How hard could the average dedicated climber climb.

Eric Engbergwrote:

Wide is fine?

Are we talking about gym grades?

Wide is unpleasant, but not necessarily harder than other styles. And no, gym grades do not count.

At a certain point in time, you will come to a fork in the road.  One fork is  "my life revolves around climbing and everything else is secondary or not important to me".  Another fork is "I love climbing, but relationships, career, financial security, etc are more important to me".  The word "dedicated" will mean different things in these contexts. 

phylp phylpwrote:

At a certain point in time, you will come to a fork in the road.  One fork is  "my life revolves around climbing and everything else is secondary or not important to me".  Another fork is "I love climbing, but relationships, career, financial security, etc are more important to me".  The word "dedicated" will mean different things in these contexts. 

I think that's a false dichotomy. Climbing 'hard' (5.13a) is certainly very accessible if you train in the gym in an organized way with a pretty limited time commitment, allowing you to be successful at other things in life that are important to you. Most people do still have to be dedicated to it, and careful to avoid injury. I actually improved my climbing (tho I haven't climbed 5.13 yet) when I started climbing less hours per week and being more intentional about my training. Dedicated weekend warriors are very much a thing. Probably hard to have other hobbies tho.

There's no answer of course, but opinions, we all have those. So: Depends where you are? I'm gonna focus on the mythical "12a grade" here. I'm sure in Boulder "everybody" is sending 12a. Same thing at Smith Rock's front side. But at the majority of crags I've been to, which rarely have any climbs harder than low 5-12, it's rare to see anyone climbing  harder than mid 5-11. I've been climbing since 1999, mainly in the west, and anecdotally I don't see that 12a is getting any easier for people to send outdoors despite the explosion of gyms and better gear. Better and lighter trad gear has probably made 11a trad more realistic for people, but gear hasn't changed the fact that 12a is still a benchmark grade that very few climbers ever reach, even the ones who consider themselves "dedicated." (I'm not counting 12a in the gym or vacation grades in Thailand to be true 12a, btw) 12a in 2020 still seems as hard to reach as it was in 99 when I started. I sent my first 12a in 2002 after 3 years of climbing, and zero time training. I sent several more 12a routes over the next few years, enough for it not to be a fluke, and my 5 or 6 partners from that era likewise all peaked at about 12a, and none of us ever "trained." To this day I still think 12a is about the max for most people to hit unless they start to train, and not just climb. Maybe that's my answer. 12a is what you get by being "dedicated" but without actual training. 

Eric Chabotwrote:

I think that's a false dichotomy. Climbing 'hard' (5.13a) is certainly very accessible if you train in the gym in an organized way with a pretty limited time commitment, allowing you to be successful at other things in life that are important to you. Most people do still have to be dedicated to it, and careful to avoid injury. I actually improved my climbing (tho I haven't climbed 5.13 yet) when I started climbing less hours per week and being more intentional about my training. Dedicated weekend warriors are very much a thing. Probably hard to have other hobbies tho.

LOL, Eric, I just realized I stopped my answer short, and never finished the post, as my husband was grabbing my attention.

Yes I actually agree with you.  I have friends who took the career route who are dedicated weekend warriors, with demanding jobs and children, and climb 5.13 (rather easily, they amaze me).  Dedication in this context means exactly what you say.  I think my answer was provoked by so many people who post at the age of the OP and are so enamored with climbing that they take the "climbing is the most important" fork, thinking it's the only way to climb as hard as they want to, the only way to be truly satisfied with climbing, and that this decision ripples through their whole life.  I realize I wasn't really addressing his question directly. His question sent me to a place of reflection of my own climbing journey within the "career" fork, what "dedication" meant to me, and what I've seen happen in the lives of other climbers who took the different forks, over a very long time frame.

Kole Hwrote:

Given the theoretical dedicated climber (climbs 3+ times per week in gym, follows basic training structure), what do you think they could climb after 5 years in the sport. 10 years. Max?

