[Bonjoy]

It’s a subject I’ve pondered in various guises on the Pear. Why and how has Peak/Yorkshire trad climbing gotten so untrendy these days? Taking the forums as an indicator of what people like to do it would seem that that the traffic here mostly likes to boulder (no surprise on a bouldering site) and sport climb e.g. on page one of the Chuffing board 8 topics are trad specific and 22 are sport specific. The UKC crowd do loads of trad but mostly in the lower grades. As ever there is an elite of hard tradders in the area and a modest band of solid tradheads, but compared to the popularity of bouldering and sport climbing, among the young and strong trad has never been so unpopular. Why do so many climbers drift away from regular trad once they get to a certain level? I’ve got lots of ideas on why, but what do others reckon?

[slackline]

Self-preservation?

Lots of young and strong seem to be coming from having learnt indoors on walls, primarily bouldering, but then also clipping bolts.  Faced with going outside and having to learn how to place gear, assess the quality of the placement, control the fear associated with moving above the gear into the unknown, then they probably feel like its a backwards step (although IMO its not at all, its a different, and often more rewarding game), and would rather just get on with pushing themselves bouldering and sport climbing than jumping straight onto routes at equivalent difficulty on trad gear but without the concomitant knowledge and experience thats required and ending up hurting themselves.

Pure conjecture though, my trad leading limit is a handful of E2's, but I'm a pansy and don't want to break my scapula (or any other bones) again.

[Jaspersharpe]

Faff, fear and cost of gear. Any combination of the three factors (be they perceived or real). At a guess.

[Stubbs]

Faff personally.  I get a lot more out of doing a circuit of boulder problems in the the same time it takes me to do a trad route.

I think I may do more trad if I lived in the Peak, as I think the trad is better than the bouldering on the grit there, where the opposite is true in Yorkshire.

The other thing is that I was never a regular trad climber, I did a little when I started climbing, but then got into bouldering and would only do a few days of trad a year for a bit of a change, so it's not a case of drifting away from trad, rather never being into it in the first place.

[ChrisC]

Reasons that jump to mind straight away are:

Time - Full Time jobs that occupy much of your time mean that Sport is more efficient.
Faff - You get to do more interesting/challenging climbing on bolts in much less time.
Fear- Hitting the ground / anything isn't fun.  Your far less likely to do that on bolts.  Above a certain level trad often becomes bold, less stressful challenges can be found on bolts.
Responsibility - people I know have done less when families have been around.  This is probably linked to time too.

Much of that all seems to be linked, and quite possibly due to getting older (jobs / family / responsibilities).  Certainly for me then my tradding took a massive hit when I got a proper job.

[Houdini]

Available rock types may be implicated ...

[Scraggadoo]

Bonjoy, when are you comparing this observation to?  10 years ago?  Don't know if this will have some relevance?

When I first got into climbing about 4 or 5 years ago, it didn't seem common to me to boulder with bouldering mats but as time has gone on and walls have cottoned on to bouldering only facilities / competitions indoors, people started to see the appeal of bouldering compared to sport / trad.  I myself too do go bouldering instead of tradding / sport because of the lack of willing partners OR because simply we don't have the time.  That said, I am based in the Lakes so it's not as quick as it is in the Peak in some places to get to and get on trad.

Then you have all the other points raised by other posters...

[Neil F]

Well I probably do more sport climbing than tradding nowadays, and convenience and the ability to get a lot done in a short space of time is a big factor in this.

But as far as the Peak goes, it is really that I have done so much that there really aren't many obvious do'able routes left.

I 've read the Pear occasionally and whilst I find your enthusiasm for the latest bunch of classic Peak trad E3's you've done refreshing, I also find myself wondering just how it was you have got to 2009 before doing such routes?

For example, I first led Oliver in 1983 - 25 years ago - and I'm bloody sure I'm not that much older than you... 

Neil

[Norton Sharley]

Why do so many climbers drift away from regular trad once they get to a certain level?

Do they?  Or do you just not notice what they are doing?

You answer your own question on the Pear, "8 routes, 16 E points" in a day out.  'Hard' climbers could never go the pub after such a day and brag of doing 16E points, it's simply not a big enough number.  However the amount of effort to achieve this is huge but clearly you enjoyed and will remember that particular day out above many others. 

How many people do you know who have done all the HVS's at Stanage, for example?  I'd say that's pretty damn hard, and time consuming, and scary, and a bit of a Faff.  But probably ultimately more memorable, and commendable, than a sport 7b+ down the Dale.



