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GDavis
Trad climber
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Sep 21, 2009 - 02:27am PT
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propsx2 to chief. That dude is a climber ;D
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Sep 21, 2009 - 03:18am PT
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Madbolter-
Let me preface this that I do not consider what I am about to say as an attack on you personally, so I hope you can refrain from treating it as such, but I do find your explanation of enhancements a bit disingenuous. It appears to me that you are trying to convince the non-initiated to your cause, as if this were the Supreme Court of climbing.
So the engineer in me just busted out when I saw your drawings, because granted, it's trooth that a wayward crystal can sometimes block a good hook placement, but more often, and I suspect more so in the case of the route you climbed, is that there is a small flake on the verge of exfoliating, geologically speaking, and it gets modified in a flick of a chisel to accept the human made hook placement in order to hold forces in the opposite direction of gravity.
I made some sketches to illustrate, based on my experience of seeing loads of such micro-flakes on my sojourns up the big stone:
From my experience, this is the type of natural feature that would be very tempting to enhance on a lower angle section of rock like that of the apron on the west side of El Cap.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 21, 2009 - 03:48am PT
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Interesting sketches. Several problems with them, though. First, we didn't direct any force IN toward the face. Tapping perpendicular to the face on a flake like you sketch would not be expected to produce a horizontal edge, and, anyway, we weren't "sculpting." Second, something wide, like the chisel you show, would probably produce a horizontal edge much of the time, but a sharpened POINT like our bits were would more likely produce an odd, 'u'-shaped divet rather than a horizontal edge.
I'm happy to hear how you refer to the odd "wayward crystal," which seems to indicate you've gotten the gist of what I'm saying. But then your drawings indicate that you've just not believed what we've said about what we did. Yes, perhaps someone with a chisel could do what you say would be "tempting," but that's not what we did. What we did is what I sketched. I guess that there can be no "proof" either way, although that is sort of a side issue, since my purpose in this thread was to undermine the use of the word "dimple" to describe what we did. At any rate, we didn't "sculpt" as your sketches indicate. You were right about the occasional "wayward crystal." Nothing more.
Your bit about the "supreme court" of climbing caused ME to bust out laughing. It is honestly pretty funny to me that when Steve et al attempt to convince the uninitiated that WoS is a travesty, and his "evidence" gets overturned point by point over the years, and the space in the corner he's backed into gets smaller and smaller, but he just keeps trying, somehow OUR responses to the endless (although thinner trickle of) defamation become the focus of speculation.
The only legacy I care about in this whole thing is that the actual truth be known, rather than the lies. People will still interpret the truth all sorts of ways, people will still think of Mark and I in all sorts of ways, and about such interpretations we have no say in the matter. What we CAN do is continue to insist that at least the interpretations be based upon the actual facts. There IS a court of public opinion, and we want that court to at least be in possession of the FACTS. Let that court draw whatever conclusions it wants FROM the FACTS.
I'm after a legacy of the FACTS. I'm clueless what legacy Steve et al are after in this endless discussion (that they keep re-stirring, in Mark's words). Seems like THEY are determined that the court of public opinion MUST view us as absolute bone-heads, losers, etc., etc. Well, the FACTS don't bear that out, and at this point it seems really, really odd for Steve et al to keep trying to make that case, using thinner and thinner arguments based upon fewer and fewer "facts." Oh well, as long as they keep trying, we'll keep setting them straight.
Nice sketches, honestly. But irrelevant. And no personal attack taken!
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mcreel
climber
Barcelona
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Sep 21, 2009 - 04:37am PT
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Hah, hah, hah! That was a good one, t*r!
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Sep 21, 2009 - 05:08am PT
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Madbolter-
Interesting. Thanks for clearing that up.
Another question I've been curious about: you counted the hooks, but did you by any chance count the other placements on the 13 pitches of the new route, eg. pins, stoppers, copperheads, etc? I am curious because all other things being equal, it appears from your statements that not much less than half your placements were holes, bolts, or rivets. That would be a lot. Even a third of all placements being drilled would be a lot.