Everything in the gym and about 5.9 J-tree. 

phylp phylpwrote:

LOL, Eric, I just realized I stopped my answer short, and never finished the post, as my husband was grabbing my attention.

Yes I actually agree with you.  I have friends who took the career route who are dedicated weekend warriors, with demanding jobs and children, and climb 5.13 (rather easily, they amaze me).  Dedication in this context means exactly what you say.  I think my answer was provoked by so many people who post at the age of the OP and are so enamored with climbing that they take the "climbing is the most important" fork, thinking it's the only way to climb as hard as they want to, the only way to be truly satisfied with climbing, and that this decision ripples through their whole life.  I realize I wasn't really addressing his question directly. His question sent me to a place of reflection of my own climbing journey within the "career" fork, what "dedication" meant to me, and what I've seen happen in the lives of other climbers who took the different forks, over a very long time frame.

Yeah that's a more interesting thing to think about. Climbing obsession can be really destructive...but that's an idea that might not get much traction around here ;)

I think there are a TON of bone crushing elite amateurs out there that get it done and have families and jobs. And a ton of dirtbags who climb every day but can't even climb 5.12. Hours spent on the activity don't matter so much as the quality of those hours in my experience.

Bruh Brah wrote:

You may want to consider that climbing in itself is the quality to them, not the rating.

Of course, and that is true for a lot of people, including myself, but the OP was asking specifically about difficulty ratings and what you would be at in certain time frames.  What we are saying is that there isn't just one path, if difficulty is your metric.  I think that's not intuitively obvious, especially since most climbing magazine articles focus difficulty levels achieved by "professional" climbers.

Or in other words: How hard could a climber climb if a climber climbed hard?

5

Bruh Brah wrote:

You may want to consider that climbing in itself is the quality to them, not the rating.

Sure. Just making the point that time spent 'climbing' might not make you better at climbing beyond a certain level, or at least not as efficiently as time spent 'trying to get better at climbing'. I don't mean any judgement towards these people.

bryanswrote:

There's no answer of course, but opinions, we all have those. So: Depends where you are? I'm gonna focus on the mythical "12a grade" here. I'm sure in Boulder "everybody" is sending 12a. Same thing at Smith Rock's front side. But at the majority of crags I've been to, which rarely have any climbs harder than low 5-12, it's rare to see anyone climbing  harder than mid 5-11. I've been climbing since 1999, mainly in the west, and anecdotally I don't see that 12a is getting any easier for people to send outdoors despite the explosion of gyms and better gear. Better and lighter trad gear has probably made 11a trad more realistic for people, but gear hasn't changed the fact that 12a is still a benchmark grade that very few climbers ever reach, even the ones who consider themselves "dedicated." (I'm not counting 12a in the gym or vacation grades in Thailand to be true 12a, btw) 12a in 2020 still seems as hard to reach as it was in 99 when I started. I sent my first 12a in 2002 after 3 years of climbing, and zero time training. I sent several more 12a routes over the next few years, enough for it not to be a fluke, and my 5 or 6 partners from that era likewise all peaked at about 12a, and none of us ever "trained." To this day I still think 12a is about the max for most people to hit unless they start to train, and not just climb. Maybe that's my answer. 12a is what you get by being "dedicated" but without actual training. 

If you go to crag's that "rarely have any climbs harder than low 5-12,...."  you won't run into climbers who climb 5.13 and up.  The same is true the other way. If you spend your days out at a steep hard crag you start to think everyone sends 13's regularly. Your group and exposure will have a large impact on what you end up climbing. 

I find it interesting to see people want to compare dedication and results to amount of time spent climbing. This would be like expecting to become a professional athlete by spending hours playing catch in the back yard. 

Kole, if you dedicate yourself and have no fixed opinion about what your limits are, who knows where you might end up.

As shown by sharma in masters of stone 4, 13d

bryanswrote:

I'm sure in Boulder "everybody" is sending 12a.

