Post Other (Not Awesome) Trad Videos Here

willromanowrote:

I think we have a new winner here.  I legit felt like I was having a panic attack at some points watching this.  Did he take a massive whipper while trying to traverse under the roof for some bizarre reason and then just cut out that part from the video?  

Crack gloves with a huge watch in an hand crack, then proceeds to remove the watch before he puts a single piece in, using the most-unconveniently-wrapped-double-length-slings. Good stuff.

In all fairness though, only watched the 1st bit, but ok jamming technique. Placements were decent. He was running it out a fair bit for someone who apparently is relatively new to leading on gear/didn't seem entirely comfortable higher up (?) but other than that... not awesome, but not terrible either. And Moby Grape 1st pitch at 5.8 is not a gimme either, from what I recall (though I did that years ago, maybe today I'd have a different perspective).

EDIT: Oh apparently I just didn't watch long enough to see the train wreck. Will pick it up where I left later then!

Man that's a slow motion train wreck. I only skimmed it so sure I missed some stuff, but to save others the time (or to pique their interest):

• Ties in with a Bowline, he must know what he's doing
• Some sweet giant Wild Country Rocks
• Why does he have a Fifi hook? (And what's that thing on the front-right of his harness?)
• Massive watch to climb a handcrack, takes it off 10' up
• Nut in a pretty parallel crack, hard to tell though
• Better extend that first piece right off the ground it doesn't do anything
• Kinda running it out but maybe he's solid (not really)
• More nuts in parallel cracks despite having plenty of cams
• Super satisfying nut at 35:20
• Clip into the rusty button head instead of the new bolts (fixes it)
• At the next anchor a sketchy 30 minute process to swap out 2 pieces
• Makes his partner lead belay him with a direct belay off their all nut anchor
• More nuts in parallel cracks
• Doesn't pull the roof because he's afraid his hands will get stuck
• Traverses off route, then it cuts to him 40' lower. Massive whipper?
• Tries to boink up and fails miserably
• Straight to bail
• Simulrap time. I don't hate it, but he thinks that his partner getting ahead of him will pull him up somehow
• I assumed he got lowered to the ground to climb the first pitch again for fun, but maybe he realized his partner didn't know how to rap and had to reclimb it to rescue him
• While setting up to rap he ties into the wrong end and now has to feed the entire 60m of rope through the anchor

Austin Donisanwrote:

Man that's a slow motion train wreck. I only skimmed it so sure I missed some stuff, but to save others the time (or to pique their interest):

• Ties in with a Bowline, he must know what he's doing
• Some sweet giant Wild Country Rocks
• Why does he have a Fifi hook? (And what's that thing on the front-right of his harness?)
• Massive watch to climb a handcrack, takes it off 10' up
• Nut in a pretty parallel crack, hard to tell though
• Better extend that first piece right off the ground it doesn't do anything
• Kinda running it out but maybe he's solid (not really)
• More nuts in parallel cracks despite having plenty of cams
• Super satisfying nut at 35:20
• Clip into the rusty button head instead of the new bolts (fixes it)
• At the next anchor a sketchy 30 minute process to swap out 2 pieces
• Makes his partner lead belay him with a direct belay off their all nut anchor
• More nuts in parallel cracks
• Doesn't pull the roof because he's afraid his hands will get stuck
• Traverses off route, then it cuts to him 40' lower. Massive whipper?
• Tries to boink up and fails miserably
• Straight to bail
• Simulrap time. I don't hate it, but he thinks that his partner getting ahead of him will pull him up somehow
• I assumed he got lowered to the ground to climb the first pitch again for fun, but maybe he realized his partner didn't know how to rap and had to reclimb it to rescue him
• While setting up to rap he ties into the wrong end and now has to feed the entire 60m of rope through the anchor

This is a pretty good synopsis. Hilarious that this dude thought the rest of this GSS was good enough to upload on the internet, but whatever happened on that traverse (had to have been a massive whipper) and then the eventual conversation preceding the decision to bail after the failed boinking attempt was just too embarrassing to include. Whatever happened there has to be solid gold. I think we should petition this guy to release the uncut footage. 

