Have a funky method - I get my LH on the rightmost crimp then get my RF in the groove and get a knee scum and bring my RH to a sidehold just below my knee.If you replace the belay suggest you put it above the bulge so you can clip off the undercuts in the overlap but leave the original in place for people who want to do it as originally or for when the overlap is still wet.
the belay is in a bad place and a total bastard to clip...Damn you Fawcett.
If you replace the belay suggest you put it above the bulge so you can clip off the undercuts in the overlap but leave the original in place for people who want to do it as originally or for when the overlap is still wet.
I don't know the route so take this comment with a pinch of salt, but in my opinion an illogically positioned lower-off can really detract from a route's quality, making it feel contrived. If Ron put the belay in a daft place I wouldn't be shy about fixing that - leaving an old belay in place seems mad (surely if it needs replacing then the old one should be removed so we don't end up with the crag being littered with any more dangerous junk than needs be?). Unless you feel that a tricky (redpoint crux?!) chain clip is an integral part of the route (if it is then that's it scrapped off my wishlist).Personally I (and I think lots of other punters) like it when somebody takes the initiative to fix bad bolting (an additional bolt at the start of Directissima for instance), even when the old vets might moan that the bad bolting was some great quality of the route in question.
If Ron put the belay in a daft place
What does one need to do a Lattice test? I bet I'd come out as the weakest climber to have ever lived.
Quote from: shark on April 25, 2021, 02:42:29 pmManaged to get into the awkward position to clip the belay and pulled up the rope but lost tension as about to clip and couldn’t reach the draw! went half the length of the crag ending up below the New Dawn bulge. Brilliant! Always wondered how far you'd go in that scenario. I came within a whisker of doing exactly the same thing. FWIW moving the belay was on my list last autumn but I ran out of time before it all got wet; it will get done this year but you'll have ticked it by then! Were you clipping off the crimp or the undercut in the overlap?
Managed to get into the awkward position to clip the belay and pulled up the rope but lost tension as about to clip and couldn’t reach the draw! went half the length of the crag ending up below the New Dawn bulge.
I've taken that ride too - I literally froze while trying to clip the Mescalito belay in a blizzard and took the long trip (and came very close to doing the same on the next occasion). Not as scary as the similar belay-clip fall from Overnite Sensation - I scraped the floor on that one (not helped by the belayer possibly being the only partner I've ever had who was lighter than me). I'm a bit torn on the re-positioning issue. The location of the Mescalito belay is by any sensible measure crap, and I would be very annoyed if a newly bolted route was like that. But it's a known facet / oddity of the route - like the gripper-clipper finale of Overnite, the chain-grab of Raindogs, the slightly run-out nature of Frankie goes to Kilnsey. Stuff like that is part of climbing lore, such as it is by the weak standards of sport climbing. My Dad used to say "life is just a quest to find things to talk about in pubs" - if belays are moved, we are robbing future generations of finding commonalities over pints of beer and packets of crisps ?
I can imagine the mobile phone in a shoe footage. Slowly inching your way up, all stylish and in control. Go out of shot off the top of the screen. Next thing- full screen plummet followed by a few seconds of language requiring beeps...
I'm impressed by both your and Simon's commitment to tradition (or purer ethics?), when I did it 2008 I decided as soon as I started working it that I wasn't bothering to try to clip the ridiculous belay and grabbed it instead. A tainted ascent but still a great route and the position of the belay really does make no sense.
Quote from: IanP on April 27, 2021, 07:33:01 amI'm impressed by both your and Simon's commitment to tradition (or purer ethics?), when I did it 2008 I decided as soon as I started working it that I wasn't bothering to try to clip the ridiculous belay and grabbed it instead. A tainted ascent but still a great route and the position of the belay really does make no sense. Very much support this. Ideally you'd clip a well positioning finish, but hard clips to finish a route are the sport climbing equivalent of boulder problems where the hardest part is getting your arse off the ground
hard clips to finish a route are the sport climbing equivalent of boulder problems where the hardest part is getting your arse off the ground
This is outrageous stuff. Grabbing chains went out in the 90s! (Raindogs excepted) As for not doing the easy top out on stuff when its clean and dry...Shocked and appalled.
Re: Mescalito belay. It was about 14yrs ago since I was last on it so can't remember how bad the clipping position is, but is the intention to move the belay up so you climb past the original one and finish underneath the big roof instead of in the middle of the wall? (assuming that's possible).If so, that might be a stronger argument for moving it as it would improve the route overall. If the intention is to lower it or move it sideways just to make it easier to clip then I'd agree with Moose that it's a quirk of the route and should probably stay - otherwise you're doing a disservice to all the people who've struggled with that clip over the last ~37yrs!
And you were sport climbing loads in the 90s to be able to comment on this from a position of experience? It was definitely still the done thing early 2000s (I think) when I did Mescalito. I certainly don’t remember agonising over the decision and no-one called me out despite having some regulars either side of me cheering me on. The only Malham rules that I remember was that you couldn’t put a quickdraw on the Raindogs belay to grab. Everything else was fair game.Strangely enough, I never used to grab the chains abroad and some crags in the UK seemed more normal to do this than others. Malham was one that always suited it because so many routes stopped in weird places.Ian and Serpico (if he’s still skulking around here) would be better placed to know the Malham norm than most as they were pretty much part of the furniture back then.
It already finishes under the roof. Sound like you're referring to the New Dawn belay?
Ah yeh I must be! So are there no decent holds in or around the roof to clip off? Or is it just that the crimps stay dry when the roof doesn't, so clipping off the crimps makes it climbable more often?Trying to understand the logic of why the belay is where it is (if any).
Tbh all the ethics of it aside, the main reason it will need replacing soon is because its really old and not in great nick.
Wrt Mescalito I’ve not done the route, but if the difficulty of clipping the chains gives it ‘character’ it strikes me folk need to go trad climbing.