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RyanD
climber
Squamish
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Oct 30, 2012 - 04:03am PT
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Hey Gdavis not saying she couldn't, just saying I'd like to see it. I think it's interesting how so many of the kids that are blowing up the climbing world are so focused on this one aspect of what climbing has to offer generally, difficulty. When/if they do learn about and endeavor to trad/alpine/wall climb its always interesting to see how it goes. A lot of kid rock stars go on to forge their own path.
Actually you know what, I'd rather see her coach Obe on supercrack.
I like how honest Riley is haha
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Fluoride
Trad climber
West Los Angeles, CA
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Oct 30, 2012 - 04:08am PT
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Crasic, Sasha DiGiulian just started her freshman year at Columbia Univ. in NYC this fall. There is hope.
Would love to see her be the high end climber she is AND a nobel prize winner. :)
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Oct 30, 2012 - 04:25am PT
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> Every year you hear stories about those kids who go to college at the age of 12 or whatever. But you never hear stories about amazing discoveries, or Nobel Prizes (or other prizes) won by these wunderkinds. Something at somepoint goes wrong.
This is a pretty different subject - going to college at age 12.
There are child prodigy scholars who don't burn out, though.
An example is John von Neumann.
He went to school at regular grade level (at the insistence of his father) but had private tutors so he could learn independently.
"As a 6 year old, he could divide two 8-digit numbers in his head.
By the age of 8, he was familiar with differential and integral calculus."
He made a lot of discoveries in so many fields, and didn't burn out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
He didn't win a Nobel Prize, but there's no Nobel Prize in Math, and there wasn't one in Econ when he was alive.
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rick d
climber
ol pueblo, az
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Oct 30, 2012 - 09:43am PT
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When the kid solos the north twin, comes back to civilization with a 1,000 yard stare and says nothing,(no photos, no vimeo videos, nothing more than a one line blurb)-then gets bitten by the bug and climbs through into their 80's.-then and only then will I accept sport climbing as a valid training venue.
(see Fred Beckey and second ascent of Waddington as a teenager.)
otherwise flash in pan. Rodden and Brown are really not cutting edge anymore-sorta like Nadia Comăneci. Sharma still has not gone alpine climbing.
-starting my 32 year, still doing FA's that no one will hear about for at least a decade ha ha ha.
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mcreel
climber
Barcelona
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Oct 30, 2012 - 09:53am PT
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My basic deep and considered reflection, after reflecting on my 30+ years climbing, across the spectrum from peak bagging to bouldering, trad 'n sport, wooden blocks to glued in rebars, goldline to 9.8 singles, burned crotch from dulfersitz to popped ring finger tendon from cranking, pemmican to goo, is that it's pretty damn amazing.
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GDavis
Social climber
SOL CAL
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Oct 30, 2012 - 10:30am PT
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The fact that a little girl did something amazing and people are grasping at negativities speaks volumes about the inner monologue that must play inside your head.
opinions are like as#@&%es, everyone has them and they all stink.
Ashima is a bad mother f*#ker. You don't have to like sport climbing, you don't have to like the mentality that high-end athletics brings, hell you don't even have to like the f*#king Red.
Whether it is rock climbing or tennis, this little girl did something amazing. Just appreciate it. Doesn't cost you anything to be decent.
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GDavis
Social climber
SOL CAL
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Oct 30, 2012 - 10:32am PT
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Rodden and Brown are really not cutting edge anymore
Brown has freed several valley big walls (WFLT, NWFHD, gave an attempt on Zodiac with Honnold) and Rodden has had to deal with a career ending injury - AFTER a divorce. She's also freed more el cap routes than any other woman, and almost any man, all in her 20's.
Yeah... they just never really performed to their potential : /
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Alpamayo
Trad climber
Chapel Hill, NC
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Oct 30, 2012 - 10:48am PT
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The fact that a little girl did something amazing and people are grasping at negativities speaks volumes about the inner monologue that must play inside your head.
opinions are like as#@&%es, everyone has them and they all stink.
Ashima is a bad mother f*#ker. You don't have to like sport climbing, you don't have to like the mentality that high-end athletics brings, hell you don't even have to like the f*#king Red.
Whether it is rock climbing or tennis, this little girl did something amazing. Just appreciate it. Doesn't cost you anything to be decent.
