Minimal Competence Require to Climb Big Walls

i definitely agree that there are a lot of people that lean towards getting in over their heads on stuff, but how is that any different than it always has been? i think if you looked at the ratios of people in this boat, it really hasn't changed that much. there are just so so many more people out there now.

at any point (or points) on a long route there will be sections that go more slowly. this is going to back things up, regardless of who is on the route. it is no different than road traffic.

i notice that nobody has really responded to my disagreement that people are climbing walls more slowly today than they did in the 70's....

I really think the root cause is how people get into climbing today.

In our time, there were no sport routes, so you cut your teeth on trad climbs - protecting with nuts and hexes, setting up your own belay anchors. And pitons, hooks, heads on the aid stuff. By the time I was ready for a big wall I had plenty of experience leading trad routes, many of which were multi-pitch, and impossible to retreat from without leaving most of your gear.

Today, many people get their first taste of climbing in the gym. Top roping with no risk. When they learn how to lead, it is often possible to "top rope" the climb, since you can reach the the next clip before your waist gets above the last bolt. And all you have to do is clip your rope through the anchors at the top to be finished. Many rapidly progress to 5.11, 5.12, or even harder - but they become afraid to climb more than a few feet above the last clip, even though a fall would be safe.

Many of the sport areas are bolted the same way, especially if it is a newer route. So, the newer climbers are unequipped to lead more than a minimal amount above their last pro, don't have good experience in placing their own gear, and most importantly, don't know how to manage all the gear and ropes at the belay, even when it is a bolted belay.

This is not meant to demean newer climbers, just an observation.

I want to make this point - I think I (we) have an obligation to mentor the newer climbers. Many climbers rag on the noobs - but if we all did a little mentoring they would exit their noob phase sooner, and not clog up the routes. Mark does a great service with all the info that he has posted so everyone can benefit from his experience, and perhaps avoid clusters that Mark has learned the hard way from. The same goes for Chris McNamara - if you read his books you get a dose of reality of what a big wall is like, but also what will prepare you to have a cluster free time getting up a big wall.

A couple of young 5.12 sport climbers contacted me this summer and asked if I would mentor them on a little bit of trad. They contacted many experienced climbers on Mountain Project, but I was the only one who replied. We practiced placing pro on the ground. I took them up a few easy multi-pitch trad climbs, led everything, and passed along as much knowledge as I could. I made a couple of new friends and hopefully got them off to a good start on trad climbing. But a few times they thought I really ran it out, when in my mind it was no big deal - I told them trad is like that, there are places where you can't get pro and you have to rely on your climbing ability and have your head game in control.

slim wrote:i notice that nobody has really responded to my disagreement that people are climbing walls more slowly today than they did in the 70's....

The Salathe was commonly done, with four pitches fixed, in four days. Mescalito was done in 5 days, Zodiac, 3. The average these days is at least a day longer, AND allow for detailed topos, fixed anchors and cams.

The third ascent of the Nose was done in 2.5 days. No topo, few fixed anchors and 98% aid. Few climbers these days could match that speed.

Mark Hudon wrote: The Salathe was commonly done, with four pitches fixed, in four days. Mescalito was done in 5 days, Zodiac, 3. The average these days is at least a day longer, AND allow for detailed topos, fixed anchors and cams. The third ascent of the Nose was done in 2.5 days. No topo, few fixed anchors and 98% aid. Few climbers these days could match that speed.

I think it was actually 3.5 days and it was Kor, Roper and Denny. Talk about an aid climbing dream team, especially Kor.

I guess, what I'm trying to say is, you can't really throw up the stats of guys that were essentially pros and ask if anyone is climbing that fast.

I haven't weighed in here because though I'm 40, I've only been climbing for 5 years, 2 of that aid climbing. I climbed the Nose 2 weeks ago (summited), didn't get in anyone's way, but we were slow it was really eye opening. I've done one grade IV wall and a bunch of other shorter multi-pitch aid routes. My partner and I were pretty solid on the aid and decent on free, but the conditions on El Cap were what really hit us hard. We were not expecting it to be so hot and windy up there. Drained us and we used every last drop of our gallon pr person pr day and could have used plenty more.

Though I'm really sure others could move much faster on their first BIG wall. I have to think that much of the slowness compared to the veteran wall climbers is being in a new environment and having a steep initial learning curve. We would be a lot faster now, probably take a day off our climb, by having systems dialed, gear changeovers, and little things like easier access to food/water, etc.

