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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
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Topic Author's Original Post - Aug 28, 2018 - 03:19pm PT
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anyone else notice their news feed filled with sponsored bouldering gym climbers setting and sending slab problems?
Is this a new wave?
Ondra does a slab problem? what?
Just another product being pushed by the sponsored-elite via Instajam?
SlabDyno4lyfe!
-removed image to prevent FB from copying without permission
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johntp
Trad climber
Little Rock and Loving It
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Aug 28, 2018 - 03:38pm PT
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sponsored bouldering gym climbers setting and sending slab problems?
Guess I don't get the news feeds you do. Links? Are they setting them ground up or rap bolted? Sport slabs with bolts every five feet or trad runouts?
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Aug 28, 2018 - 03:46pm PT
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It's fake slab if you top rope to the first bolt. Hell, getting to the first bolt is all the fun.
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johntp
Trad climber
Little Rock and Loving It
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Aug 28, 2018 - 04:12pm PT
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Hell, getting to the first bolt is all the fun.
At Suicide/Taquitz/TM/JT climbing slabs to the first bolt was "stimulating".
edit: If I recall correctly, one didn't feel safe on many routes until the second bolt was clipped.
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ec
climber
ca
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Aug 28, 2018 - 04:22pm PT
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Hell, getting to the first bolt is all the fun.
At Suicide/Taquitz/TM/JT climbing slabs to the first bolt was "stimulating".
Southern Sierra, Sequoia/Kings, Kern Canyon!
 ec
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Aug 28, 2018 - 04:32pm PT
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It's fake slab if you top rope to the first bolt. Hell, getting to the first bolt is all the fun.
Nah, the real fun starts when it is three times as far to the second bolt and the crux is just before it.
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johntp
Trad climber
Little Rock and Loving It
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Aug 28, 2018 - 04:34pm PT
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When I was a youth in DFW and Norman climbed a bit at Quartz Mountain. Dug out my Southern Exposure guidebook Raleigh and Thomas put out.
That puppy had quite a few X rated routes. Several had no pro till the first pitch belay bolts. After that were long ass runouts. The common thought when climbing those routes was a hip belay by the second was mandatory. Reason being a sticht plate would not allow the second (belayer) to yard in enough rope to prevent a leader groundfall.
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Aug 28, 2018 - 04:51pm PT
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Nah, the real fun starts when it is three times as far to the second bolt and the crux is just before it.
And traversing!
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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Aug 28, 2018 - 04:55pm PT
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A slab of New York on the barb'q.
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Aug 28, 2018 - 05:16pm PT
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Several had no pro till the first pitch belay bolts. After that were long ass runouts. The common thought when climbing those routes was a hip belay by the second was mandatory. Reason being a sticht plate would not allow the second (belayer) to yard in enough rope to prevent a leader groundfall.
At Stone Mtn. NC, the “running belay” was just that. If the leader fell, you turned and ran to take in slack.
The worst injury I saw there was a belayer who turned and ran when the leader fell just before the belay on Mercury’s Lead. She ran into a tree. The first bolt was at 40 ft, then nothing to the end.
The leader lost big chunks of flesh from his palms, which I had to climb past when it was my turn and to retrieve their gear.
I think ebeck was with me that day.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Aug 28, 2018 - 05:43pm PT
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Nah, the real fun starts when it is three times as far to the second bolt and the crux is just before it.
A perfect description of the steep slab leading to the arete on Carson Kodas Arete at Courtright...
The second bolt (with someone's bail biner on it) is by the thin right facing flake above. It's 5.10 something to rock up onto that sloper just above my left hand to make the clip. That move, stepping up to the drilling/clipping stance is not the crux of the route, but it's sure as hell the scariest. Yikes.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Aug 28, 2018 - 05:50pm PT
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I've done a few new routes with Laeger. Second to Ron Carson, Herb is the best climber at stance drilling I know.
