsights are also a flash (but not all flashes are an onsight). Because once you make your first onsight attempt you now have beta from the holds you've grabbed. In which case your second attempt is no longer an onsight or a flash.

I used to hear onsight flash used back in the 90s but rarely nowadays. Because if you say you did an onsight it pretty much means you flashed it. But I have heard people say “I did it onsight with one fall”. I guess technically they climbed the part they fell on twice so it’s not a true onsight but it describes doing it with no beta and one fall.

Isidnar wrote:

I'd much rather climb something well than onsight.

These are not mutually exclusive.

So if chalk negates an onsight, then only first ascents can be onsighted?  Unless a trained monkey goes up the route well beforehand to brush all the fucking chalk off?

Knowing the rating alone eliminates the onsight as it is useful Beta. Best you can do is a Flash.

Walk up, rope up, get to the anchors/end of pitch with zero intel is an Onsight.

An Onsight should actually be limited to a ground-up FFA, but the availability of those is limited. Maybe we should devise a new term for that, above onsight