[Andy F]

All the reason's people have mentioned are true, but there are still people going out and doing hard trad, just not shouting about it. Maybe that's because it's hard to put on the 8a logbook?

[shark]

And the history provides the proof. Standards of on-sight trad climbing have only increased v...e...r...y slowly over the last 30 years.

It was the only game in town 30 years ago.

[tc]

Re: It was the only game in town 30 years ago.



Bollocks

[shark]

Maybe not quite the only game - there was still alpine and ice climbing - but for most bouldering was just messing about and indoor walls, comps, DWS, highballing with mats, beastmaking and sport climbing hadn't been invented. So the majority of UK climbers were engaged in trad onsighting (or attempted onsights) the majority of the time. You become best at what you practice the most individually or on aggregate. The increased diversity, distractions and fashions for novel forms of climbing slowed the improvement of trad onsighting for a period of time though has and will push it on ultimately I'm sure. Can't speak for everyone but in the late 80's I found the straightforwardness of being able to push yourself with sport climbing and the redpoint ethic a welcome relief from the jiggery pokery and other frustrations of trying to push yourself ground-up on trad climbs.   

[Kingy]

When I first started, trad was the only option outdoors because I didn't climb very hard and only bouldered 5c. Bouldering was for training (still is really!) and only when you could only spare a couple of hours with your ninjas and beermat. Real climbing was getting up to the Lakes and questing up a 6 pitch VS on Scafell. I never even thought about bouldering exclusively for the sake of it cos I didn't realise how hard it was possible to climb and it seemed a bit of a waste of time on its own.

However, things have changed and now ppl starting out are prob very likely to head down the bouldering path given the number of flash DVD's out there and the perhaps limited appeal of grovelling up an HVS chimney in the rain. When we get into the higher grades like E5, it really is only a tiny fraction of the climbing pop operating at this level and for the reasons others have mentioned, there is only a small band of devotees playing the game, most have long since bailed to the safety of bouldering for time reasons, family etc.

The growth in the number of sport routes in the Peak/Yorks and the availability of easy to use guides with fully updated photo topos like Rockfax has made sport climbing come back into vogue. It was only a few years ago that nobody knew where the hell all the decent sport routes were for example down Cheedale due to the lack of quality topos. But there is hope for trad yet, I predict a spirited resurgence may be just around the corner!   

[TobyD]

I wonder whether the total number of people actually out tradding is more or less the same, it has just gone down as a percentage of the total number of people climbing as more have got into it?

I have no idea whether this is true, mere specualtion. Hard(er) trad is always going to be something of a niche interest i feel, and this is probably no bad thing.

[duncan]

Re: It was the only game in town 30 years ago.

Bollocks

In 1979, trad. and Alpinism were the only games in town.  People had starting to go to places like the Verdon but this was still very much a trad. venue.  A few people operating in (west) Yorkshire, Kent and the Liverpool area were primarily boulderers.  They were very much the exceptions. 

I can remember tc returning from Yosemite and consensus was that he was a bit ...well... weird for having mostly gone bouldering and not done the manly thing and suffered his way up El Cap.  Little did we know he was just ahead of his time!


Why the decline?  It's just a symptom of the moral decay that's gnawing at the heart of the country.

[webbo]

the idea that 30 years ago bouldering was just training for other climbing depended on what climbing circles you hung around with.things like the pinch,the horn and mr smooth at caley were cleaned and climbed in 1978/9.pebble wall at almscliff was done around 1975 and this was considered as big a tick as doing wall of horrors etc
i went to colorado in 1978 partly influenced by pat amats book on john gill.

[Neil F]

Why the decline?  It's just a symptom of the moral decay that's gnawing at the heart of the country.

Duncan - the Matt Johnson of UKB...

[SA Chris]

He's already been wadded for it. I slipped a quote into the climbing dreams thread too.

[TobyD]

Sport climbing and bouldering are generally speaking just safer.

I'm not sure about this at all. I know that theoretically they should be ... but surely most injuries (of a less serious nature) are bouldering related. And much as a broken ankle is preferable to what happens to me if i deck it off North Stack Wall, i still really don't want one.
The relaxed atmosphere of sport climbing seems to precipitate a higher number of incidents than should occur ... its usually human error, surely, rather than the intrinsic nature of the activity?
All of which goes to prove that we all should be out running it out at gogarth, as we'll be more gripped, but less likely to make mistakes

[T_B]

Fear of Failure?
The pressure?

With sport climbing (redpointing) you can always have another go. Or if on-sighting on the continent, there's always something else to try. Bouldering has even less pressure.

The ting with trad is that if you're pushing your limit to the point where you might fail, there's a good chance of coming away with nothing. Let's face it, falling off trad and then redpointing/yo-yoing is always a bit of a hollow victory.

[Kingy]

With sport climbing (redpointing) you can always have another go.

I agree with the fact that you can always have another go but the thing with this is that you have to do it in the end, which creates its own, different pressure if the project in question is at your limit.

[Jaspersharpe]

Bouldering can be just as stressful pressure wise too.

