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KevinQ
Social climber
SLC
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Werner - couldn't agree more on the unwritten rule part. I think most of us know and honor it.
But I'm suggesting it's time it becomes a written rule.
Subtle but significant difference, imo.
And the perfect place for that is in the new ST bigwalls book.
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WBraun
climber
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"You simply cannot deny that Chris is responsible for bringing more climbers to the walls of Yosemite."
No way, Jose. Don't try and blame him.
They'd be here anyways ...
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JoeSimo
Trad climber
New York
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Agreed. I was going to Yosemite regardless of supertopo. these just happen to be the best guide books for the area. If they didn't exist I'd be using another one.
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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You're being disingenuous if you actually believe that guidebooks don't contribute to the crowds in an area, Werner.
You're just a rabble rouser, Werner, out rousing some rabble! (take care, it was good seeing you recently.)
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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aid rating for every pitch that is possible to aid
bunch of wanker free climbers wanna force me to free climb
pft!
heheheh
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More Air
Trad climber
S.L.C.
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Sunkist
Heart Route
Misty Wall, Yosemite Falls
Bob Locke Memorial Buttress, Mt Watkins
Direct Northwest Face & Arcturus on Half Dome
Chouinard Herbert Route, Sentinel
Mother Earth, Middle Cathedral Rock
Your books are awesome!
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Hey Chris
Great job on all your guidebooks.
But I've also got a problem with all of them: the topos are printed too small!
Some of us are getting a bit farsighted and it gets much worse when the light is dim.
I can think of a long list of tradeoffs between topo map size, book size, convenience, price, etc.
Can you be creative on this and work out a way to help us Old Fa#$s?
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Ferretlegger
Trad climber
san Jose, CA
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Hi Chris,
A few thoughts from a geezer. I did a lot of walls BITD, including Salathe and the Nose. I was young then, and strong. Now I am old and not so strong. I still want to climb walls. And hope to. Fortunately for me, I still have every guide book to Yosemite ever published (or the "popular " ones anyway...). So, having climbed in the Valley for 42 years, I am aware that there ARE a few other (!!!) walls than the those in your books. Like a LOT of walls!!! I totally respect the work you and Eric and others have done to get the topos updated that are in the current books, but I really think that ALL yosemite walls should be there. There are walls on Upper Cathedral Spire, Sentinel, Half Dome, El Cap, the Column, Arches, the Arrow area, and all over that are headed for the dustbin of history. We currently have a situation where there are really NO other recent wall guides (that I know of)but yours and that one selects some of the nicest and more usual routes, ensuring that they are perpetually crowded and beat to death. Anyone from Europe, or other parts of the country that wants to have the experience of a lifetime and do a wall in Yosemite is more or less forced to do one of the ones in your book because that is all they know about. I am not blaming you at all. You do wonderful work for the climbing community, but I see this situation as arising in part due to your success at your excellent work.
In Book three, I suggest that you more or less start over and get encyclopedic. I, for one, have no objection to wandering off the beaten trail a bit and working my way up some more or less forgotten routes (and staying out of the way of the "elite" people who think that their skill and conditioning means that they should have special privileges on a route like the Nose.
At the minimum, I suggest including references to the other walls, and perhaps even the topos from Reid or other older guides. A complete disclaimer could be added that the routes have not been climbed recently and that anchors, etc, may need maintainence. I bet that many of them HAVE been climbed by some of the more adventurous on this site, and a solicitation for recent beta might be productive. If nothing else, the load of climbers would be spread over a bigger area in the valley.
There has been some debate about including free ratings in the guide and some rumbling that people who have to think about climbing 5.8 do not belong on a wall. It is very hard for the young and fit to understand how aging eats away at ones ability to fire up things. I have climbed at pretty high level, and still can get up decent ratings on a good day. On a wall, loaded down with a couple of ropes, jumars, aiders, and all the crap and weight, I doubt that I will be leading hard free on a wall. I am not a gumbie, and have literally thousands and thousands of hard pitches in my wake. But being over 60 now, and knowing other long term climbers of similar age, I think it is not unreasonable to mention explicitly the mandatory free limits of those climbs you really document. If I KNEW that I had to climb a 5.9 flare, I would be able to thin out the rack and make a heroic effort to get up it. This is useful. There will always be people trying walls that have no business on them. Perhaps if we were honest, some of us might admit that they fell in that group once. My first try at the Nose (circa 1971) was a total fiasco. Well worth a story sometime, but I learned from it and did the Salathe a few years later almost completely clean with only stoppers and hexes. My partner broke his ankle trying to nut a parallel sided crack, and we climbed off in a snowstorm... Not everyone that longs to climb a wall is ready, but I would urge some of the veterans posting above to cut them some slack, for god's sake. They may have traveled from the ends of the earth to get on a wall, and may have never had a chance before to climb one. Or even SEEN one!!! Yosemite is a pilgrimage for many. Maybe a once in a lifetime chance to grab the brass ring.
