Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
|
|
|
Sep 24, 2007 - 11:28am PT
|
Techinicaly. sport = all fixed protection drilled on lead or rap. G or PG rated.
Trad = you place your own gear where available face/slab may be bolt protected. Any fixed gear was placed on the lead. Protection may be from G to X
Stupid = all fixed pro. Rap bolted R or X rated.
Personaly I feel that the ultamate trad climbing experience happens when I have pins, hooks a hammer and a hand drill hanging off my harness and I am headded into new territory:)
|
|
atchafalaya
climber
California
|
|
|
Sep 24, 2007 - 11:35am PT
|
trad=ego
|
|
tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
|
|
|
Sep 24, 2007 - 12:44pm PT
|
sport = ego
|
|
TwistedCrank
climber
Caution: Filling may be hot.
|
|
|
Sep 24, 2007 - 12:45pm PT
|
If trad = ego
and sport = ego
then trad = sport
|
|
Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
|
|
|
Sep 24, 2007 - 12:49pm PT
|
Case closed.
Now where is my rope...
|
|
randomtask
climber
North fork, CA
|
|
|
Sep 24, 2007 - 12:53pm PT
|
So if trad climbing =sport climbing =ego
If no ego then no climbing?
-JR
|
|
Inner City
Trad climber
East Bay
|
|
|
Sep 24, 2007 - 01:11pm PT
|
What is Trad? See the Tuolumne Appreciation thread. That's it!
|
|
John Vawter
Social climber
San Diego
|
|
|
Sep 24, 2007 - 03:39pm PT
|
Ground up is important to traditionalists, but is not the defining criteria. Some sport routes were/are installed ground up because, for example, they can't rap in for some reason.
Hard to sum up trad in one sentence. Bolts clearly don't fall on one side or the other, though a lot of 20-somethings equate the word trad with "gear only." As to climbs with bolts, I've always liked John Byrnes' (aka Lord Slime) succinct, and in my opinion definitive, sport climbing definition:
"No, I'd say a sport climb is (usually) bolted in a way to
minimize the risk during a fall, with the intended purpose
being to allow the climber to focus on the moves and not
the consequences of a fall."
Hence, B-Y is not a sport route, but Shipoopi is. Needle and Spoon is a sport route, but Piece of Grass most definitely is not.
|
|
LongAgo
Trad climber
|
|
|
Sep 25, 2007 - 05:00pm PT
|
Follow up note on Wikipedia link: I will confess to writing some sections there, for better or worse; but, as with any Wik entries, bunches of people keep tuning, changing, adding until, well, one gets what one gets. Mysteriously, the current result in this case (of course it is never final) seems pretty good. Note also there is a link to another Wik page on sport climbing, also not bad.
Final note: some may wish to visit the "discussion" tabs when viewing these Wik pages to see how people debated certain changes. The section is revealing on the variety of interpretations and how the term is evolving, just as any language and especially English seems to do, adding and shedding connotations with time and new usage.
Tom Higgins
LongAgo
|
|
Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
|
|
|
Sep 25, 2007 - 05:15pm PT
|
I was curious as to the identity of the author on that Wiki piece and was going to reply to the Warbler’s comment about it being pretty accurate coming from a non-climbing source; my response was going to be “Kevin, that description is much too concise to have come from anybody other than a central figure in the climbing community”.
And so it did: it is clean, thorough, sober and represents a nearly perfectly detailed account of the matter.
Good job Tom & Wikipedia staff.
|
|
Wrathchild
Big Wall climber
Satan's testicles
|
|
|
Sep 25, 2007 - 08:05pm PT
|
No Jaybro, I clearly made the distinction of freeclimbing.
Aid rules, especially big walls, are fundamentally different.
No one is ONLY any kind of climber. These terms only apply to routes. To talk about people, there are Climbers, and Mountaineers. Oh I almost forgot Hikers and Punters...
A key indicator to me is the fact that people want to portray themselves as "Trad". So much F'ing BS in this sport today, and so little real sack.
And Jolly Roger was f'ing STOUT! But I thought Tempest was technically more difficult.
To others, a pin is NOT the same as a bolt. And what is so bad about top ropping? Personally, I'd much rather people did that than spray bolts all over a crag.
And Le Bruce, that is CERTAINLY trad.
Crusty ole bastid, over and out.
|
|
Nefarius
Big Wall climber
Fresno, CA
|
|
|
Sep 25, 2007 - 08:24pm PT
|
A silly Canadian I know could solve this problem pretty easily... He'd simply say, "Shut the f*#k up and climb, buddy!"
Sounds like good advice to me.
|
|
426
Sport climber
Buzzard Point, TN
|
|
|
Sep 25, 2007 - 08:35pm PT
|
No hooks, stance only...no friggin, bulldogs or blowboys...
at least according to my "teachers"
|
|
Jeremy Handren
climber
NV
|
|
|
Sep 25, 2007 - 08:45pm PT
|
Best post ever on the subject.....Username - Duncan......thread - Hardest Trad route in the world... too busy to find it right now, but look it up.
|
|
Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
|
|
|
Sep 26, 2007 - 02:13am PT
|
Just for the sake of conversation, and I mean of the exploratory variety (which is what I enjoy about these threads) and not the postural, chest beating type: what I find edifying about that Wikipedia definition of trad is that it is fairly accurate etymology, because it is couched in historical terms. To really understand trad is primarily to understand it as a term which was offered in response to the emergence of sport climbing.
As has been said up thread, before sport climbing, before the term trad was coined, we just called it all climbing, yet even so, there were varying degrees of accepted practices in terms of purity and style. The modern use of the term has morphed to mean quite a few things, sometimes too specific, sometimes too broad; not all of them germane to the historical context of the usage which was largely divisive in nature; meaning it was all either sport or trad, and that was the scope of the term’s usage.
One example, also noted up thread, pointing to how the definition of trad has diverged and morphed: I see younger climbers, referring to anything that is purely gear oriented as trad. Often, what they're talking about is head pointing. Now that's a cool thing, but it is not really what was accepted in the state's prior to the appearance of sport climbing, so to be true to original usage, it isn't trad for us in the states, while it may well be for the Brits.
So this is one reason why it's hard to define trad: style wise, everything that preceded sport climbing has been lumped into the concept of trad, that was its definition, and although trad was typically ground up, as you can see by some of the posts of up thread, some people would say that more pure styles were likewise “more trad”, such as no bolting in the Gunks being more trad (more pure really) compared to bolting in Tuolumne Meadows. These are really internal distinctions, for it was all trad.
Concurrent with the coinage of the term trad, accepted styles were still evolving: John Bachar perhaps expanded the concept to allow drilling from hooks on steeper terrain. Yet if you follow his argument carefully, it was an outgrowth of freeing aid routes, which were put in from the ground up, so it was just a finer distinction of previously accepted styles. So, even as the term trad arose, the exact activities which it circumscribed were not that clear. This is ultimately what makes the question “what is trad?” an interesting one.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!