That's accurate.  Because the grades are soft :) 

Leronwrote:

If you go to crag's that "rarely have any climbs harder than low 5-12,...."  you won't run into climbers who climb 5.13 and up.  The same is true the other way. If you spend your days out at a steep hard crag you start to think everyone sends 13's regularly. Your group and exposure will have a large impact on what you end up climbing. 

I find it interesting to see people want to compare dedication and results to amount of time spent climbing. This would be like expecting to become a professional athlete by spending hours playing catch in the back yard. 

this is incredibly accurate, and a reason that you should seek out partners who climb harder than you if you want to improve... if everyone you are climbing with is climbing 5.13 it feels way more possible than if your whole crew is falling off of 5.11, getting over the mental hurdle of climbing new grades is often harder than the physical hurdle in my experience, most people are stronger than they think, especially people who have climbed a long time but never really pushed themselves...

Personally, I think most average climbers could climb somewhere in the upper 5.13s if they take it seriously, in my own experience I now climb harder than I could have imagined 5 years ago, and I expect that to keep going as I've become better at training to avoid plateaus along the way, get a taste of warming up on what was once a multi-year project and suddenly training hard feels pretty worth it ...

bryanswrote:

There's no answer of course, but opinions, we all have those. So: Depends where you are? I'm gonna focus on the mythical "12a grade" here. I'm sure in Boulder "everybody" is sending 12a. Same thing at Smith Rock's front side. But at the majority of crags I've been to, which rarely have any climbs harder than low 5-12, it's rare to see anyone climbing  harder than mid 5-11. I've been climbing since 1999, mainly in the west, and anecdotally I don't see that 12a is getting any easier for people to send outdoors despite the explosion of gyms and better gear. Better and lighter trad gear has probably made 11a trad more realistic for people, but gear hasn't changed the fact that 12a is still a benchmark grade that very few climbers ever reach, even the ones who consider themselves "dedicated." (I'm not counting 12a in the gym or vacation grades in Thailand to be true 12a, btw) 12a in 2020 still seems as hard to reach as it was in 99 when I started. I sent my first 12a in 2002 after 3 years of climbing, and zero time training. I sent several more 12a routes over the next few years, enough for it not to be a fluke, and my 5 or 6 partners from that era likewise all peaked at about 12a, and none of us ever "trained." To this day I still think 12a is about the max for most people to hit unless they start to train, and not just climb. Maybe that's my answer. 12a is what you get by being "dedicated" but without actual training. 

I agree with this.  I have been climbing for 27 years both sport and trad and have climbed at most of the major climbing areas in the western us.  With the exception of rifle (which draws hard climbers from everywhere and the bar is really high it is pretty rare to see a lot of sport climbers sending mid 5.12. Most of the time when I walk up to a crag the moderates up through about mid 11 have groups on them and most of the 11+ and 12's are empty for most of the day.  In terms of trad (which I climb more often than sport) if you are climbing harder than mid 5.10 you can pretty much walk up to the crag at any time of day and have tons of routes open.  I rarely see groups cued up on trad 5.11 except for a route like the naked edge so the argument that 5.11 is the average grade for a trad climber doesn't make sense otherwise those routes would be more crowded than they are.  I feel like 5.11 sport and 5.10 trad are the more every person grades that are accessible to most dedicated climbers.

Mark E Dixonwrote:

If you aren’t climbing 12d at the end of your first year, it’s time to find another sport. 

This should be printed on a t-shirt. I guess I have to pack it in, my climbing career is over according to this blowhard.

Ryan Stevensonwrote:

This should be printed on a t-shirt. I guess I have to pack it in, my climbing career is over according to this blowhard.

How about a T-shirt that reads-

I couldn’t climb 12d, so I’m hiking this shitty 14er

Based on what climbs are crowded 

The average trad climber climbs 5.6 to 5.7

The average sport climber climbs 5.8 to 5.9

but maybe those are more crowded because there’s not many climbs that easy, there’s lots of beginners who may not continue the sport, and groups go to climbs for the lowest common denominator.