5.10 offwidth is harder than 5.12 sport!

it's a fact, well for me

2nd that. well for me

How long did you spend climbing offwidths vs sport climbing? I'm guessing offwidths are an occasional venture and pulling on steep edges is a more common practice.

Imagine if you only ever climbed offwidths and you tried a 5.12 sport route, yikes!

GDavis wrote:How long did you spend climbing offwidths vs sport climbing? I'm guessing offwidths are an occasional venture and pulling on steep edges is a more common practice. Imagine if you only ever climbed offwidths and you tried a 5.12 sport route, yikes!

Very true, hence the "well for me" climbing at lovers leap in tahoe is really the only time i climb off widths and i always get spanked. (i remember hanging on a 5.9 OW specifically) but i feel like if you are smashing 5.10 OW you could still crush .12 sport. or maybe thats just because i think OW climbers are just that bad ass

I think that falls in the "that climb just isn't my style" excuse catagory. :-)

Chasing Choss wrote: Very true, hence the "well for me" climbing at lovers leap in tahoe is really the only time i climb off widths and i always get spanked. (i remember hanging on a 5.9 OW specifically) but i feel like if you are smashing 5.10 OW you could still crush .12 sport. or maybe thats just because i think OW climbers are just that bad ass

I've climbed a ton of 5.10 offwidth and never one 5.12 sport routes... you're good at what you do and not at what you don't.

I can get up desert 10s if I have a rope gun. Rope gun doe's Jack shit for me on 5.12

I honestly think that sport and trad grades have very little to do with each other. This is most pronounced in crack climbs (offwidth especially), but I find it to be fairly across the board. What does a 5.12 sport climb have in common with a 5.12 trad climb? Knee bars? Lol.

All this sounds like comparing swimming a mile to running a mile to biking a mile.

kiff wrote:All this sounds like comparing swimming a mile to running a mile to biking a mile.

What about biking a mile underwater?

they have very little in common for me. cracks are so size dependent its hard to compare 5.10 offwidth, for me.

OWing=swimming through pavement?

kiff wrote:All this sounds like comparing swimming a mile to running a mile to biking a mile.

That is incredibly easy to compare. For an Olympic-trained swimmer, the order of difficulty would be, from least to greatest:

1) Biking a mile
2) Running a mile
3) Swimming a mile

5.10 offwidth used to feel like 5.12 sport to me as well until I got on a few and practiced a bit. Now that I've sent a few 5.10 offwidths they feel more like solid 5.11 sport.

You say a 5.12 sport route feels like a 5.10 offwidth. I commend your wide range of skills and relative grade consistency across the wide range that is the spectrum of rock climbing styles. To me a 5.12 feels like a 5.6 offwidth. If I'm in an offwidth it means I'm in over my head. Period. Maybe that's why I still think they're sort of fun. I can never remember just what it is I've gotten myself into.

Climbing style is so different depending on the geology. The Gunks, a trad bastion, has very few "true" crack climbs. The hard-for-me routes there have all climbed just like sport routes, albeit without the bolts.

My point being that the protection type does not always dictate the climbing style.

- Alex

No way! with a little technique and a lot of willpower anyone can climb 5.10 O.W you need a ton of strength and skill to break in 5.12 sport..

True, Alex, but are the Gunks grades similar to any sport climbing area you've been to? Does a 5.6 at the Gunks feel like a 5.6 sport climb at Rumney? People call the grades at a lot of trad areas "sandbagged" or "old school," but really I'd say they're just "trad." This goes much further than just how you protect the climbs and gets into history, ethos, and terrain-specific technique (offwidth crack climbing being just one example). How many sustained laybacks have you done on a sport climb? How many bolted chimney climbs are there? Dihedrals? People usually claim trad areas are stiff because they're used to climbing in a gym, but the reverse sandbagging can occur as well if you spend most of your time doing techy vert/slab climbs and jump on an overhanging 5.9 at the gym.

I'm not sure what some of you guys are smoking, but I don't think offwidth will ever feel like sport. No, not even a bolted one.

Ted Pinson wrote:I honestly think that sport and trad grades have very little to do with each other. This is most pronounced in crack climbs (offwidth especially), but I find it to be fairly across the board. What does a 5.12 sport climb have in common with a 5.12 trad climb? Knee bars? Lol.

I really wish we in the US had adopted French grades for sport climbing BITD.
Would have eliminated a lot of the trad vs sport animosity I believe.

but 5.12 OW is really hard !