overheard at the crag: post it

Doctor Drakewrote:

Overheard at the gym a few weeks ago: a coach congratulating a 10 year old for “sending” his first 5.12b after spending 20 or 30 minutes having his belayer drag him through the moves

Sadly, I don’t think your Kalymnos acquaintance was trolling you

Yeah, I have a friend who says things like "I just did my first 10a! I had to hang two times but I did it".

I don't know what to say to her

Dan Dwrote:

Yeah, I have a friend who says things like "I just did my first 10a! I had to hang two times but I did it".

I don't know what to say to her

Offer to belay for the clean ascent?

Dan Dwrote:

Yeah, I have a friend who says things like "I just did my first 10a! I had to hang two times but I did it".

I don't know what to say to her

I think that's fair actually. "Did" is not "Send". You can "do" a climb without sending it.

Matthew Jaggerswrote:

I think that's fair actually. "Did" is not "Send". You can "do" a climb without sending it.

Agreed. The psyche is real just getting to the chains sometimes.

Matthew Jaggerswrote:

I think that's fair actually. "Did" is not "Send". You can "do" a climb without sending it.

Yeah, it doesn't actually bother me, but posting about it online is fun.

Yesterday at Butchers Branch overheard a belayer yelling loudly at his climber.

“There’s a bunch of jugs right in front of your face!”

short pause, then continues

“Some of them are slopers, some of them are jugs.”

Will C wrote:

I heard someone say they took a "big whipper in the gym"

lol. pathetic. 

Dunno. I fell from two moves from the anchor to five feet above the ground once at The Studio in San Jose. ~35' probably. I was a lot heavier than my belayer and pulled her up probably 15'. 

I don't go around spraying about my whippers, but that's a bigger fall that a fair amount of my friends have ever taken, and I managed it in a gym. 

As a little bonus as I fell my leg got caught in a top rope which spun me around causing me to fall mission impossible style face first towards the ground. Maybe you wouldn't call it a whipper, but it counts in my book. 

Will C wrote:

I heard someone say they took a "big whipper in the gym"

lol. pathetic. 

You’re a sad little person. 

Ricky Harlinewrote:

Dunno. I fell from two moves from the anchor to five feet above the ground once at The Studio in San Jose. ~35' probably. I was a lot heavier than my belayer and pulled her up probably 15'. 

I don't go around spraying about my whippers, but that's a bigger fall that a fair amount of my friends have ever taken, and I managed it in a gym. 

As a little bonus as I fell my leg got caught in a top rope which spun me around causing me to fall mission impossible style face first towards the ground. Maybe you wouldn't call it a whipper, but it counts in my book. 

Either this gym has exceptionally high first clips or you have a very very skinny belayer

Matt Robinsonwrote:

Either this gym has exceptionally high first clips or you have a very very skinny belayer

Route had an unusually high first clip, no idea why. Other routes near it mostly didn't share this feature if I recall correctly. Belayer was probably 50 pounds less than me. 

"What's the worst that could happen?"

"The bolt rips out and you fall on your neck and die"

... my belayer to me after asking what could go wrong if I tried a move I fell on again

"I met you in the meadow below Mount Hooker. When we bailed from our route, we were out of weed so we scraped your bong that you left in your vestibule."

"it doesn't matter how gnarly the approach road is, you can always find a clapped out civic in the lot" 

Mr. Southforkwrote:

"I met you in the meadow below Mount Hooker. When we bailed from our route, we were out of weed so we scraped your bong that you left in your vestibule."

This makes me sad. Mt. Hooker just doesn't seem to belong in the same thread with stories from the gym.

abandon moderation wrote:

Reminds me of one time in the gym, I'm toproping with my buddy and he says "ok, I'm just going to stop taking in slack half way up the climb" - and of course I agree, because toproping is otherwise boring.

So I get to the top, take a final look at my belayer and the huge loop of slack, and let go.

After falling 3/4 of the way to the ground, the employee behind the counter yells across the gym "You guys are f****** idiots!" Of course we know said employee and he just goes back to work shaking his head, but we had a good laugh.

Wow, you really do have a relevant user name, huh? That, uh, is certainly a thing one could do. 

abandon moderation wrote:

Reminds me of one time in the gym, I'm toproping with my buddy and he says "ok, I'm just going to stop taking in slack half way up the climb" - and of course I agree, because toproping is otherwise boring.

So I get to the top, take a final look at my belayer and the huge loop of slack, and let go.

After falling 3/4 of the way to the ground, the employee behind the counter yells across the gym "You guys are f****** idiots!" Of course we know said employee and he just goes back to work shaking his head, but we had a good laugh.

So.... did you fall like 20' on a static line? Or do they use dynamic ropes for TR? That would seem a dumb choice to me, since falling early on would mean potentially hitting the ground.

abandon moderation wrote:

I don't know what ropes they used. I do remember they were way less stretchy than most ropes, but I never considered if they were static. If it was static, it didn't hurt at all, but pulling my (lighter) belayer off the ground might have absorbed most of the impact.

This was maybe 8 years ago, and now that I think about it, it was probably a bad idea...

It was gym line, which is less dynamic, I have whipped big on them no problem.

abandon moderation wrote:

I don't know what ropes they used. I do remember they were way less stretchy than most ropes, but I never considered if they were static. If it was static, it didn't hurt at all, but pulling my (lighter) belayer off the ground might have absorbed most of the impact.

This was maybe 8 years ago, and now that I think about it, it was probably a bad idea...

I guess they might have been using low elasticity. Given how TR stretch like crazy outside on actual lead ropes, I doubt gyms would use them. THey also tend to cost more (which is perhaps the best argument against them).

If they had been fully static, I'm fairly certain you would have known, and perhaps even have been injured. I haven't TRed/fallen in the gym for quite a while, but I remember the very first gym I climbed at had static ropes, and you'd easily know whenever you fell and the belayer had some amount of slack in the rope - it would jolt a fair bit at the end, even with just sort of a "lead climbing" amount of slack, so to speak. And then they had a double wrap around a large pipe at the top, so a fair amount of friction, so there were not much slippage possible. I'd consider yourself lucky - even if you paid me a 1000$ I wouldn't try it with those ropes!

Was just talking to my climbing friends about how all of us have gotten our worst injuries in gyms, despite climbing outdoors more often than in the gym.

Broke down the anchor and started climbing.

“On belay!” heard about five feet after I started climbing. 

As I suspected, when I checked with him at the top it was about the fourth time he’d called “on belay”, it was just a difficult pitch to hear. But it always makes it a little more interesting.