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hooblie
climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
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Topic Author's Original Post - Aug 31, 2015 - 02:00pm PT
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here's the premise: if you think of best practices as anchoring one end of a spectrum, then anything but ... is some shade of stupid
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squishy
Mountain climber
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Aug 31, 2015 - 02:12pm PT
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Negative, because without experimentation, trial/error, and someone going out on the proverbial edge, we lack a path to better best practices. How do you think best practices came about? The good book? Stone tablets?
And stupid don't know about that, so it cannot be stupid...
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Trashman
Trad climber
SLC
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Aug 31, 2015 - 02:27pm PT
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9 piece SRENEdundant anchors composed solely of totem cams and tricams at all times, anything less and you deserve what you get.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Aug 31, 2015 - 05:18pm PT
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Best practices IS to be as dumb as we wannabe. Believing that humans work by being omniscient omnipotent supercomputers may be our best practice, but, well, maybe we're not quite there yet :-) Dumb that we believe it anyway? Nah ... Praise Jesus! Or Dean.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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Aug 31, 2015 - 05:23pm PT
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I'm a fan of knowing the ideal setup.. and every other possible setup and rapidly adapting to whatever works well in any situation.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Aug 31, 2015 - 05:57pm PT
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Well said. Probably need to add humans in there too if we really want to be accurate. If we fall to our death because we're human, I'm hoping the rest of us are human enough to forgive us :-) I don't know about you, but for me that's the hard part!
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Aug 31, 2015 - 06:22pm PT
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I like it; Hooblian logic.
Squishy makes a great point, but the good mind is always looking, testing, running scenarios, etc. It's rare a system is developed by accident.
It's a shame to see folks get dogmatic about little things.
Like clipping the top rope into a harness via locking carabiner instead of tying in.
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Trashman
Trad climber
SLC
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Aug 31, 2015 - 06:33pm PT
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Like clipping the top rope into a harness via locking carabiner instead of tying in.
But then you're trusting your life to a single piece of equipment!!!!! That is not a best practice(unless it's a harness, rope, belay device, belay locker or partner;)
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hooblie
climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 31, 2015 - 06:34pm PT
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touche squishy, quick and just so.
along those lines i'll advocate for the artist, expression free of arbitrary constraint and evaluated solely on a subjective basis. in an evolved society there will be an artistic license in every box of cracker jacks. meaning yes, let the freak flags fly.
i'll reveal the provocation for starting this thing way down thread but meanwhile plow on, this is an encouraging start that i'd rather not prejudice...
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Aug 31, 2015 - 06:47pm PT
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Best practice used to mean "the leader does not fall."
Robbins, the wannabe, changed that with "fail falling."
Still practicing what he preached today.
Only it's more bizarre.
And quite a bit dumber in terms of actual accomplishment and time wasted in the gym.
Nawmean?
I sure don't.
"hooblie is the man"
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Jul 22, 2016 - 04:16pm PT
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"...i'll advocate for the artist, expression free of arbitrary constraint and evaluated solely on a subjective basis."
hooblie is the best
always on a quest
let us celebrate hoobs, boobs, and nOObs descending safely
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jul 22, 2016 - 09:56pm PT
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"Best practice" is a term that assumes there is a linear scale or "spectrum" as Hooblie says. I think the idea that all climbing "practices" can be linearly ordered is mostly an illusion, at least partially born of the desire to avoid the actual complexities we face.
If we say "you should always do it this way," then we avoid having to think about the conditions at the moment and how they affect what we should do. Eliminating choices (and so perhaps mistakes in judgement) is attractive but not necessarily optimal.
Groups and individuals involved in teaching are understandably interested in standardizing what they promote. Even if the standard version isn't always the best thing to do, it is reasonable to claim is that it will never be one of the worst options, and so the learner is better served by learning the purported best practice and so cut the potential for flawed judgements out completely. I think that behind this viewpoint lurks a disdain for the average ability to form solid judgements in the face of complexity.
I think the notion of "best practices" in climbing is related to a general trend in which climber skill, judgement, knowledge, and flexibility are replaced by engineered solutions that can be executed without attending to any of the subtleties of the situation. One result is a cohort of climbers who have very few options up their sleeves, and only know one way to do things. When the "one way" involves specific pieces of gear, as is more and more the case, then the loss of that implement is needlessly catastrophic.
