[mrjonathanr]

But you're missing the point of shoes are going to get better they're not a new addition. Joe bloggs walks around in shoes, kids start climbing in shoes, no one walks around wearing knee pads. Knee pads are new and completely arbitrary, there'll be elbow pads next. Though that's all we'll get to luckily.

I like to maintain five points of contact at all times.

[kelvin]

Undercuts? They'll be taking Viagra next.

[account_inactive]

The best thing about this thread is that I found out Barrows didn't match the undercuts on Pilgrimage hahahaha

[Ru]

No-one's actually done Hubble with a knee bar yet. And the route does't just boil down to one move - I used to be able to quite comfortably static the undercut move, but found climbing into the position really hard.

Anyway, if you do Hubble with a knee pad in the name of progression, you should also clip the bolt off it. Fair's fair.

[Bonjoy]

  Good point!

[petejh]

As long as you don't lower-off halfway up the crag... hang on!

[Andy Harris]

I remember Trav's trying a kneebar on Hubble before he'd even tried the original method and was much relieved that it didn't work. This was a long time before knee pads but I thought the most iconic of hard moves was safe!

Personally I think it's a real shame but obviously it in no way invalidates an ascent. I wonder if it was a left or right kneebar? My guess would be this would suit only very short powerful legs. Does it make the move 2% easier or does it make it a non move. This would have a dramatic effect on the end grade. Anyway from what I read this 9a route climbing, 8b+ bouldering, world cup podium finalist didn't do it in 3 days even with what might be a rendering of the crux to a 5c move. Must be pretty hard still?

Of course it's all progress and nothing each generation doesn't do to the previous, but from a time when hard climbs were few and far between and people whispered about a handful of hard moves dotted around the world that you could only read in magazines. This created a real mystique about routes and problems like The Dominator, La Surplomb de la Mee, Hubble etc etc. Most of these iconic moves have been desecrated by technique. Do you remember how hard Marc LeMenestrel tries on La Surplomb in The Realthing. This sequence was an immense move, I thought he was going to explode or just die on the spot. Only repeated by a half or dozen or so in 10 years and now it's reduced to a lowly 8a. I remember chatting to Ben about this some years ago and what maybe people put down to bad technique was more likely a case of a non internet world with literally 3 or 4 people operating at this level, respect for the method and less available technique then now.

On a similar vein I never quite did Mecca and whilst I wouldn't consider any kneebar ascents as invalid or anything other than totally fine , on a personal level I 'd consider myself to have cheated. Personally I'd rather not do it than do it with the kneebar. I guess for me the whole history and essence of this route is that although it has no hard moves there are no rests and even though the moves get progressively easier they get harder due to the lack of respite. Always felt I cheated on Revelations with the footlock too but I can live with that because it was still hard. But if I did a similar route outside of my local area I wouldn't give a toss how I got up it.

As for the Hubble cruxes whilst the undercut match was considered the crux I'd say most people found the last slap the hardest. One very burly, the other very fingery. RicH Heap used to be able to do the match static but struggled on the next crux, I was the opposite. And even if you could do both you mightn't be able to hold the terrible sloper or do the foot moves between them.

As for you Barrows, no caller of the lime can desecrate my beloved Pinches wall, verbally or with points of aid! As a previous caller I envoke a little known rule and retract your ascent of The Bearclaw from the record until you reascend without the pad

[Ru]

As for you Barrows, no caller of the lime can desecrate my beloved Pinches wall, verbally or with points of aid! As a previous caller I envoke a little known rule and retract your ascent of The Bearclaw from the record until you reascend without the pad

As I wrote on Facebook a few days ago, the Pinches Wall isn't a piece of rock, its a state of mind. Just because you can jam your knee against a bit of it, doesn't mean that there are any knee bars on pinches wall.

[abarro81]

I remember being really disappointed that that failed to get a rise out of you, just a look of vague contempt. I'll get the tipex out.   

[Where did Ru's post go? I liked that pinches wall line of yours from facebook..]

[Doylo]

Personally I think it's a real shame but obviously it in no way invalidates an ascent. I wonder if it was a left or right kneebar? My guess would be this would suit only very short powerful legs. Does it make the move 2% easier or does it make it a non move. This would have a dramatic effect on the end grade. Anyway from what I read this 9a route climbing, 8b+ bouldering, world cup podium finalist didn't do it in 3 days even with what might be a rendering of the crux to a 5c move. Must be pretty hard still?

Of course it's all progress and nothing each generation doesn't do to the previous, but from a time when hard climbs were few and far between and people whispered about a handful of hard moves dotted around the world that you could only read in magazines. This created a real mystique about routes and problems like The Dominator, La Surplomb de la Mee, Hubble etc etc. Most of these iconic moves have been desecrated by technique. Do you remember how hard Marc LeMenestrel tries on La Surplomb in The Realthing. This sequence was an immense move, I thought he was going to explode or just die on the spot. Only repeated by a half or dozen or so in 10 years and now it's reduced to a lowly 8a. I remember chatting to Ben about this some years ago and what maybe people put down to bad technique was more likely a case of a non internet world with literally 3 or 4 people operating at this level, respect for the method and less available technique then now.

