How long until you can "onsight" a route again?

Title says it all. How much time needs to pass in order for you to be unfamiliar enough with a route you've already climbed to consider another send an onsight? Does it depend on the difficulty of a route? How memorable it was?

Never. You get 1 shot.

climbing friend,

NEVARRRRRR!!!!

all your flash are belong to me

Only one shot. UNLESS you take an epic whip on said route and can claim amnesia due to temporary coma. One of the reasons you shouldn't wear a helmet, by the way.

Alzheimers/amnesia is great for repeating onsights! I do it all the time. If it's been so long that i don't remember a thing about the climb, it counts as an onsight... even if it is the second time.

But seriously aside from the non-Alzheimers/amnesia issue, I have gone back to some routes I hadn't climbed in over 30 years and getting back on them had no memory of them at all. And really, who cares what I call my second ascents, I am not trying to prove anything to anyone else. Not like it's going into any kind of record book.

If you do it blindfolded it's an "unsight"

If you're backwards it's a "hindsight"

;)

Ryan Van Dyke wrote:

Title says it all. How much time needs to pass in order for you to be unfamiliar enough with a route you've already climbed to consider another send an onsight? 

1000 years. 

IOW, you have one chance and one chance only to onsight.

I think the term you're looking for is "retro-flash." 

I've always thought of that term as kind of a joke, though. No, you can't flash or onsight something you've already climbed.

John Barritt wrote:

If you do it blindfolded it's an "unsight"

If you're backwards it's a "hindsight"

;)

If I flail or fall off a route that I have previously onsited, then I call it an unsite.

Guy Keesee wrote:

Actually, you can: Hymenoplasty

YES YOU CAN!

Turn 60+, you get an A.O.S.

(alzheimers on-sight)

Believe me, it's real.

:)

Two methods:

1. Amnesia onsight

2. Seasonal onsight

I'm sure if you tried hard, you could come up with more.

I onsight every climb I do, regardless of how many times I do it.  I can't remember the moves 5 minutes later.

Stoner’s onsight is 2 years without seeing the route. In Canada it’s 34 years. (Double it and add 32.) 

I’ve always felt there’s a mental onsight and physical onsight. Physical onsight is the first time you onsighted the route. Mental onsights can occur anytime you reclimb the route provided enough spliffs/beers have been had and/or enough time had passed to completely forget you climbed the route in the first place. 

Bill Coe who posts here once did an onsight attempt of a typical moss job up this way and on getting up it a ways he found a pin overgrown with moss and yelled down to his belayer that someone had done the route before. His belayer burst out laughing because he knew it had been Bill who put up the route years before and had forgotten it entirely so those senior / alzheimer ascents are possible.

Aleks Zebastian wrote:

climbing friend,

NEVARRRRRR!!!!

all your flash are belong to me

Yawn.....

actually if you use all previous hand holds for feet and foot holds for hands then it's an entirely new route, and if you manage it first go, it's a FA onsight!! BOOM.

Ah, the Irish onsight...

Guy Keesee wrote:

Haha, I was climbing with Medusa at Tick the other day and we were talking about beta, I swear Medusa is some kind of savant when it comes to route beta.  He can remember every move of every climb he has ever done.  I on the other hand can't remember climbs I did a years ago.  I remember places and the people I was with and sometimes specific climbs.  When talking about Joshua Tree forget it, I have climbed tons of stuff out there but can't remember names or specific routes for crap save for a few stand outs.   I can do the same climb up at the Tunnels, my "home crag" and end up doing it different every time it seems.  I think that is what keeps me from moving into harder grades.   So if you have a memory like me you can be a "virgin" again and insight the same route twice.