What is "dumb," in my opinion, is not knowing a lot of ways to do something, along with a sense what's good and bad about the various options. What is "dumb" is reducing climbing practice to a collection of catechismic invocations accompanied by either flimsy (and often apocalyptic) reasoning or no reasoning at all.
This isn't aimed at any particular demographic. Old farts who practice a willful devotion to ignorance in the face of contemporary advances are just as "dumb" as new climbers who can't manage without their precious technology.
Best practice is an open mind, informed by a range of possible approaches, both new and old, and conditioned by experience to make good choices. It is something to continually aspire to, not attain.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Jul 23, 2016 - 08:38am PT
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I think the notion of "best practices" in climbing is related to a general trend in which climber skill, judgement, knowledge, and flexibility are replaced by engineered solutions that can be executed without attending to any of the subtleties of the situation. One result is a cohort of climbers who have very few options up their sleeves, and only know one way to do things.
There is a standard procedure for lowering now taught in climbing courses in Argentina which in my opinion fits this bill. Beginning climbers are taught (on sport routes, obviously) to clip themselves to the anchors, then, without untying, to pass a loop of rope through the rings (the rings used here are typically made in Argentina and, although servicable, tend to be of poorer quality than rings used in the US), to tie a figure eight in the loop, clip it to a locking biner in the harness and then untie the sharp end of the rope, so they can lower directly through the rings. The justification for this is that it should reduce error and therefore be safer than other methods. Both my wife and I are a bit outraged by this (as a form of education) and find it to be a good example of the way that students are treated as idiots in the educational system. Of course rings will wear out faster and in fact it is the reason that rings at anchors are offset on routes these days (one higher than the other). The idea being that the higher ring will wear out faster and, in case of failure, the lower ring will act as backup. The funny thing is that some of the people who teach this procedure (and have accepted it as standard) are my friends and are very experienced and accomplished climbers who have climbed all styles of climbing around the world. However teaching these basic courses to gym climbers from the big cities is an important form of income and they've taken a "saftey at all costs" attitude.
I hate to be one of these old fogies lamenting the "saftey at all costs" attitude in modern climbing, but here I am doing it.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Jul 23, 2016 - 09:00am PT
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Perfect is the enemy of the good...
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HermitMaster
Social climber
my abode
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Jul 23, 2016 - 09:11am PT
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if you think of best practices as anchoring one end of a spectrum, then anything but ... is some shade of stupid
Life is not nearly this easy...
This is just an argument for more bolts...
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overwatch
climber
Arizona
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Jul 23, 2016 - 09:12am PT
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yanq, that method has been around a long time.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Jul 23, 2016 - 09:55am PT
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It's not such a bad plan for a group if only the last climber does it. The leader sets up a proper TR with slings, the last cleans the way you describe. Your last climber gets to set up the lower off without going off belay. Only one of the climbers uses the rings.
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hooblie
climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 23, 2016 - 10:41am PT
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i'm proud to have started my first climbing thread here.
i'd had enough of screaming into a pillow over disengaged employees unable
to even venture a guess as to what "get your head in the game" might mean.
let me tell you, retirement has helped a lot.
please, don't be dissuaded by this confession,
your thoughtfulness is contagious!
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jul 23, 2016 - 12:40pm PT
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There is a standard procedure for lowering now taught in climbing courses in Argentina...
Yeah, it is pretty standard everywhere; the AAC now recommends it as well, and includes a reasonably coherent "best practices" justification to boot. http://americanalpineclub.org/resources-blog/2016/3/15/5ipkouk0id07cgc3dqks4fljnsgnx6. But as the only procedure, it suffers from the fact that some anchor set-ups might be too small to take a bight of rope---only a single strand will pass through. And then there is the fact that, at least in some cases, rappelling might be preferable.
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jstan
climber
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Jul 23, 2016 - 01:54pm PT
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The funny thing is that some of the people who teach this procedure (and have accepted it as standard) are my friends and are very experienced and accomplished climbers who have climbed all styles of climbing around the world. However teaching these basic courses to gym climbers from the big cities is an important form of income and they've taken a "saftey at all costs" attitude.