Which leads to my next suggestion. You are one of the most prolific Yosemite wall climbers around. I doubt that there is a technique used on El Cap that you have not seen or used. So expand the intro a bit and talk a bit more about HOW these walls are climbed. For example, you give some size ranges for cams. How about pictures of the most likely hooks, a short description of sawed angles, and a few pictures, some tips on getting through the C? fixed stuff and some ideas as to what one might do if they are NOT fixed anymore. I know you are writing an aid climbing book and this should all be in that, but I believe that MANY wall aspirants from other places could use a little more advice. And being a little more explicit about manners and ethics, and passing, and how to get along with other parties might ease some tensions. One other thing that would be very helpful in educating people so they do not appear on El Cap as a gumbie would be a bunch of suggestions about pitches and places to practice aid moves and to work out the kinks for the newcomers. The first 4 pitches of the Nose are certainly the WRONG place to start. What are some GOOD places to get dialed in? Steep jumaring, overhanging rappels, overhanging jumaring, a piece of wall somewhere to practice setting up hauling systems, where to try out some cam hooks and regular hooks, that sort of thing.
This is a lot to digest, and a bit chaotic. It is also a hell of a lot of work. But I think that there is little value in just adding a few climbs to the guides you have now. They cover what needs covering in respect to their contents, and just tweaking them is pointless. I for one, would like to hear about the Chouinard Herbert, the West Face of Sentinel, other routes on the Column, Arches Direct, the Robbins route on Higher Spire, Some of the routes around Yosemite Falls, and so on.
Thanks for all the service you do for the community, not the least this priceless forum. I would love to see your aid book. I wish the new guide book well.
All the best,
Michael Jefferson
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Rhodo-Router
Gym climber
Green Cove slabbage BITD!
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The Robbins Route on Higher Spire-hmmm. Shaggy and I climbed that about 13 years ago. 'Higher Excavations', we started calling it. PM me if you really want to hear more about this one.
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Oxymoron
Big Wall climber
total Disarray
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I miss Shaggy. Great folks.
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Chris McNamara
SuperTopo staff member
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Topic Author's Reply - May 10, 2010 - 02:18pm PT
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thanks for all the feedback. really awesome!!! the whole supertopo thing started when i was asked to write an article for rock and ice (1999?). then i got positive feedback so made the book… and ever since then the whole process is basically about getting feedback from passionate yosemite climbers about what they want in a guide. so all these feedback is awesome. really helps us figure out what to focus on.
 yes, will be putting more emphasis on clean aid ratings. this was one of the major reasons to write big walls 1.0. the current zodiac topo at the time (late 90's) still called for 80 pins and rated it a5. every aid guide since then for zion and yosemite i have tried to have the most current clean aid beta. you can help me out in this next edition, by emailing me topos with more current clean aid beta. this feedback has been awesome but so far nobody has emailed me a topo. please do! also, if you have an updated rack for the climb, please post it the route beta page. you can find that page here http://www.supertopo.com/routebeta/bigwalls.html if you have beta for a route not listed there, let me know and i will create a page for it. its best if you post beta there because it helps keep things organized and lets other people comment on it.
i will be adding in a lot of free routes and adding more free beta to pitches. I was actually just emailing with Alex Honnold about sections that should be described as mostly free (like the upper half of the Glowering Spot pitch on the nose is 10 d - which i didn't even know till alex told me). So that people will be inspired to free climb as much as they can. an give people one more reason not to nail (like on Grand Traverse on West Butt of El Cap)
whether to include free ratings on easy pitches (a c1 pitch that is 5.7) is a tricky one. I see both sides of the issue. Overall, i think so far this is really only a major issue on The Nose, no? and stovelegs specifically. I will have some comments about that in the book. But overall, i take a "keep it positive" approach. I don't think I can tell people they can't climb the nose if they dont free the stovelegs fast. But I will copy and paste text over from my how to big wall climb chapter on this issue. you can read my opinion here http://www.supertopo.com/a/Preface-of-my-How-to-Big-Wall-Climb-Book/a10531n.html if you dont want to read that whole page, I basically say, "its a lot more fun for you and everyone else if you have your aid and free climb skills dialed before getting on the nose or any popular wall where taking forever makes eveyone's experience suck."