^^^This
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Oct 30, 2012 - 10:49am PT
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Hmm I'm not sure this requires much deep thought really.
She is impressively good. Very Cool
From a pure technical point of view it is not surprising to see young gals excelling. It is a gymnastic sport. People have seen this coming for decades.
What does it mean to my climbing? Not much other than it's cool to hear about.
I sure don't see why it's bothering anyone. Hmmm I guess I can imagine why it might for some people. Your identity would have to be waaaay too caught up in competitive numbers if it does.
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jfs
Trad climber
Upper Leftish
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Oct 30, 2012 - 10:58am PT
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GDavis agreed. grasping at negatives... or just grasping.
"Yeah but ...can she...?"
Seriously???
Wow.
Supertopo amazes me....again.
She's an amazing little girl. To whatever degree there's any similarity between her "sport" and my "sport" I can at least identify with the drive that motivates her to push her own limits. It's fantastic. I wish her the best.
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mountainlion
Trad climber
California
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Oct 30, 2012 - 11:30am PT
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Every single one of the young climbers who looked to me to do all the onsight leading surpassed me in every aspect of climbing and IT MAKES ME FEEL GOOD!
The next generation should surpass us that is the way of the world. She will mentor someone in the future who will surpass her!!
Good for her!
I'm climbing better than I ever have and still am probably the worst climber at the crag. Just started sport climbing because it's what overhanging limestone has and I love it! Not turning my back on my roots in trad but I have new friends who sport climb. Watched a guy make a stick clip out of bamboo and clip a bolt 9 feet off the deck---I kept my mouth shut---he was leading I was belaying it's his ass, motherf#%@r red pointed sustained 5.12b. I led it ground up or shut up to the third bolt and was scared of decking at the 2nd clip and couldn't pull the 3rd 5.12 move (1 finger pocket). I was happy for my buddy who fired it and happy for me also now I have a new goal= get stronger, use better footwork. I can't be 12 again but I can be 40 going on 12.
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GDavis
Social climber
SOL CAL
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Oct 30, 2012 - 11:35am PT
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 30, 2012 - 11:36am PT
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ratings are a necessary part of the sport in the sense that they provide the knowledge that, in former times, would come from a knowledgeable local, a guide, who would lead climbers on the climb.
we use the word "guide" to mean the written description of the routes, and a part of that description is the answer to the question: how hard is it?
it isn't so surprising that the degree of difficulty be turned around to indicate the accomplishment of the climber, and it is a short hand way of determining a hierarchy of sorts in a group of climbers. In the sense that climbing is a sport, the ratings may mean something.
In the other sense of climbing the ratings mean very little, climbing is not a sport, but often a means to adventure where what is at risk is the life of its participants. That sense of climbing does not fit into our perception of it as sport, though the risk is a big part of climbing, and the consequences of a fall the frontier between sport and adventure. It is a frontier that we all ask ourselves about crossing, every time we go out, what are we willing to ante up?
So I'd say as a sport, it is very interesting to watch the progression of difficulty among the youth. Whether or not someone stays in climbing seems a strange metric, an elite athlete has only so many years at the peak of their sport. Once that peak has been reached the motivation to continue can be elusive to find, especially to maintain a level near that peak. It's not impossible, but it is rare.
From my observation that period for climbing seems to be around 10 years, and happens in the late teens to late twenties. At that time, it seems, the climbing life starts to dim and other interests start to become more important. It struck me looking at the audience at the Face Lift this year, how many old climbers were there and how many young... and not only that, but the unawareness of each of those audiences of the other. But of the old, there were few compared to the numbers of their youth.
In terms of risk, it is a part of any adventure, and certainly one wouldn't expect an athlete to undertake some of the adventures even a weekender alpinist might decide to take, no level of accomplishment protects the participants who venture into the realm where many random occurrences could threaten life.
It is also natural to take what we learn from the sport of climbing into the domain of the climbing adventure, those athletes who get interested in the sport and go on to a lifelong participation in climbing would naturally push up the level of all of climbing, and in so doing up the adventure ante. But we don't even know why we do it ourselves, how could we decide what a teenager might do with their amazing skills.
So we can all appreciate athletic accomplishment, and even try to learn something from those accomplishment from the people who perform them. Bottom line is we all like the movement over stone, we like doing it in the flow, in the moment when we do not have to be conscious of it, where there seems to be little effort, and we are transported into a place few people venture.
