[spidermonkey09]

Why anyone would choose to climb in this cave when you have the rest of Rodellar to onsight in, god only knows, but there we are. Awful soundtrack but some reasonable footage. Turn subs on (italian)

[wasbeen]

Yes, not exactly the most inspiring line.
It is interesting that both woman to have climbed 9b are 5 foot and have a pretty light frame.

When Ondra spoke at the Kendal mountain festival. Someone asked him about Angie Eiter's 9b and whether woman could match or exceed the grades of men - his response was along the lines of... it was a route that was perfectly suited to her.  I presumed the implication being that whilst she had climbed a 9b, there would be a very limited number of routes at the grade that she could climb. Perhaps that is not surprising since all the 9b's and above have been put up by men.


 

[Johnny Brown]

That might make more sense if Ali Hulk had been put up and repeated only by climbers similarly short and light. I think the future will hold plenty of routes 'perfectly suited' to the lighter climber, and therefore unclimbable by the heavier.

[jwi]

I have yet to see a move on overhanging rock where being light is not an advantage. Pity it is not possible to be both light and tall, because weight ~ height ^ 2, while strength ~ height. (If your only criteria for performance is strength/weight ratio you need to be short, it is not physically possible to be tall and have a good strength/weight ratio.)

Good video from a deeply uninspiring piece of rock. Inspiring climbing though, and she certainly seems to get out a lot from the experience, so chapeau to all involved.

[wasbeen]

[deleted]

[teestub]

Good video from a deeply uninspiring piece of rock. Inspiring climbing though, and she certainly seems to get out a lot from the experience, so chapeau to all involved.

Agree with this, she seems psyched, the actual climbing looks good.

[Fiend]

I liked her tantrums, that made it worth watching. What a "toilet line" tho, even the rock itself looks dismal in a Peak Lime sort of way. Still when our first 9b+ ends up as Belly Of The Beast -into- Mutation we'll be laughing on the other side of our faces....

Pretty light frame is a very tactful way of putting things.

Incidentally watching Ondra's "ideal body shape for climbing", the tallest top comp climbers are, guess what, relatively light, and can use both their power to weight ratio and height effectively.

[cheque]

Dab at 02:46.

[JamieG]

Pity it is not possible to be both light and tall, because weight ~ height ^ 2, while strength ~ height. (If your only criteria for performance is strength/weight ratio you need to be short, it is not physically possible to be tall and have a good strength/weight ratio.)

Being pedantic are your numbers from real data and studies?

Since if you assume isometric scaling then i'd expect weight ~ height ^ 3 and strength ~ height ^ 2. Although I'm sure humans don't scale isometrically, so I'd be interested to know the real scaling exponents across populations.

Still the same principle though, that weight goes up faster than strength as height increases.

[jwi]

Pity it is not possible to be both light and tall, because weight ~ height ^ 2, while strength ~ height. (If your only criteria for performance is strength/weight ratio you need to be short, it is not physically possible to be tall and have a good strength/weight ratio.)

Being pedantic are your numbers from real data and studies?

[...]

To be honest, mostly from first principles. But I did check this at some point on a homogenous group where the height, actual measured weight and strength is known: olympic lifters. I'll see if I can dig out my plots.

[jwi]

From the 2016 olympics

Height² explains 79% of bodyweight in the world's best olympic lifters


Height explains 78% of total weight lifted in the world's best olympic lifters


Height explains 72% of strength to weight ratio in the world's best olympic lifters

[JamieG]

Interesting. Does the R^2 increase if you plot weight ~ height^3 and strength ~ height^2?

[IanP]

This paper:

Gender- and height-related limits of muscle strength in world weightlifting champions

https://journals.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/jappl.2000.89.3.1061

suggests height ^ 2.16

'The separate ratios of weight lifted to Ht ^ 2.16 for men and women (Fig. 1E) were nearly constant over the entire range of body weights, including those of the unlimited-class champions'

[JamieG]

Cheers Ian. That's interesting regarding strength. It does seem to scale close to height^2. Interesting then that weight doesn't scale to height^3 (figure 1B), although they do discuss that weight/height^3 is almost constant in the lighter lifters, but increases in the heaviest lifters. Maybe related to changes in the body composition and the fraction of total mass made up by muscle mass. I.e. heavier lifters are proportionally much more stacked (and hence heavier) than your predict from height alone.

