[Darren S]

I thought Sean Myles got a really raw deal over Rodney Mullen.

Sean was totally honest about his style of ascent at the time of the original ascent but the guidebook writers decided for some strange reason (Yorkshire/Peak rivalry) to not acknowledge it.
I got some nice photos after he re-climbed it placing the gear on lead.

[tomtom]

 

My 'logpileometer' (tm) is registering a 7 going on 8 with this thread.....

[mrjonathanr]

You're correct a fiddly placement is a lot harder than clipping a bolt. However placement of the exact piece of gear strategically placed on your harness is not that much harder than trying to make an out of reach, hard clip on a sport route, at least if injury or death are not the consequence of falling off.

 An extended in place quick draw is fine to make the latter problem easier (never said this was bad style), so is it not acceptable to make the former easier by preplacing the fiddly bit of gear?

Sorry to butt in but there's quite a difference between anxiously fumbling to clip a bolt vs gear placement in extremis.

Ethically the bolt should be replaced or extended because the whole point is to eliminate protection issues as difficulty to focus solely on the task of physically climbing the rock.

The trad ethic is to cope with the challenge of staying safe or calm as well as climbing the moves - preplacing gear runs counter to the ethic.


Just my ha'penny worth.

[roddersm]

You're correct a fiddly placement is a lot harder than clipping a bolt. However placement of the exact piece of gear strategically placed on your harness is not that much harder than trying to make an out of reach, hard clip on a sport route, at least if injury or death are not the consequence of falling off.

 An extended in place quick draw is fine to make the latter problem easier (never said this was bad style), so is it not acceptable to make the former easier by preplacing the fiddly bit of gear?

Sorry to butt in but there's quite a difference between anxiously fumbling to clip a bolt vs gear placement in extremis.

Ethically the bolt should be replaced or extended because the whole point is to eliminate protection issues as difficulty to focus solely on the task of physically climbing the rock.

The trad ethic is to cope with the challenge of staying safe or calm as well as climbing the moves - preplacing gear runs counter to the ethic.


Just my ha'penny worth.

No bother. Good points, similar to what Bonjoy said. I agree a bold fumbling gear placement in a scary situation is WAY harder and more serious than a bolt clip. Sorry if my post wasn't clear enough. What I was alluding to was that some headpointed trad routes are physically hard and safe as opposed to bold or dangerous. In this scenario the challenge of placing the gear is a physical one like making a difficult clip on a sport route.

But like Bonjoy you have made a clear distinction between sport redpointing and trad headpointing. I was trying to point out that there might be some blurring of the boundaries but perhaps it is as clear cut as you're saying and that preplaced gear is just against the spirit of trad climbing and any comparisons with sport climbing are not valid. Cheers.

[psychomansam]

The question is, if we're going to have threads like this on here, does the other channel even need to exist?

[butters]

The question is, if we're going to have threads like this on here, does the other channel even need to exist?

God yes - without the other channel it would be the 79th time this week that the same question (or at least a variation thereof) would have been asked on here. With the other channel filtering out the other 78 instances you stand a chance of getting a reasoned answer before it all goes massively off topic for a while and then Slackers tries to enforce logic\Linux into the equation and it dies a natural death.

[psychomansam]

Ah, I see,
although aren't forum debates supposed to be ended by someone mentioning the Nazi's?

Oh wait, sorted