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Topic split: Downclimbing dodginess (Read 6659 times)

webbo

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When I was in to sports climbing which is probably before half the people on here were born. Comedy at Kilnsey had a difficult second clip, so the deal was to have it pre clipped on the red point. Once you had completed the red point, you climbed up clipped it, pulled some slack through and jumped off to ground, then hobbled around for a few days.

spidermonkey09

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When I was in to sports climbing which is probably before half the people on here were born. Comedy at Kilnsey had a difficult second clip, so the deal was to have it pre clipped on the red point. Once you had completed the red point, you climbed up clipped it, pulled some slack through and jumped off to ground, then hobbled around for a few days.

Showing your age referring to it as sports climbing webbo!  :tease: Seriously though, that's deranged.

webbo

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No that was showing at my age sometimes you type the wrong letterz.

ali k

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I watched caff downclimb half the leap on boat to naxos in about 07, pretty sure he finished off the onsight a few years later.
Cheating bastard.

36chambers

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Best bit of this thread is boulderers arguing about something that mostly affects trad onsighting. I watched caff downclimb half the leap on boat to naxos in about 07, pretty sure he finished off the onsight a few years later. I'll leave it to those who find 6cs scary to tell him he redpointed it.

Only former boulderers here at the minute. Everyone's clipped in nowadays :P

and I hope you don't think any of my comments have anything to do with trad climbing. 

Bradders

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Best bit of this thread is boulderers arguing about something that mostly affects trad onsighting. I watched caff downclimb half the leap on boat to naxos in about 07, pretty sure he finished off the onsight a few years later. I'll leave it to those who find 6cs scary to tell him he redpointed it.

Stubs should do it, Caff already thinks he's a cyber wanker  :2thumbsup:

andy popp

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I don't think it particularly emerged out of trad. Isn't it often simply about safety? Very often on UK lime you're straight into hard bouldery climbing right off the deck, often above far from perfect landings (obviously the catwalk epitomises this but it's true elsewhere). Who wants to repeatedly make some slightly dodgy clip that's probably halfway through a hard move?

Personally, I always thought it was fine, within reason. But it did get ridiculous, not only all the variations already mentioned but it seemed to become ok that someone had done the downclimb and you didn't even have to do it yourself.

Likewise, on trad, if I can get back to the ground without weighting the gear in anyway then it seems fine to leave the gear and rope clipped ... but only for that day. You have to start again if you need to come back.

Doylo

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I watched caff downclimb half the leap on boat to naxos in about 07, pretty sure he finished off the onsight a few years later.
Cheating bastard.

On a separate note he's known for knocking multiple sessions off siege projects during verbal discourse. :lol:

MischaHY

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Bit perplexed and entertained by all these climbing up/down/4 clips in tales  :blink:

I feel like this:

OS: leave the ground and don't come back or you've cocked it.

Flash: Leave the ground with your mate shouting crap beta constantly but don't come back or you've cocked it.

RP: Pre-clipping obviously legit to stop groundfalls from a boulder start because this is sport climbing but if you've got clips in that are purely for energy saving rather than to prevent hitting the deck then you've cocked it.

Is this not how 99% of climbers play the game? 

remus

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Personally I prefer "don't fall off or you've cocked it". Only allowing certain type of down climbing seems weird.

Duma

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Falling off is what ends an os or flash. The ground has nothing to do with it.
It's murkier with rp's as obvs you're falling off a lot. I'd say the whole ascent including clips has to be free (so not weighting gear), which implies any downclimbing has to be done before every rp.
Preclipping to save energy rather than safety is way worse, anything after the second bolt is basically invalid except in exceptional circumstances imo. Claiming its ok as sport climbing is all about the moves is balls, unless you consider a tr ascent to be just as valid.

abarro81

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I concur with Remus. Being allowed to downclimb to the ledge 1cm off the floor but not the floor is absurd. We're not bouldering here.

teestub

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I concur with Remus. Being allowed to downclimb to the ledge 1cm off the floor but not the floor is absurd. We're not bouldering here.

I agree with this, but if you want to do this to allow you to have a high clip or some gear pre placed on your next go from the ground (which is what I was aiming at with my previous post but didn’t explain properly), what time limit would you place on this?

I remember there being a vid of Dave Mac on Trauma in N Wales where he looked to downclimb about 2/3 of the route to the ground to get a high runner in. No issues with this, sort of behaviour, it looked totally nails.