Also he had plenty of hand size cams on him (even went so far as to steal a #2 and a 0.75 from the anchor his partner set up in the anchor at first which he then had to rebuild) but doesn't think to place one above his head when trying to pull the roof while he's sitting there for like 10 minutes.  He could have just hung on the cam, pulled up on it, and then he's done.  

I don't get the 4' runners on every nut and the locker that he locks and unlocks frequently on the nut rack.  Mostly this is just an example of being very inefficient (I didn't have the patient to watch the whole thing). 

We need a highlight reel. I won't claim I never waste my time, but even I don't have 4 hours to waste for that video!

David Kwrote:

We need a highlight reel. I won't claim I never waste my time, but even I don't have 4 hours to waste for that video!

Well, at 2x speed, it's only 2hours, and it turns out to be actually pretty good. Then you can just slow down for the savory bits!

Somewhat seriously though, we should maybe do that with all the treasure trove we built up in here. Some sort of funky trad bits homemade.... Realz Roacks

Yeah I watched ten minutes and thought "this is so long but I can't look away!" I forgot about speeding it up, I will try that. Even in the first few minutes you can tell we are in for a disaster. The watch, the way he talks about gear, the way he places the first pieces. He seems to have some background in crack climbing though i wouldn't say he's very good at it. Did you notice he tries to do a ringlock in the first few minutes??

Love the quintuple length slings to extend pieces

Some people just really aren't cut out for climbing...

This man has got to be the least dexterous, least coordinated, least intuitive climber to ever flounder their way up a multi-pitch...

I can't stop watching.  My hands don't sweat when I watch Free Solo or The Alpinist...but I am profusely perspiring watching these pitiful fools...

1:35:30, he completely takes him off belay.

Steven Rwrote:

Love the quintuple length slings to extend pieces

I love to be the guy with the least rope drag in the whole cemetery

Am I the only one not seeing disaster here? Anyone want to post timestamps where things get interesting? In the first 10 mins he's climbing fine and just seems to be making some so-so gear decisions and wearing a watch (that was swiftly removed), nothing I'd call a massive red flag - typical 5.8 leader stuff.

I feel like I could’ve been that guy (in the video) when I first started trying to teach myself climbing and trad at the same time.

Thank god all my friends were smart enough not to trust me.

Someone needs to watch his three-hour video on High Exposure and tell us if it's worth it.

MattHwrote:

Am I the only one not seeing disaster here? Anyone want to post timestamps where things get interesting? In the first 10 mins he's climbing fine and just seems to be making some so-so gear decisions and wearing a watch (that was swiftly removed), nothing I'd call a massive red flag - typical 5.8 leader stuff.

Go to 1:11:00 and watch the 30 minutes it takes them to start the next pitch, then go to the 2:00:00 mark and watch the next 20 minutes or so of him trying to get through the roof and the events that follow that.  

Not to harp on the same duo, but... (High Exposure)

• Giving a belaying tutorial at top of P1 is not part of my standard multipitch gameplan... but why not?
• "I feel like it's super low to put something in", or why the Jesus nut is a myth that need not worry you
• If you're worried about rope drag, putting a piece in an horizontal crack as far away from your direction of travel as possible is probably going to help
• Not so sure about that piton, but maybe it's just me.

Well, that explains that.

MattHwrote:

Am I the only one not seeing disaster here? Anyone want to post timestamps where things get interesting? In the first 10 mins he's climbing fine and just seems to be making some so-so gear decisions and wearing a watch (that was swiftly removed), nothing I'd call a massive red flag - typical 5.8 leader stuff.

Direct belay starts at 1:35:10
Roof saga starts 1:58:30
Presumable edited out whipper at 2:14:30
Trying to teach self-lowering through charades from 60m away (actually terrifying) 2:38:40

I like how he tends to loosely drag his hand against heavily flaring cracks like it’s just randomly gonna wedge into it like a constricted nut placement 

Shear party with that red nut at the roof!  Put an effen cam in up higher already!