You can say we should have had all of that dialed by now and we thought we did, as I'm sure plenty of others do, but just doing a single El Cap route adds significantly to the number of total big wall/aid pitches done. So, to go back to Mark's original comment of climbers underestimating their abilities. You're probably right, but maybe the big stone has a way of magnifying those deficiencies that you don't know about until you're up there.

i have email mark myself, as he seems experienced, intelligent and willing to help. i also agree with a lot he has to say. but with that said... i think itll be nearly impossible to prevent all of us new to the big wall world from getting on the lines that everyone wants to do.

i think all newer wall climbers should do their best to practice as much as they can. dont go into a big wall having aided fewer pitches than are on the climb youre going for, for starters.

as for the experienced guys, i feel my mentality would be "every noob in the planet will be on the nose, washington column, moonlight buttress, space shot etc. so even though it sucks, im going to climb something else cuz i want some solitude."

even as a newer aid climber (and probably slower party), i dont expect to have any of the classics to myself (which inevitably means lines), whether they be big wall, a few pitches of trad or some sport climb.

Mark Hudon wrote: The Salathe was commonly done, with four pitches fixed, in four days. Mescalito was done in 5 days, Zodiac, 3. The average these days is at least a day longer, AND allow for detailed topos, fixed anchors and cams. The third ascent of the Nose was done in 2.5 days. No topo, few fixed anchors and 98% aid. Few climbers these days could match that speed.

man, i think you have an overly-rosy rememberance of the past. even in the 80's and early 90's most people were taking 4 to 5 days to do the nose. sure, there were some people (ie elite climbers of their time period) that were faster, but let's look at the AVERAGE climber then and AVERAGE climber now. no comparison. people are a lot faster on average, these days. and a helluva lot faster at the elite end of the spectrum.

i also think arlo's example is a rarity. usually it goes more like this: old guy takes 'noob gym climbers' out for scary 5.9 trad. old guy backs off, blaming it on arthritis/spastic-colon-syndrome. gym noob runs up the route and thinks it was easy.

Climbing in the late 80's and from then on was far, far different from the 70's.
The vast majority of ascents these days are certainly not faster then back then.

i didn't want to reply to this thread but feel the need. i have multiple things in my head that might be relevant. I don't know if i should go forward or backward, so I will so just go forward.

Fast forward a few years. I headed to the mecca for climbers. I stayed in Camp IV and climbed a bunch of the classics. I was with my girlfriend at the time, and was trying to teach her how aid--but really how to clean an aid line. i brought her to Church Bowl Tree. She had freed the pitch, so I thought, "She knows this route, this is the PERFECT pitch and route to teach her how to clean an aid line."

As I'm sitting there on the bench, attempting to instruct her how to clean the line and how to deal with the traverse at the end, some dude shows up and tells me that "I can't teach my girlfriend" how to clean an aid line "on a classic crack. "I told him to fuck off because there is an ENTIRE VALLEY of cracks." There was no response from the guy trying to teach his friend to climb.

Fast forward again. A friend reaches out that I hadn't heard from in a while. He wanted to climb El Cap. I did some research and decided Triple Direct was a good match given our skill set. We had a very limited time to get the route done. We hauled the line set leaving Heart Ledge, and left our gear.

The next day we left the ground planning on the summit. Several things went wrong that led to us abandoning our attempt. We rapped after about four pitches and spent the night on the ground. The next day we retrieved our gear.

As we gathered our shit, two people had followed us down the lines. The first one was someone who talked shit about how quickly we went down the lines; he said we burned them. What he didn't realize is that that very day, I had replaced two lines. I had used the ropes I brought to replace the most worn that we encountered on the way up and down.

The next person down the rappel? Tommy C. He couldn't have been nicer. He was coming down from his latest attempt on Dawn Wall. He recognized that we were both amateurish wall climbers. He didn't hesitate to be helpful with both of us. I've somehow made my way up the PO Wall, the Steck-Salathe. But my partner? Nothing of the caliber. It didn't matter to him.

We're all just climbers.

Which partner are you?

slim wrote: i also think arlo's example is a rarity. usually it goes more like this: old guy takes 'noob gym climbers' out for scary 5.9 trad. old guy backs off, blaming it on arthritis/spastic-colon-syndrome. gym noob runs up the route and thinks it was easy.

I don't back off 5.9 trad... My experience is the exact opposite, with many from different areas. As an example, my long time climbing partner (even older than me!) and I were in JT climbing a beautiful 5.9 hand crack, with a nice 5.8 in the next crack over. Another group was struggling in the 5.8 and I heard the comment "but I climb 5.11 in the gym." I led the 5.9 and my partner followed it, and the other climbers were hang dogging and still hadn't made the top.

They asked how we climbed the 5.9 so easily. "Because I've climbed a lot of cracks. You have to climb cracks to be good at cracks." Unfortunately, many of the gyms have very few cracks. There is only one crack at the excellent City Rock gym here in Colorado Springs, and it's rare to see anyone on it.

So climbing gyms don't teach much about cracks, but also slab climbing. I've watched climbers who flashed 5.11 at Shelf become gripped on 5.9 on the slabs at Red Rocks.

People think because they send hard sport routes they should be able to send El Capitan. But the skills are only partially transferable. Hopping on El Cap without much experience in trad or walls is like hopping on a 5.11 when you've only climbed 5.8...