The problem with hard tradding, be it grit or in the mountains, is that it is just that, hard.  And the reward of shouting out big numbers in the boozer are just not there!

[Johnny Brown]

I think bouldering introduces folk to the heady concept of doing hard moves without being scared. Going back to trad makes them feel like a punters again - easy moves but terrfiying. The ego doesn't like it; they stop tradding.

Can someone explain why 'you get so much more done' sport climbing than tradding? I can 'get a lot more done' going to Millstone than Raven tor of a spring evening. Do you just mean hard moves, or because you can climber quicker and lower off, or 'cos you avoid that 'soak up the atmosphere' feeling that topping out on a great trad route provokes?

[Bonjoy]

Available rock types may be implicated ...

How so? Peak/York's has loads of good trad grit and a fair amount of good trad lime. Do you mean harder lime/grit trad routes are less friendly than stuff on other rock types?

I 've read the Pear occasionally and whilst I find your enthusiasm for the latest bunch of classic Peak trad E3's you've done refreshing, I also find myself wondering just how it was you have got to 2009 before doing such routes?

For example, I first led Oliver in 1983 - 25 years ago - and I'm bloody sure I'm not that much older than you... 

Neil

I know, I'm as implicated as the next man. I agree with most of the points made already. I dare say that me getting back into regular trad this year has had a lot to do with extra days off, a wrist injury and running out of quality sport routes. In the past I think my tradding was held back by lack of a driving licence (so I went did the climbing the driver wanted to do), a lack of a decent rack and not being that good at, so getting scared.
But having got immersed in it again I'm just blown away by how much fun it is and think it's sad that the modern climber misses out on these experiences. A lot of the faff, fear, danger etc. goes away once you do stuff on a regular enough basis and you're left with a vast variety of great routes and crags. The level of variety is incomparable to sport climbing which has only a handful of really good crags.

[Bonjoy]

Norton, JB - 
 I think ego is a bigger factor than any of the previous posts suggested. The amount of effort and mental energy it can take to get up sometning of an often highly unimpressive grade (you should have seen the effort and grazed knees that went into me doing The Trident HVS at Wimberry) is not attractive if bagging big numbers is a main factor in your day out.
 I think this also got compounded by the headpoint boom circa Hard Grit. All of a sudden many a climber of dubious ability could bag up a few heavily pre-practiced E7s. Making the hard fought E4/5 onsight looked even less impressive. The fact that the new minted E7 leader had never onsighted anything over E3 being an oft forgotten, seemly irrelevant detail.

[Neil F]

Can someone explain why 'you get so much more done' sport climbing than tradding? I can 'get a lot more done' going to Millstone than Raven tor of a spring evening. Do you just mean hard moves, or because you can climber quicker and lower off, or 'cos you avoid that 'soak up the atmosphere' feeling that topping out on a great trad route provokes?

I suppose it depends on what sort of sport climbing you like to do.  For me, I spend 90% of my sport climbing going for on sights / flashes, rather than working / redpointing, which I find pretty boring and ultimately less fulfilling.  So I've just had 2 weeks in Kalymnos and fell of once.  The only unusual thing about this is that I took a fall at all.  I've had lots of sport climbing holidays to Spain or Majorca, or France where I've not fallen off once.

Some people tell me I'm not trying, but I certainly am! It's just I'm trying to go on-sighting at a level where I think I will be in with a chance.

If when I went sport climbing, it was to go to Raven Tor to fail on In Brine for the 15th day, then, like you, I would feel that I got a lot more done when I go to Millstone.

You see, there's sport climbing, and there's "sport climbing..."!

Neil

[Neil F]

I think this also got compounded by the headpoint boom circa Hard Grit. All of a sudden many a climber of dubious ability could bag up a few heavily pre-practiced E7s. Making the hard fought E4/5 onsight looked even less impressive. The fact that the new minted E7 leader had never onsighted anything over E3 being an oft forgotten, seemly irrelevant detail.

...except amongst those of us that always knew on sighting the majority of trad lime or grit E5's in the Peak was always more impressive than headpointing a heavily pre-practised gritstone E7!

Neil

[Johnny Brown]

If when I went sport climbing, it was to go to Raven Tor to fail on In Brine for the 15th day, then, like you, I would feel that I got a lot more done when I go to Millstone.

Actually it was Body machine. And I lost the will to continue after day 5...

I think abroad though its more to do with the nature of the crags themselves than the presence of bolts. Like I get more bouldering done when I go to font than I do when in the south lakes.