seeing a lot of requests for falls wall: which routes on falls wall?
routes by overall difficulty will be in!
there will be a lot more walls in this book. but not all of them. expecially because I am under a bit of a deadline. however, you can help me get ALL the walls on the supertopo database. basically, i just need an introduction (5-10 sentences) and the basic vital stats and a line on a picture. so if you are psyched to help out, just email me. What routes will make it into the book? I dont know exactly what the cut off for routes to include or exclude will be. partially it will be how good the history is and how much interest there is in the route…
thanks again for everyone feeback. to recap how you can help:
keep posting to this thread your ideas
posted updated beta to the route database especially updated racks, clean aid beta, free ratings (for exampe, pitch 10 is rated c1 but goes free at 5.11)
draw in beta onto existing topos and email the to me
help me add new routes to route database (if you have done the route, can help me write an intro, and help draw a line on a photo)
Thanks again. I really appreciate all the feedback!
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Shimanilami
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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May 10, 2010 - 03:11pm PT
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More Half Dome routes.
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Knuckles
Trad climber
Everett, Wa
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May 10, 2010 - 03:37pm PT
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It would be cool to highlight first clean ascents. Turning A2-3 into C3-4 is pretty cool and will help sustain the rock. People should be recognized for their efforts on this.
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Mick K
climber
Northern Sierra
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May 10, 2010 - 04:39pm PT
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More history!
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Gene
Social climber
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May 10, 2010 - 05:29pm PT
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But I've also got a problem with all of them: the topos are printed too small!
Some of us are getting a bit farsighted and it gets much worse when the light is dim.
I can think of a long list of tradeoffs between topo map size, book size, convenience, price, etc.
Can you be creative on this and work out a way to help us Old Fa#$s?
i hear ya. Buy the e-book version and print the topos on ledger paper. Works for me.
g
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OhYeah!!!
Trad climber
Sacramento, CA
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May 10, 2010 - 07:20pm PT
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Chris,
Your bigwall guides have definately been a godsend to all of us. I know that it means more work for you, but could you have a large subset of topos that go into the book, and place all of the other topos of more obscure routes on Supertopo.com (with updated information) so people could get that info as well.
About 5.8 free vs. C1- 5.8 on wet rock in hiking boots with a cluster of gear hanging off of you can be hard... It would be good to know that you could aid it.
Falls Wall- Via sin liquer...Via sin aqua... It would be awesome to see people on those a little more often :)
Have fun writing the guide we are all anticipating it.
Mike
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scotty vincik
climber
up north, these days
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May 10, 2010 - 08:48pm PT
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Supertopos Big Walls are good, for the most part. You updated aid ratings which had clearly changed by new gear and repeated beatings.
1. Big wall free routes should be included. Definition, multi-day for most.
2. Topos in "Supertopo" form, with mucho beta should donly be done if you've climbed the route, and the beta is accurate.
3. Chris, you picked up Donny Reid's torch.....you owe it to the world to publish ALL of the routes on Yosemite's walls. The history needs to be recorded, which it is not currently. However, it is not necessary to have loads of information about every route, just what the first ascensionist provided. I would like to see the obscure routes stay obscure. People who hang in the valley can get beta on them. If they get over published, they will get beat up or drilled on. Reticent Wall is a good example. I believe another section in the book, or a separate book would serve this need. Really, a comprehensive online source would be fine, just so that all the new route activity gets recorded. Same for free routes.
The select guidebooks you publish appeal to most Yosemite climbers, and therefore outsell Don Reid's books. I know it is hard work and bad business, but please step up and record all of the route history. Some day, life will draw the current generation away, and history will disappear.
Scotty
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Ferretlegger
Trad climber
san Jose, CA
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May 11, 2010 - 12:44pm PT
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Hi Chris,
Another thought on free ratings at the low end. My (limited) experience soloing is that it is a lot harder to be courageous leading free on a wall when soloing. I thing as a previous poster pointed out, that KNOWING that a part can be aided or whether or not there is mandatory free (slab, face, whatever) could be very very helpful for a soloist having a bit of a bad day. There really is no reason NOT to put it in, if the beta is known, and it really could be very helpful. Please keep in mind that not all legitimate climbers can do 5.11 with a wall rack on...
All the best,
Michael
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