Arlo F Niederer wrote:As an example, my long time climbing partner (even older than me!) and I were in JT climbing a beautiful 5.9 hand crack, with a nice 5.8 in the next crack over. Another group was struggling in the 5.8 and I heard the comment "but I climb 5.11 in the gym." I led the 5.9 and my partner followed it, and the other climbers were hang dogging and still hadn't made the top. They asked how we climbed the 5.9 so easily. "Because I've climbed a lot of cracks. You have to climb cracks to be good at cracks." Unfortunately, many of the gyms have very few cracks. There is only one crack at the excellent City Rock gym here in Colorado Springs, and it's rare to see anyone on it. So climbing gyms don't teach much about cracks, but also slab climbing. I've watched climbers who flashed 5.11 at Shelf become gripped on 5.9 on the slabs at Red Rocks. People think because they send hard sport routes they should be able to send El Capitan. But the skills are only partially transferable. Hopping on El Cap without much experience in trad or walls is like hopping on a 5.11 when you've only climbed 5.8...

I see a lot of this kind of thing, too.

Back in my day, when I was a young whippersnapper, gumbies climbed El Cap in winter and we didn't even have any of them totem cams.

Colin Simon wrote: and we didn't even have any of them totem cams.

No totems? Savages!

Mark Hudon wrote:Climbing in the late 80's and from then on was far, far different from the 70's. The vast majority of ascents these days are certainly not faster then back then.

i think the drugs just made it feel like you were going fast. next thing you are going to say is that they were even faster in the 60's, ha ha. shit, look at the number of folks doing NIAD or damn close on their first time up it these days. that just wasn't the case in the 70's.

i think people just tend to notice the slow pokes because it affects them more.

slim wrote:i think people just tend to notice the slow pokes because it affects them more.

I tend to notice the hard pokes a bit more, but that's probably just my kink. No slowpokes slowly poking me in my bedroom.

While I agree that climbers need to gain the required skills to be competent wall climbers, if you expect a trade route like the nose or Salathe to not have gumbys on them then your expectations are a bit unrealistic. The hard part about learning how to bigwall is that you need to be on a bigwall to really get experience. Yeah you can aid 1 pitch routes and climb a lot of wide but the logistics and decision making are thing you only get from experience. Every time you decide to up your game your going to pick one of the easier routes on the wall so the moderate trade routes will always be crowed with people who are getting on the big stone for the first time. Telling new wall climbers to get on routes that are off the beaten path doesn't really make sense. Those routes are less traveled because they are harder. Its like telling a new trad leader to get on choosy runout routes because the classics are crowded. Mark is smooth and efficient because he has tons of experience. I.E. you only get smooth and efficient once you're experienced. Most of the competent wall climbers I know spent years learning and yes did a couple of routes more slowly than they would have liked but thats part of the game. My first trip up the captain took 6 days. We moved slowly, learned a lot, but had a blast. Clusters are annoying but I don't see any realistic way to prevent crowds on the classic walls in the valley or zion. If you're experienced and want to climb a trade route either wait until the route is less crowded or expect to deal with a cluster from time to time.

Some Euro gumby that´s never hauled, can´t jug worth a shit, doesn´t aid climb and has never done a big wall will be blocking up the Nose next week with his old dad.

Jim Titt wrote:Some Euro gumby that´s never hauled, can´t jug worth a shit, doesn´t aid climb and has never done a big wall will be blocking up the Nose next week with his old dad.

That's why we need to kick his ass back to where he belongs, and, in the words of TC: "Make climbing great again!".

See, I warned you. Flailed, fumbled, fell off and pulled on the gear, took all f#cking day and got benighted on the way down.

Jim Titt wrote:See, I warned you. Flailed, fumbled, fell off and pulled on the gear, took all f#cking day and got benighted on the way down.

Nicely played sir!

Could not agree more!

supertopo.com/tr/Lemmy-Wink…

Here is a link to our portaledge getting blasted with us on it in sleeping bags, this past May on the Salathe. I ran into Hudon at the grocery store just before this happened, he told me of his plans for the freerider, I was stoked to hear this. Super bad ass! The block pulled off on us was covered in chalk and an X, by a party that had rapped in and stashed gear, climbing in the dark who were crawling along. Pre stashed not ground up is pretty weak sauce. You may be the first on a wall and then 3 or 4 parties are rapping in from above dropping stuff on you ALL day long, very lame and dangerous for everybody below! You could very easily kill somebody and it can be very easily avoided. Learn your rope work and skills first before the Captain, it is a HUGE BAD ASS mountain...not a crag. A crag is J tree or Indian Creek.

Not trying to be a ranting jerk, just wanted people to know how sketchy it can be up there and try to cause a little more awareness on the dangers of big wall climbing. Needless to say we bailed the next morning with stuff still dropping from above...we too took a bunch of garbage down,.. anything to please the wall gods.

Have fun, climb another day!
Doug