[dave]

OK i'm wading into this late cos I was in font. so personally speaking here's a few of the factors why I don't get on any/as much trad as in years gone by, maybe some of these will resonate with other people (for reference I came into climbing through trad mid-late 90s and doing a bit of indoor climbing on the evenings):

lazyness - frankly I am lazy and seek quick instant gratification, it has to be enjoyable NOW and not later in the pub or in a few months time. I loathe getting pumped and particularly getting pumped on routes where the moves are easy whilst placing gear. I have no interest whatsoever in training stamina. The knock-on effect of this is it limits my choice of trad routes to basically things which are hard but very short lived or things which are bold.

On grit this means you plod through doing up to E5/6 onsight/ground up and all of a sudden things start to get either really hard or dangerous pretty quickly, instead of being able to plod on for years with english 6b as your theoretical limit (and to get stronger means bouldering, which takes time out of your trad schedule, see below). This means that also the days you're likely to get up these routes are more rare, i.e. dropping on good nick, good partner, right frame of mind etc etc.

conditions - when we used to go out climbing, in the winter it was always really too cold to do trad, particularly if you're standing around belaying, and in summer it would be too warm on grit. Your sweet spot for trad would be spring and autumn, which in some years would be a very narrow window indeed, especially if you're only climbing maybe one day on the weekend if the weather is OK, and evenings when there's enough light. In peak bouldering if you go out and its too windy, or a bit damp, or boiling in summer, or pissing it down, there's generally always a venue you can go to and have a productive session.

The other thing is with trad I always felt its a highly confidence-based activity, and recent form breeds confidence. Which means for me to do it and feel good at it I need to be doing it a lot, which means not bouldering, and not being subjected to any weather restrictions that lead you to be forced to boulder. As above, this window to build up form and confidence is narrow.

Another big factor for me is what your mates are doing. Most of my climbing mates are people I met either at uni or the few years following, and all have a similar trad background to me but fell more towards bouldering for various reasons (maybe cos its so good!). All the best trad days i've had have been climbing with a partner opperating at a similar level and aiming for the same routes, its gets you up a lot of stuff, there's a team psyche. Its just not the same if its a case of "well I'm not bothered for routing but I'll come and hold your ropes" - I've gone out to try and ground up E6 with the wife belaying and i'm just not the same climber. OK i could no doubt go out and find some random on the internet to do the same route but personally I want to climb with my mates more than I want to go and climb a specific route with someone I don't know. Generally these days the default activity within my group of mates is bouldering, so everyone boulders more - not that this is a bad thing, bouldering is great.

The other thing is I get off on the physical movement of climbing rather than the act of going from bottom to top leading a route. Thus I always feel more gratification from either boulering or soloing a route than from leading, especially when you know that physically speaking soloing can be easier than leading cos you're not placing gear.

I suppose the last factor is the failing thing. I always climb trad with the unavoidable in-built preservation instinct of not falling off being of the utmost importance. I'd rather downclimb and not do the route than have a go and fail - If i don't feel like I can do something I won't go for it. I can't think of an instance where I've taken what most people would call a proper leader fall onto gear and I've been climbing for something like 12 years. Obviously this could be quite a problem, but then again when you've come through the ranks doing bold runout grit routes its probably the single most important thing thats lead me to be still alive now.

All this said I still want to do trad, and will do trad when the right set of circumstances present themselves.

[petejh]

Just an observation from reading this thread - it sounds like when people say they don't climb trad anymore what they mean is they don't climb grit trad. I can see why this happens - many bold routes/tricky 'grit' conditions/great bouldering close by, but I reckon if you climb in Wales/Scotland/South West/Lakes etc you're more likely to keep your trad psych stoked because of more choice of type of route - single,multi, mountain plod, sea cliffs/more variety of rock type etc together with great bouldering. That isn't a dig at the peak by the way.

Edit - oh right, I just the topic heading '...in the Peak/Yorks..' 

I'll get my coat.

[SA Chris]

All rings very true dave, esp the

I loathe getting pumped and particularly getting pumped on routes where the moves are easy whilst placing gear. I have no interest whatsoever in training stamina

But not really due to laziness, more due to the sheer tedium of taking time to develop it, especially with no really convenient outdoor sport crags nearby where you can go and do mileage.

[andy popp]

The other thing is with trad I always felt its a highly confidence-based activity, and recent form breeds confidence. Which means for me to do it and feel good at it I need to be doing it a lot, which means not bouldering, and not being subjected to any weather restrictions that lead you to be forced to boulder. As above, this window to build up form and confidence is narrow.

Nail on the head. When I was in my trad prime, such as it was, I was weak as shit, never trained, barely bouldered but I went tradding ALL the time, often several times a week. Good form breeds even better form. Get out of the habit and form disappears (at least it always did for me). That said I have known climbers (e.g. Dixon) to whom a long lay-off from trad. seemed to make no difference, but they are probably the exception.

[d88ve]

It's always been possible and often beneficial to use some 'sport' stamina to assist with your tradding and some bouldering strength on the tough moves always comes in useful.

Away from the grit there isn't a great abundance of 5 star classics in yorks/peak however if you have the ability you're missing out if you haven't ticked 'Golden Mile', 'Doubting Thomas', 'Great White'......

I wouldn't be surprised if at some point it becomes fashionable again, I can still remember and  feel the buzz you get when that bomber nut or friend goes in and you know the climb is in the bag.