I hate to be one of these old fogies lamenting the "saftey at all costs" attitude in modern climbing, but here I am doing it.
A teacher's "safety at all costs" is the teacher's back up for avoiding liability.
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clarkolator
climber
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Jul 23, 2016 - 05:37pm PT
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My best practices are better than yours.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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I thought this might be worth reviving.
Yeah, it is pretty standard everywhere; the AAC now recommends it as well, and includes a reasonably coherent "best practices" justification to boot. http://americanalpineclub.org/resources-blog/2016/3/15/5ipkouk0id07cgc3dqks4fljnsgnx6. But as the only procedure, it suffers from the fact that some anchor set-ups might be too small to take a bight of rope---only a single strand will pass through. And then there is the fact that, at least in some cases, rappelling might be preferable.
Interestingly enough, you just expressed fairly clearly in another thread what I feel is one of the main problems with this procedure being taught as "standard" in the climbing courses. You said:
... the result is a climbing population that expects to have the same level of convenience everywhere they go, which means there is popular pressure for more of the same thing. The net effect is that the presence of ever more fixed anchors eventually creates a new population whose consensus favors...more fixed anchors!
Because the methods under debate eventually change the population, the debate can easily disappear as the potential for alternate perspectives disappears. This is one of the ways conservation fails in all areas. The drug addicts, if you will, get to run the show. And of course part of running the show is heaping scorn on those who would try to slow the march of "progress," so any efforts at conservation will always be met with irrelevant ad hominen attacks.
When I first came to live in Balcarce, I knew right away that the bouldering was the best I'd ever seen. For several years, all my wife and I did on the hill behind our houses (called "La Barrosa") was boulder. At that time there were no other climbers in Balcarce and for roped climbing we always went to other areas. Then, after a few years, she got busy working on her masters thesis. She was also was working full time, so she had no freedom to go out climbing. Since I had no one else to climb with, to compliment my solo bouldering, I decided to put up some routes. These routes are absolutely no big deal. They are short (40 to 60 feet long) not very hard (5.8 to easy 5.12) and I put them up entirely for my own amusement. I never expected anyone except me, my wife and maybe a few friends to ever climb them. At any rate, when I bolted I wanted to make the routes "safe" (always a judgement call) but I didn't put bolts where good gear was available. This was not so much an "ethical" decision as it was a practical one. Why hang there hand drilling a 5/16 inch bolt when it was an easy matter for me to place gear? Another thing I did on many routes was put anchors at the top, where rapelling was more apt then lowering. This was for two reasons: (1) on some of the routes the top out involved an interesting and challenging move that (I felt) added to the overall quality of the route; and (2) to me, there is something inherently pleasing about climbing to the top of a wall rather than just climbing up to chains hanging down near the top, clipping in and lowering.
At any rate, after a time people came on their own to climb these routes and a small group of local climbers began to evolve. And some of the visiting climbers were downright pissed. The routes were dangerous or poorly bolted, they said (which was true in some cases if you just used the bolts and didn't place gear). Also, having to top out and rappel from anchors was just all wrong. Because the routes were on private property, if any one was to be hurt or killed climbing (especially if this got media attention) there is a good chance we would not be allowed to climb there any more. So I gave the the go ahead to retro bolt and add bolts wherever they wanted to. I'm not real happy with the result, but I wouldn't go so far as to say I regret having started this. It's still a fun area for me (and others). Though I have no plans to ever place another bolt again.
Recently we spent eight days climbing in City of Rocks and did about 30 routes. Some of them were well bolted face climbs, others were "mixed" routes and some were pure gear routes. If I remember correctly, not a single one of the routes had rings that could be lowered from without untying (lots of chains in the City). In some cases a natural belay had to be established and afterwords easy third class led to rappel chains. In one case a natural belay was followed by an exposed fourth class downclimb. All that adds to the experience, as far as I'm concerned.
I guess a big part of what I'm trying to say is that when the kids learn that the "right" and "safe" way to get down from a route is to pass a loop through the rings and lower without ever untying then by definition any route that is not set up this way is poorly done and unsafe. That's part of my problem with this being taught as a standard procedure in the courses and then seeing all the local routes being re-equippped to fit the procedure.
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