Wil

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Claiming its ok as sport climbing is all about the moves is balls, unless you consider a tr ascent to be just as valid.

Why shouldn't we? I'd find it personally unsatisfying, and there are lots of routes where leading them is logistically easier, but I really don't see the issue if someone wants to toprope something clean.

andy popp

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Falling off is what ends an os or flash. The ground has nothing to do with it.

Agreed. I can't understand why downclimbing would invalidate an onsight, especially on trad.

jwi

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There is no floor outdoors. The idea that reversing a move is OK anywhere on the route except when you touch "the floor" is an indoor rule that has spread to outdoor crags because big city yuppies modern times grumble grumble all gumbies who did not start by scrambling in the great outdoors frhmp grumble.

abarro81

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if you want to do this to allow you to have a high clip or some gear pre placed on your next go from the ground (which is what I was aiming at with my previous post but didn’t explain properly), what time limit would you place on this?

Well I'd want my gear or ropes back so I reckon there's a natural limiter there for most people! (I should point out in the example I gave Caff took his gear out on the way back down rather than leaving it insitu for a decade  :lol:) I'd have no objection to someone "taking a look", climbing down, belaying their mate, then smashing on.. though obviously it's unusual. It's still a "natural" way to go climbing IMO, which for me is I think the key - is it a fairly natural thing to do given the situation or is it a contrived absurdity? So climbing back down to the ground from the hard-to-read crux after 5m of relatively easy but pumpy ground on your o/s go feels quite "natural", as does clipping the awkwardly-placed 3rd bolt then reversing before a RP go*. Conversely RPing with half of Kilnsey/Malham on a toprope then trying to do a 20m downclimb afterwards does not feel like a "natural" part of climbing to me, it seems totally absrud, so I can't imagine I'd do it. Dare I say it, Fiend might be right about the spirit of the "law" being the key here...

* E.g. I think I did this on both Zeke and R'n'P, you're going to downclimb a few moves anyway as the clipping position isn't the climbing position, so why not just go a few moves further to the ledge/floor. On 30 is the new 40 I clipped the hard-to-clip bolt then reversed to the ledge below but didn't bother going the extra few meters of easy choss to the floor because I couldn't be bothered and I was in a no hander anyway, but I'd have no objection to anyone going back to the floor each time.

Johnny Brown

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The Thing magazine, Feb '94:



Not much has changed! Highly amused by stories of people projecting the downclimb after the redpoint. Stay classy sportclimbing!  :lol:

Adam Lincoln

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There was a time a few years back when people would have rope clipped in up to undercuts before crux for Unjustified. This is a massive advantage. They might have done the down climb once sessions before…..


jwi

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The Thing magazine, Feb '94:


The pic did not show up for me, but here is a direct link http://adamlong.co.uk/images/IMG_4423.jpg

MischaHY

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Falling off is what ends an os or flash. The ground has nothing to do with it.

Agreed. I can't understand why downclimbing would invalidate an onsight, especially on trad.

I was more thinking about sport there really Andy, but for me personally if I come back to the ground (aside from maybe in the first few moves because I've totally read the start wrong or whatever) then I think of it as 'ground up' because a big part of the OS/Flash for me is figuring it out whilst dealing with the growing pump. For me it's all about the first go and if I do 5 laps up and down the first 10 metres or more whilst having lovely long rests on the floor in between then it's not the first go anymore in my personal standards.

I appreciate nobody has to care what I think  :great: It's just how I like to play.

SA Chris

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What about downclimbing to an enormous ledge you can stand on halfway up the route? The ground is an enormous ledge, just at the bottom of the route.

36chambers

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The Thing magazine, Feb '94:



Not much has changed! Highly amused by stories of people projecting the downclimb after the redpoint. Stay classy sportclimbing!  :lol:

and here's me naively thinking that sport climbing was a clean step up from all the questionable trad antics.

SA Chris

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Morality of a back alley tomcat.

Will Hunt

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The Thing magazine, Feb '94:



Not much has changed! Highly amused by stories of people projecting the downclimb after the redpoint. Stay classy sportclimbing!  :lol:

and here's me naively thinking that sport climbing was a clean step up from all the questionable trad antics.

This is what comes of years of swinging about on the likes of Demon Wall Roof where the floor is always in easy reach. For bouldering, your go ends when you touch the floor or something (a spotter/neighbouring boulder) that is out of bounds. That makes sense for bouldering.
Roped climbing has different rules. Your go ends when you weight the rope. That's it.

 

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