Re headpointing, I think its got more to do with an obsession with grades than ethics as such. Was 'big grades by any means' such a feature of the seventies/ early eighties scene? Or did they just have a healthier scene due to a) lack of alternatives and b) plenty of unclimbed rock to keep things vibrant?

[Nigel]

I think people drift away from regular (hard) trad as they get older because life gets in the way.

They aren't being replaced in any numbers because people don't start climbing in quite the same way as they used to (I suspect anyway). Now they go to the bouldering wall instead of doing Jack's Rake with some dubious old relative. That isn't the whole storey though, because people of my generation and slightly younger (i.e. late twenties) tended to start in walls too, or at least progress to them fairly sharpish. However we were inspired by Stone Monkey and the guides and mags of the time. I would have thought these days that they are inspired by Sharma campussing on monos, as such they are led off in a different direction.

To be honest I don't mind if it stays that way as long as I can still find people to trad climb with!

[Bonjoy]

I think this also got compounded by the headpoint boom circa Hard Grit. All of a sudden many a climber of dubious ability could bag up a few heavily pre-practiced E7s. Making the hard fought E4/5 onsight looked even less impressive. The fact that the new minted E7 leader had never onsighted anything over E3 being an oft forgotten, seemly irrelevant detail.

...except amongst those of us that always knew on sighting the majority of trad lime or grit E5's in the Peak was always more impressive than headpointing a heavily pre-practised gritstone E7!

Neil

Indeed, as ever those in the know know. I'm not so sure the punters did and yesterdays punters become today's good climbers. What folk choose to go into depends on perceptions gained at an early stage from mags etc which, for a while at least, had lots of column inches for the latest repeat of Kaluza Klein/Three Blind Mice but not so much for comparable onsighting. News media inevitably has a bias towards big number headlines.

[Bonjoy]

To be honest I don't mind if it stays that way as long as I can still find people to trad climb with!

Therein lies the problem. Shame we don't have the same days off.

[soapy]

Re headpointing, I think its got more to do with an obsession with grades than ethics as such. Was 'big grades by any means' such a feature of the seventies/ early eighties scene? Or did they just have a healthier scene due to a) lack of alternatives and b) plenty of unclimbed rock to keep things vibrant?

..due to the dole

[abarro81]

Why do so many climbers drift away from regular trad once they get to a certain level?

I started on trad, and it was all I wanted to do for a while. Then I moved to sheffield and became a wimpy sport climber and boulder.
Seriously (though the above is true): When I started, I wanted to get better - so I could do all the classics, so I could do the best lines, so I could burn my mates off, so I could be like a hero and climb e5 etc. etc. As I got to onsighting/flashing the classic soft E6s 2 3  lots of things happened (this conincided with moving to Sheffield, so we have extra variables here).

1) I realised it was actually possible to fall off dangerous things (especially on the grit). Previously, I'd never fallen off anything dangerous and neither had any of my mates so the answer to the internal question 'what happens if you fall?' was always 'I'm not going to fall', and this was enough to silence any doubts. Then in the space of a few weeks I fell off the wrong side of ulysses or bust and hobbled away, my mate broke his ankle from the top of ulysses at stanage, and the answer didn't seem to work anymore.

2) I decided it wasn't worth risking it on routes I didn't care that much about. I've always liked bigger routes more, and I realised that risking a summer of big routes in pembroke, north wales, ceuse, longer peak trad etc. wasn't worth the risk for a 1 star route on the grit where I didn't actually care that much if I did it, not compred to how I cared about he big routes I had my eye on for the summer. I was having as much fun bouldering so why risk my ankles?

3) I realised I needed to get better at climbing to climb harder trad. I didn't want to only get up routes by doing easy bold ones, I wanted to do hard steep ones too - the big E6s and E7s in pembroke, swanage etc. So I started sport climbing and bouldering to achieve this. If I was going to be able to onsight a 30m F7b or F7c putting gear in, I had better get good enough to do it on bolts first. As I sport climbed and bouldered more they gradually changed from being what I was using to train, to being what I was training for.

4) Lovely moreish crack. (Actually, I hate cracks) but I got addicted to getting better, or at least to getting bigger numbers. Back when I trad climbed I was better at trad than sport/bouldering, then the more I clipped bolts and landed on pads the more it reversed. As usual in life, you get drawn in to focusing on what you're good at. I;ve always been shallow and always wanted to be good at climbing, now I was better at sport than trad and it started to take over what I wanted to do.

5) I met more boulderers and sport climbers. - partly due to moving to sheffield, partly due to climbing at higher grades. Anyway, if my mate wants to go bouldering what's the point in forcing him to go trad climbing when I enjoy both? Also, having no car, to some extent I did what I was told to do!