.

Yes the static heel method on Dominator is a sickener too. Another iconic hard move ruined   

[Baldy]

Not that it matters much, but I might posit that the reason that people are saying that they think the route is 'spoiled' is not so much because the rock itself is somehow spoiled - but because the mystique, and the dream they were sold has been. 

For them "the route" doesn't just mean the rock itself - it is the history, the memories, and the nostalgia for what the route meant at the time; and when that is undermined by the use of a sequence that reduces the feats of strength to a technical oversight on behalf of the first and future ascentionists - I don't think it is unreasonable to feel a little disappointed.

It's an effect that I think can be seen to a lesser extent with boulders like TSOTW, where a slurry of quick and seemingly easy repeats in recent times has diluted the fascination and glamour of what was originally a brutally-hard boulder problem to simply being another boulder that people are climbing.

NSFW  :

(Graham FA in 2005, then six years! later - Robinson in 2011, and Dai in 2012 before Kruder, Traversi, Cameroni, Moroni, Webb, Hojer, Nakajima and possibly more that I have missed rolled up and fired it off in 2013/14)

 
Now, when TSOTW was repeated once, it didn't ruin it - if anything,  the whole saga of Dai's efforts added to the story.
When it was repeated twice it was still pretty incredible, but as time goes on and more and more people do it, it becomes un-newsworthy. Sure Dave Graham was visionary back then - but the rest of the world has caught up now. TSOTW has simply travelled through the natural progression of cutting edge boulder problems, and while that might have been hastened by the rapid nature of its repeaters, it has come out pretty much intact.

However - I think that if Hubble had been ascended at a lower grade while using a knee pad, in a way that would have been impossible without - then that same journey would have a shortcut in the bend.

So for that reason:

• I am glad that McColl has failed.
• I'm glad that Ondra has failed.
• And I'm glad that at least one of the stories that has been sold to me has not been watered down by new technology, or an oversight on behalf of the first ascentionist; if anything it has been made stronger for it. I can continue to hold Ben Moon up as an unbesmirched icon of British waddage, and Malc is still a superhero with tendons of steel.

As SteMac said

"The grade doesn't matter, it could be 9a+, it could be 8b+ it's totally irrelevant. It's the name that matters - the Route and the Name is everything."

And for me 'The Route' doesn't include a kneebar.

[moose]

+1 to that.... I think...

To me, the use of a knee-pad feels like a shame but those feelings are unrelated to the rock being spoilt or the composition of future graded lists.  It's all to do with my personal memories - the mythos I absorbed when first getting into climbing.  It's a desire to preserve the sanctity of a past.  An extension wanting to believe in childhood fairy stories -  I was robbed of Santa, let me keep Hubble?   Whatever, for some reason, it's seems obscurely important to me that there's a route out there that reduced it's ascensionists to broccoli diets and wooden models of the crux holds!   If knee-pad use reduced that tithe, the rock would still be there, and the stories would still exist, but for me the magic would be a little less.

[gme]

Its so nice to see this site full of other sentimental old fools.

I love you all.

Its just a shame that Johnny Brown doesn't feel the same, i had him down as the most sentimental of the lot of you. Must be a rock colour thing.

[Nibile]

 

[slackline]

When someone actually climbs Hubble with a knee pad/bar will there be mass hari-kiri?

[Nibile]

When someone actually climbs Hubble with a knee pad/bar will there be mass hari-kiri?

At all, because all the ones who could be bothered by that ascent, won't be bothered by that ascent.

[Dexter]

When someone actually climbs Hubble with a knee pad/bar will there be mass hari-kiri?

not until they do malcs one armer with one

[Wood FT]

No ones done it with the kneebar, sounds like shit beta, move along here..

[Ged]

Didn't Ron wear a thick woolly hat on the first ascent of Zoolook so he could get a head jam rest in the cave?  Didn't Don WHillans attempt Archangel with motorcycle innertubes strapped to his legs?  Nobody told them off.

I don't really understand how using knee bar pads is any different to the advent of properly good sticky shoes, chalk, boulering mats, micro cams, lightweight gear, and reliable weather forecasting in patagonia.  It's called progress for goodness sake.  Does it mean that no ascents of Indian Face are valid because they all wore 5.10 sticky rubber?

[Ally Smith]

Does it mean that no ascents of Indian Face are valid because they all wore 5.10 sticky rubber?

Gresham wore Sportiva's - thus his is the only valid ascent...

[chris_j_s]

What is interesting about the pictures that slackline posted is that Ondra appears to be the only person trying it without knee pads!

[davej]

Out of interest are knee pads allowed in bouldering comps??

[petejh]

Only if you're the joiner building the wall.

[davej]

 

[Johnny Brown]

Its just a shame that Johnny Brown doesn't feel the same, i had him down as the most sentimental of the lot of you. Must be a rock colour thing.

Not rock colour, its the old skill vs strength argument, and I'm on the side of skill every time. Every time a better sequence is found on an old testpiece I rejoice - just goes to show that strength is quickly won and lost but technique is harder won, and a gift that keeps on giving. Rules are for schoolboys not ready for the real world.