[mrjonathanr]

Not sure whether this is quality - for historical value- or not. Ron pathing various Peak classics:

[cheque]

Ace. Look how clean Great West Road is as Ron Saunters down it!

Always good to see the Gill Fawcett belaying style. In each of the four early 80s Ron films I’ve now seen she looks like it’s her first time doing it, fumbling to pay the slack out and pretty much letting go of the brake end in the process. Pretty stressful when he’s huffing and puffing on Body Machine and The Prow in huge clunky boots. 

The only bit I’d seen of this before is the sequence of Geoff Birtles on the Right Unconquerable- it’s the contrast between the unrelatably dated (hexes on cord, body belay, handing a lit cig to your belayer immediately before starting, making a dodgy “ooh there’s nothing like a Brownie” joke) and the completely timeless (Stanage and the moves of the route itself, pre-climb jitters, placing more runners than you planned to, making a total meal of the top mantel) that I love about old climbing footage and photos.  .

[Duma]

I thought the down climbing at millstone was glorious

[mrjonathanr]

He makes the crux of Coventry Street look about V Diff. 

[nai]

and he makes Edge Lane look like he's climbing a ladder. Total confidence in his feet in those big clunky boots.

[Jerry Morefat]

Excellent! I think its been discussed before but why did the use of a single crab, rather than a quickdraw, on a wire and the linking two crabs to fixed gear (I was always told metal on metal was bad, but never fully understood why) fall out of vogue?

[mrjonathanr]

All the weight of a quickdraw and you STILL get loads of drag? Metal on metal seems to work ok in my car engine so not sure that’s the reason.

[cheque]

I think it fell out of vogue when decent sewn quickdraw tapes became available. In Fawcett on Rock (1987) he’s got QDs and recommends using two krabs joined together only in “low-drag situations“. David Jones’ Rock Climbing in Britain shows (from the same year as this film) calls quickdraws tie-offs and warns you that they’re weaker than the karabiners, showing strength test results where the tape has failed first.

My experience of doing it on low first runners suggests that they lift out very easily.

[Jerry Morefat]

I think it fell out of vogue when decent sewn quickdraw tapes became available. In Fawcett on Rock (1987) he’s got QDs and recommends using two krabs joined together only in “low-drag situations“. David Jones’ Rock Climbing in Britain shows (from the same year as this film) calls quickdraws tie-offs and warns you that they’re weaker than the karabiners, showing strength test results where the tape has failed first.

My experience of doing it on low first runners suggests that they lift out very easily.

I see. Thanks for the explanation.

[duncan]

That's great, I don't think I'd seen it before, Body Machine on pegs, crappy aid bolts, and tatty threads!

Wired nuts were invented in the mid 60s but only came into widespread use in the mid 70s a decade or so before the film. It took a while to figure out the most effective way of using them and a single or doubled carabiner was the standard initially.

The Troll website claims they invented the quickdraw around 1977 but I never saw them used until 1983-4. A friend who went to Buoux in 1983 saw them in widespread use there and encouraged me to acquire some. Seems like Ron hadn't quiet got with programme in 1985 despite being sponsored by Troll.

Here is Ron using three carabiners (1982):
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1wm8J5Dd1y/

My friend Matt, single and double, the same year:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BYeXeI4lQpe/

Hazel's dad with carabiners pre-racked in pairs (1980):
https://www.instagram.com/p/BwPkHlcDxv0/

[cheque]

I see. Thanks for the explanation.

Reading it back, the tone of my last post is ridiculously dry!  I thought it was interesting too and was looking at those books late last night to try and understand it- saw your post soon after waking up and just regurgitated the information. 

I think the breakthrough must have come when someone realised that if you stitched all the way down the middle of the tape, creating the stiff ‘draws we know today, the strength problem was solved.