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johntp
Trad climber
Little Rock and Loving It
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Aug 28, 2018 - 06:12pm PT
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The leader lost big chunks of flesh from his palms,
Base104 took a 100' slider at Quartz. Wasted his EB's(?) and had serious road rash. At least that's the story I remember.
edit: here's the story from R&I:
"In 1980 my college roommate, Mark Herndon, fell 100 feet on a two-pitch route. I was belaying from a stance at the end of the first pitch, cooling my feet, shoes off. Mark had just cruised the second-pitch crux, a near-holdless paddle up granite glass, and was nearing the end of a 50-foot runout above the route’s only lead bolt when he slipped.
Back at the belay, I figured that the serious climbing was over and was gazing stupidly at my toes when a giant loop of slack suddenly spooled down the face. I glanced up to see Mark looming larger and larger.
I froze, horrified by the prospect of witnessing—and catching—the daddy of all falls. As Mark scorched past me, I caught a strong whiff of his E.B.s burning on the rock. Panicked, I reeled in an arm- load of slack—just enough to catch him a few feet above a sea of knobs. Instead of splintering his ankles, or worse, Mark walked away with a serious road-rash and a backside full of quartz granules that my mother, a nurse, carefully tweezed out of his buttocks that evening."
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Aug 28, 2018 - 06:30pm PT
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I used to fancy myself a slab-climber back in the late 1970's & early 80's.
When I was in "the zone," those long run-outs seemed so cool.
Occasionaly, I ran out of friction, but I never suffered a slab-fall longer than about 40'.
I remember a couple falls, where I would just start sliding back down the slab. After a short period of backwards skiing, a bump would upend me & the tumble would commence. Happily, the tumble never ended at a ledge.
On a new route on Idaho's South Fork Clearwater River, a long, but easy, unprotected lead took me to a 1' x 3' sloping ledge covered in verdant 2" thick green moss. Since I wasn't sure of how sticky the moss would be, I put in a 1/4" by 1 1/2" bolt before stepping onto the moss.
After clipping the bolt, I destroyed the environment by simply tearing the carpet of moss off the ledge. I stepped up onto the slightly damp ledge & stood there looking up at where my route might go next.
At that moment, all the micro-organisms, whose environment I had just destroyed, gave an upwards push & I skidded off the ledge.
I was very pleased that I had placed the bolt by the ledge.
Here's a photo I took of Avery Tichner on a late 70's new route on Lightning Dome on the S. Fork Clearwater River.
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two-shoes
Trad climber
Auberry, CA
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Aug 28, 2018 - 09:43pm PT
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Slab has always been here. There's no coming back.
I like low angle slab as that is all I seem to be able to climb anymore.
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skywalker1
Trad climber
co
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Aug 29, 2018 - 12:38am PT
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Hmm I've done a few of these things. Talk about being in the "puzzle factory". You lead the slabs and I will lead the O.W. The #2 camalot cracks will be a fist fight! Or a hand fight between us!
Just curious why would you do them in the gym?
Anyway...
Cheers
S...
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Nick Danger
Ice climber
Arvada, CO
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Aug 29, 2018 - 07:03am PT
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Slab is such a mind game. When I am in the zone it is just a total hoot and when I am not it just scares the poop right out of me. I recall one effort in the south Platte on Helen's Dome when I was climbing steep slab that entailed using small feldspar phenocrysts about the size of my little fingernail as the only positive holds. The wind was quite gusty that day and I had to wait for the occasional drop in wind speed to do the moves or risk being blown right off the face. A stimulating day, that.
Long live slab
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Oplopanax
Mountain climber
The Deep Woods
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Aug 29, 2018 - 09:31am PT
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60 footers?
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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Aug 29, 2018 - 09:46am PT
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I wonder where it is coming back from; maybe a couple of years partying with Buffet down in the Keys?
The Meadows delivers hella in this realm and one of the reasons I dig it so..
Kris, thanks for those pics of CarsonKodas. When I started climbing I lived in Bako and did the KernCanyon/Dome/Needles things. The horror stories of respect I had heard about you guys and your route devo blew my mind and still does. When you add R to your life, an enhancement occurs can that can come from nothing but climbing.
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