And perhaps this is one of the qualms that people might have with the route, that WOS has a very large ratio of drilled to non-drilled placements, and thus is not a very natural line.
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tooth
Mountain climber
Guam
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Sep 21, 2009 - 05:52am PT
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deuce4
Somehow, since WoS has fewer drilled placements than other climbs on that wall, I'd expect the ratio should be better.
You would think that in 25 years the level of aid climbing would be at a place that blank faces would be climbed a lot more often, given the fact that TC is climbing all the old aid lines free.
Why haven't some of you guys repeated this?
Besides the fact that there have been no technological advances in 30 years of aid climbing that would help with face climbing (cams only work in cracks).
I would have expected that someone else would have seconded it, learned the technique and put up some other similar climbs. No?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 21, 2009 - 06:10am PT
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I have to admit most all of my experience with slabs is at Whitehorse Ledges and I'll be damned if there weren't a lot of lines there I wouldn't have considered 'natural'. Hell a quite a few of them seemed like they were entirely arbitrary decisions to go wandering hither and yon in the absence of any sign of a 'line'. Wouldn't that kind of beg the question of the legitimacy of a whole lot of slab climbs around the country and whether slabs like the one WoS is set on should be climbed at all? It seems like that would descend pretty quickly into a quagmire of what should be [free or aid] climbed / connected (G.U.) at all relative to the idea[l] of 'natural' versus forced lines.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 21, 2009 - 06:13am PT
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Deuce4, your statement of the potential "qualm" is stated very reasonably, and I certainly do understand how there could be such a "qualm." I will see if we have accurate figures on those other sorts of placements. I do remember having more than 60 pin/copperhead placements in one of the upper pitches (very long pitch), but I don't know how accurate of figures we have on this point for the whole route. I see this as a worthy concern, however, so I'll look into it.
I would note that this is an off-topic concern, as I'm trying to keep the various arguments from spiraling off into a rat's nest where closure never happens on any particular points. The point of this thread was solely to lay to rest the "dimpling" idea and clarify the exact nature of our anti-enhancements. Hopefully we have succeeded in that quest.
A final point (for now) regarding that concern is that "even 1/3 drilled being a lot" is a judgment call that could well be argued against. I return again to the Sea of Dreams, touted as "the way" when we did WoS. We found MASSIVE amounts of drilling and heavy-handed modifications that were NECESSARY for even the first ascent. As Mark notes, Hook or Book has a number of full-on bat hooks that you simply are not going to get past without using them, obviously drilled on the first ascent, and anybody that has done the route can see that what I'm saying is true. One of those bat hooks is THE difference between a critical "hook" placement (A5 pitch)and a rivet (A4) pitch.
Now, I'm not calling such tactics "bad." I think that the Sea was all it was cracked up to be--a truly awesome, visionary route. However, WAY more than 1/3 of its placements required drilling and chipping.
My overarching point on this concern is that "natural" is a moving target, and some really magnificent routes would fail to clear the bar you have just set, including the Sea and ZM. People that have concerns about the sheer "blankness" of the slab should actually get on the route to see that it is actually not as "blank" as one might think. There is an actual line there, although it is much subtler than on most routes. Perhaps this subtlety is escaping people that have not been on the route.
I remember a passage by Bridwell in Yosemite Climber in which he is quoted as saying, "The thing that makes the P.O. Wall different from other routes is that there are no corners to hide your ass in," noting then how much subtler and tinier the features were. "Subtlety" does not equate to "non-natural," and no arbitrary line (quite a bit short of an actual bolt ladder) is going to accurately brand a route as "natural" or "non-natural."
There's a lot of drilling on WoS. Certainly. There's a lot of drilling and other heavy-handed tactics on some other classic routes too. On that point I guess I would just contrast the few micro-gram anti-enhancements of WoS with Bridwell's instructions to the leader on one pitch of ZM: "Beat the sh|t out of those blocks! Really BEAT on 'em! Cut 'em loose!" Anybody that's ever used the pick of a hammer to dislodge a pebble from a crack has been more heavy handed with the hammer than we were with all of our anti-enhancements combined.
