the shizzle > the blog pile
James Mchaffie - Caffs (B)Log...
Doylo:
It's not that complicated. Less people are having a trad apprenticeship now as they're distracted with sport and bouldering, indoor walls and all this training business
.
--- Quote from: Stu Littlefair on October 07, 2016, 04:34:30 pm ---.
As a result, if you measure impressiveness by the number of people doing it on a regular basis, then regularly on sighting E6 is equivalent to 8c+ redpoints in my book. But cooler.
--- End quote ---
That's because you've climbed 9a but are relatively crap at trad. The numbers are down because of the reasons I stated above not because it's the equivalent of climbing 8c+. For someone who's good at trad like Pete Robins onsighting e6 is a rest day whereas climbing 8c+ is a summers worth of stress and effort (and earache off his wife).
Luke Owens:
--- Quote from: Doylo on October 08, 2016, 12:14:36 am ---(and earache off his wife).
--- End quote ---
;D
Stu Littlefair:
--- Quote from: Doylo on October 08, 2016, 12:14:36 am ---It's not that complicated. Less people are having a trad apprenticeship now as they're distracted with sport and bouldering, indoor walls and all this training business
.
--- Quote from: Stu Littlefair on October 07, 2016, 04:34:30 pm ---.
As a result, if you measure impressiveness by the number of people doing it on a regular basis, then regularly on sighting E6 is equivalent to 8c+ redpoints in my book. But cooler.
--- End quote ---
That's because you've climbed 9a but are relatively crap at trad. The numbers are down because of the reasons I stated above not because it's the equivalent of climbing 8c+. For someone who's good at trad like Pete Robins onsighting e6 is a rest day whereas climbing 8c+ is a summers worth of stress and effort (and earache off his wife).
--- End quote ---
You misunderstand I think. Sure, climbing a single E6 may be a gentle day out for Pete, but to be able to go out and have a fair chance of onsighting any E6 requires a level of skill that very few have.
Whether that's due to a lack of practice or the innate difficulty of acquiring that skill is a different, but interesting question.
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Fultonius:
In my experience Doylo's on the money - the current route into climbing tends to push more towards bouldering and sport. You see plenty of people who get to Fr8a or 7C within 2 - 3 years of starting these days (which would be unheard of 20 years ago, no?).
Whereas you don't see them jumping straight on E5s in 3 years. Especially not consistently onsighting E5 on different rock types and styles. Unless you're particularly gifted, it just takes a quite a lot of time and mileage to learn the skills of trad.
I wonder how the current results would compare to "back in the day" if you compared E5 trad leaders' sport redpoint grade. i.e. would an E5 climber from the 90's have F7b "fitness" whereas now they'd maybe have Fr7c-8a fitness? Who knows.
My own story is maybe representative of the newer trend:
2001 Started climbing indoors
2002 first VS, ~6c (indoors)
2003 First E1 (sketchy!)
2004 Some more E1s, Fr7a+ Outside
2005 More E1s...Fr7b+
2006 First E2 then First E3 late on that year
2007 First Font 7A - l'oblique in roche aux sabots! Mainly E1/E2 but scraped up an E3 at the end of the year which now gets E4. Lots of trad mileage that year, first Pabbay /Mingulay trip
2008 Started taking trad falls! E4 second go. More mileage on different rock types, climbed in norway. Still ticking off more 7A/+ boulders locally, first 7B at Dumby. Did an E5 5c - tried to flash it after seeing it on abseil, then had for TRs, then climbed it.
2009 sport fitness still around the Fr7b mark...but 2006 - 2009 I didn't do a lot of sport. Big trip - 1 week on Mingulay, 3 in Lofoten, then 3 in Squamish. First multipitch 5.11b - freeway lite. Looking back this felt like a bit of a breakthrough year. After the trip I did my first, super-sketchy and not in control E5 6b (the E5 bit is not the the 6b bit), then got up my forst F7c+ sport route - so still quite a differential between RP grade and trad grade.
2010 car crash, destroyed my PCL/LCL/PFL in right knee.
2011 focussed on sport to get back into climbing, did my first Fr8a (albeit Scotland's softest...) back to E3 ish.
2012 to 2015 - living the life of a Cham Trustafarian, climbing with aspirant guides etc.... sport grade plateaued at steady Fr7c due to lack of training/effort. Lots of trad/alpine climbing - lots of improvement in technique and confidence.
2016 7 x E5s at fairhead/gogarth/slate/glencoe, one E6 quick headpoint and a Fr7c+.
God that's a lot of detail to make a simple point haha....trad takes time and persistence to get better at; and even when your "objective fitness" doesn't change your trad abilities can keep improving.