Whether that is high on a granite cliff or overcoming a 15 foot boulder, we recognize that state and we seek it out.
We like it, we have fun with it, and at some point, we can leave the guide at home and go out and enjoy climbing without the artificialities.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Oct 30, 2012 - 11:45am PT
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Why is it that folks feel threatened if somebody, even if it's a young girl, can pull harder than they can?
I think the grading system is OK. Think about it--surely Ashima can tell the difference between grades. Put her on a .12a, a .12c, a .13b, she can probably tell you which one is harder than the next.
Certainly, she might have a hard time on overhanging fist cracks, but if she desired to send those, she probably could train to do so.
Relax, it's just us folks out having a time of it all. I applaud the focus and strength that it requires to send at such a high level.
And yeah, I'm jealous.
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BlackSpider
Ice climber
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Oct 30, 2012 - 12:05pm PT
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Again, I'd love to see some of these kids get on a Henny, Rollins, Carson, Clevenger, Higgins etal clean face runout test piece where strength (Pulling?) and gymnastic abilities mean absolutely nothing.
Adam Ondra has climbed multi-pitch 5.14s in the Ratikon that were hand-bolted on lead with huge runouts, so I doubt he'd have a huge problem with some of the stuff you are describing. It's like some people here think these climbers are just campusing every move and that footwork and technique means absolutely nothing.
Not to mention that the climbers currently operating at the highest level in trad - Dave MacLeod, James McHaffie, Alex Honnold, etc. - all pull 5.14+ on bolts. The translation of sport climbing power and technique to physically easier but mentally tougher trad or trad-ish routes is not as alien as many would like to believe.
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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Oct 30, 2012 - 12:09pm PT
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Again, I'd love to see some of these kids get on a Henny, Rollins, Carson, Clevenger, Higgins etal clean face runout test piece where strength (Pulling?) and gymnastic abilities mean absolutely nothing.
I bet your dad can beat up her dad too.
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Alpamayo
Trad climber
Chapel Hill, NC
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Oct 30, 2012 - 12:18pm PT
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Again, I'd love to see some of these kids get on a Henny, Rollins, Carson, Clevenger, Higgins etal clean face runout test piece where strength (Pulling?) and gymnastic abilities mean absolutely nothing.
IMO it is much easier to gain the mental game to climb runnout faces a couple of number grades below your max than it is to get your max up into the 14's. I have no doubt that you could teach a young 5.14 sport climber to climb Bacher-Yerian faster than you could teach the average 5.11 trad climber to climb 5.14
Reality is, however, that most young 5.14 sport climbers have no interest whatsoever in runnout trad climbs two numbers below their max.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Oct 30, 2012 - 12:19pm PT
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I think the grading system is OK. Think about it--surely Ashima can tell the difference between grades. Put her on a .12a, a .12c, a .13b, she can probably tell you which one is harder than the next.
I've thought about it and disagree, at least in some cases (although in most cases, you're probably right).
I imagine that Ashima could get shut down on certain boulder problems that are V2 or V3, if they are entirely dependent on reach and have no intermediate holds (obviously she's not going to need much of an intermediate hold, but she's going to need something). When you hear about the super hard problems that short, light children (or very small adults) do, you don't necessarily hear about the "relatively easy" (for an average size man) things that they can't do.
When you reduce the difficulty of a climb/boulder problem to a single number, that number's not going to be the same for climbers of vastly different dimensions. This is most obvious for things like pure cracks and very reach dependent moves.
That's not to say that she isn't a "better" or "stronger" climber than 99.whatever % of climbers--I'm sure she is.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Oct 30, 2012 - 12:38pm PT
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Yeah I'd be sad too if I were 11 years old and couldn't get up Astro-man or Hall of Mirrors. Especially when 10 year old just did the rostrum as his first multi-pitch First crack climb.. No falls
ROTFLMAO
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Oct 30, 2012 - 12:53pm PT
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Well I will agree that I get more of a kick out of seeing that Kid who did the Rostrum at age 10 than I get out of hearing another 5.14. Or the girl who climbed RNWF with her dad. (interesting same mentor involved)
Probably because 5.14 is something I can't relate to really. That's my own failure of vision not theirs for sure.
It's all good and I hope as these kids go on they get to enjoy all that climbing can be with such incredible talent and early dedication.
Mind blowing possibilities it seems.
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