Thanks for your thoughts... very reasonable!
Gotta get to bed, finally (working too late and too hard tonight).
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Prod
Trad climber
A place w/o Avitars apparently
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Sep 21, 2009 - 08:49am PT
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Have the Madbolter, his partner, Steve G, and Mimi ever met in person? In the last 5 years? Just curious?
Prod.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 21, 2009 - 02:02pm PT
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Well, Chief, you know, one man's "self absorbed" is another man's "self defense." As long as we keep getting publicly defamed, I guess we'll keep defending ourselves with the facts.
Nobody is forcing you to read this stuff.
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Russ Walling
Gym climber
Poofter's Froth, Wyoming
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Sep 21, 2009 - 02:05pm PT
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Trade ya a "shitter" for a confession?
(it's a joke....relax....)
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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Sep 21, 2009 - 02:19pm PT
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As a lurker who just reads this stuff and laughs most of the time, I got a good chuckle from this:
"...we made usable by removing a single offending crystal ..., our hooking was entirely natural."
"natural" and "removing" in the same sentence is pretty damn funny.
So these guys chipped a few holds on an aid route on a rock that is full of bolts and holes and people are upset. BFD.
Dave
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 21, 2009 - 02:32pm PT
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So, the some total volume of all the crystals they unnaturally 'removed' on all the pitches combined would amount to about a single stone of pea gravel - i.e. the total volume of the crystals removed on the route was likely comparable to the volume of rock removed for a single bat hook hole, possibly two. How many other FAs could make the same claim?
So the tempest is really more like a 'Princes and the Pea (or two)' dramafest, and in this case the WoS FAs aren't the princes in question.
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JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
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Sep 21, 2009 - 02:32pm PT
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Who in YOSAR exactly shitted on the ropes?
Juan
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TwistedCrank
climber
Ideeho-dee-do-dah-day
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Sep 21, 2009 - 03:07pm PT
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I, for one, enjoy seeing the WoS girls get their panties in a clump. I don't really care what they did or did not do. Besides, El Cap is a whore who's job it is to get drilled.
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
Hood River, OR
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Sep 21, 2009 - 03:29pm PT
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In all this time it's not been repeated? What's up with that?
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Sep 21, 2009 - 03:48pm PT
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27 years and counting, about time for everybody to move on.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Sep 21, 2009 - 04:47pm PT
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Or put up or shut up in the case of detractors who've never been on the line.
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Hardman Knott
Gym climber
Muir Woods National Monument, Mill Valley, Ca
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Sep 21, 2009 - 04:48pm PT
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Because it's too hard?
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deuce4
climber
Hobart, Australia
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Sep 21, 2009 - 04:49pm PT
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Madbolter-
You definitely lose me when you start dissing guys like Bridwell and Beyer. It's pretty obvious you really don't have that much experience on the big walls, having only done a few other routes other than your own, to really know what these guys were all about. Climbing one of their routes, then pontificating and defining their style is petty. When you repeated Sea of Dreams, there had been a few teams who had repeated it before you. One of the subsequent ascentionists is known to have added drilled holes to the route. For you to definitely say that all the drilled holes you saw were Bridwell's team's work can only be conjecture. I highly doubt that 1/3 of the Sea of Dreams was drilled on the FA.
Bridwell has his own style of climbing, that's for sure, it's not like Grossman's, Shipley's, Cole's, or mine for that matter, but everyone has a different way of doing things, that's the beauty and the art of the activity.
And it appears you are trying to make the claim that your style, the style you imposed on the El Cap slab, is also valid, that the difficulty of WOS makes up for the fact that it has a lot more than the norm in terms of drilled placements.
What some are trying to tell you, is that it is not about the actual volume of rock displaced in ascending the stone, and it is not about comparing your route with the testpieces of the major players in the sport, it's about a communal recognition of the art.
You are doing well to convince the non-cognoscenti that aid climbing in general is just a matter of bashing and drilling your way up a rock, but it's not the truth, is it?
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