I do reckon upping my sport onsight to Fr7b+ would make E6 onsight a lot easier...
petejh:
--- Quote from: Doylo on October 08, 2016, 12:14:36 am ---It's not that complicated. Less people are having a trad apprenticeship now as they're distracted with sport and bouldering, indoor walls and all this training business
.
--- Quote from: Stu Littlefair on October 07, 2016, 04:34:30 pm ---.
As a result, if you measure impressiveness by the number of people doing it on a regular basis, then regularly on sighting E6 is equivalent to 8c+ redpoints in my book. But cooler.
--- End quote ---
That's because you've climbed 9a but are relatively crap at trad. The numbers are down because of the reasons I stated above not because it's the equivalent of climbing 8c+. For someone who's good at trad like Pete Robins onsighting e6 is a rest day whereas climbing 8c+ is a summers worth of stress and effort (and earache off his wife).
--- End quote ---
Exactly this. It isn't complicated, you get good at what you do. There's no magic to being good at trad; or at sport, bouldering, alpine, mixed climbing etc. It's just time spent doing it.
My apprenticeship between roughly age 19-25 was probably similar to lots of others in the 90s/early noughties. Climbing 51% of the S, HS, VS, HVS, E1s, E2s and E3s in the N.Wales select guide (just counted - 212 out of 413 routes), all of them onsight except for 4 routes (pincushion, valour and tensor - all at trem!; and plumbline).
I didn't climb a sport route until I'd been climbing for around 4 years and I remember walking under LPT in my early twenties believing that grade 7s seemed an exotic world of advanced climbing and 8s a different planet (or Moon) entirely - one that I'd surely never visit.
Then I got into sport and got better at that. With having had a trad apprenticeship it wasn't hard to keep going with that as well and still progress with it, although more slowly.
It's so different now. People can easily go straight to sport climbing outdoors and onto 7s in their first year because there's a good choice of 5s and 6s to progress through, the climbs are a known quantity and are generally well bolted (you're welcome).The trad is still there for those who want to go tradding; the ones who want 'adventureTM' still can - and now with the added boost of having easily-acquired sport fitness; and the ones who want an easy/quick option now can in most parts of the country, even Scotland (soon NI hopefully). The ones who want to willy wave about what they climb still can and do.
For most people time is in limited supply as they age, but also it seems youth today are more economically pressured than when I was 20. Everyone now has the option of sport, so they don't *have* to go tradding if they want to climb. It doesn't surprise me that lots of people opt for the time-limited 'easy' option - that's people, path of least resistance generally.
I don't get the impression trad is dying off - the level has risen and it seems like loads of people are still going out every weekend serving apprenticeship on E1s and above, rather than VS and above which was the norm 20 years ago.
It seems to me the people who get good at onsighting trad these days usually to be either young people with testosterone to burn trying to prove/establish themselves in some way; broke people with lots of time living close to good trad - i.e. students; people from privileged backgrounds with resources to travel lots and not work; or middle-aged 'live to climb' lifestylers (most with financial safety nets). Caff's a bit of an anomaly. And to continue tradding at a high level you probably need to choose to live very close to good trad ahead of choosing to live where decent work or a relationship might take you. Few people are prepared to make that sacrifice long term.
--- Quote from: stulittlefair --- As a result, if you measure impressiveness by the number of people doing it on a regular basis, then regularly on sighting E6 is equivalent to 8c+ redpoints in my book
--- End quote ---
I think (?) I know what you're trying to say, that in terms of number of people doing E6 os or 8c+ rp the numbers are similar? Because no way are they anywhere near comparable in terms of difficulty for a climber who regularly climbs both grade 8 sport and E5 trad.
If the numbers *are* close (which I doubt) than it'd just be because of circumstances and fashion than inherent difficulty. But I doubt that the numbers are even close. I reckon loads more people are onsighting E6 than rp'ing 8c+ - it isn't *that* rare despite what Caff's blog implies. I'd be surprised if the ratio of E6 onsights to 8c+ rp's per year is any closer than 10:1. Relatively few people are climbing 8c+ in the UK - and how many 8c+s has Caff redpointed this year (and previous years) compared to E6 onsights?
Trad is ace but I don't think it's any cooler or less cool than sport. A great trad route is great and a poor one is poor. There are far too many trad routes that are poor climbs; crap eliminates; and compromises littered with rusty fixed gear for trad to be blanket 'cool'. Just as there are crap, average and great sport routes.
The moves on Liquid Ambar or The Brute! But Rainbow of recalcitrance is an amazing visual feature. Apples to oranges. Nothing's cooler to me than the climbing on a good steep mixed route though.
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