6) I realised sport climbing happened on good rock. I went to europe more and more, and went to good sport crags in the uk rather than to obscure crappy quarries near Avon. No longer was sport climbing just what you did on the crap rock that no one wanted to trad climb on - it took you to ceuse and tarn, goals like the soaring arete of Master's Edge - previously unchallenged by sport pretenders for line - were eclipsed by the like of Tenesse in Tarn.

7) I stopped doing other sports as much. Initially trad was a hobby, an activity, an adventure; my 'sport' came from cross country running and going to the gym in a wifebeater to get big guns. Then I did them less and climbed more - noe it needed not only to fullfil my desire for adventure but also my desire for 'sport' - pushing myself physically, improving and the like. (Stress fracturing my leg running helped push this process along.)

Now I'm a hooked. I want to be better, stronger and fitter. I want to climb harder. Fuck easy moves in bold positions, where are the damn monos? But a little bit of me cries for the lost non-obsessive enthusiasm of those early days, so happy just to be sat on a ledge in Avon gorge when everyone else was stuck in the traffic jam below.

P.s. I have quite an obsessive personality which may or may not affect how any of the above points relate to others.
P.P.S. I can't be bothered to read that back right now as it's taken so long to type, sorry if it's riddled with mistakes or doesn't really fit together well.

[abarro81]

However we were inspired by Stone Monkey and the guides and mags of the time. I would have thought these days that they are inspired by Sharma campussing on monos, as such they are led off in a different direction.

 
Though I'm a bit younger, my inital inspiration was trad so that's the direction I went in.

[mark s]

the works probibly has a lot to answer for.like jon said the media dictates whats trendy,example off the back of the hard grit days i got a  mention in ote for doing thing on a spring and master of reality in a weekend.that sort of thing wouldnt even get a look in now,in fact ryan,caff and pete all did masters the other week.2 flashes and a ground up.
i think there is a lot more trad climbers out there than you think.
it will become the top dog again,if i hear of an ascent of the joker or despo its a case of "oh".but the other week when id heard rob had done rays roof,that earns respect

[Jaspersharpe]

To be fair, the popularity of bouldering had increased way beyond that of trad before The Works existed and ascents of The Joker are hardly newsworthy (unless it's a flash of course).

[Falling Down]

To add some perspective I've not done a great deal of trad this year but on the few occasions I've been out placing runners I've been pleased to see lots of other folk out doing mid E grade routes.  Went to Higgar the other weekend for a quiet Saturday and was pleasantly surprised to have several other teams for company throughout the day.  Virtually every route got climbed including Rasp Direct, Flute of Hope, Bat out of Hell and Block 'n Tackle (onsight by Caff) and two of those more than once. 

Down at High Tor in the Summer on a sweltering day (hello Neil - you were wilting) Supersonic, Flaky Wall, Robert Brown etc. all got ascents.

Went to Staden and my ascent of Telescopic Demand was eased by the presence of chalk and Paraplege was clean and chalked.

[nik at work]

Good topic Bonjoy.
I'm not really in a position to comment on the current popularity of trad, as I don't really partake anymore. However it appears to me that the entry point to climbing has changed. When I started climbing it was through a traditional(ish) go out and have a go outside with a mate affair. At that time I merrily top-roped VS's, dreamt of leading HVS and considered those who climbed E2 and above to be super-human.
Now the entry point appears to be bouldering, which is at time sold almost as a viable alternative to gym membership. It's convenient, not time consuming, can be done alone or in groups, relatively cheap and well catered for.
I no longer do trad, the reasons for this any numerous but the main ones that spring to mind now are:
1) Time, I work full(ish) time, have a family and other things in my life. Bouldering is an efficient climbing hit, trad isn't.
2) I can't be injured. A broken ankle would be bad news, anything worse would be horrendous. Obviously I could still break my ankle bouldering, but calculated risk and all that.
3) I'm not young, bouncy and quick healing anymore. A nice thick bouldering mat for me thanks.
4) I've gone about as far as I can with trad. I don't mean I've done everything, and I do still hanker after some trad ticks in my contemplative moments. Just I've climbed about as high up the trad tree as I can/am prepared to. That sounds really grade chasey, but that's not exactly what I mean I just can't explain it very well. This compares interestingly with sport which I have tried (properly) this year for the first time and I still have places to go with sport climbing (I hope).

Anyway that's all just specific to me. Trad (specifically grit) was very trendy ten years ago or so, now bouldering is cool. Sport appears to be making something of a comeback also. Maybe I'm some sort of trend-setter?