The vagueness of “T,S”

Anyone else particularly annoyed by this little quirk all over the database?

It’s Trad, or it’s sport. Having one bolt with the rest being gear does not a sport route make. Just because a fully bolted route has a spot you could stick a cam or sling a horn does not magically make it a trad climb. These two options ought to be mutually exclusive.

same goes for top rope. “T,TR” Is especially annoying. Can I scramble to the top of the Crag and set a top rope? Does it share an anchor with an easy approach route? If not, then it’s not a top rope route. It’s just a Trad route that you can set up for top roping like most other climbs in existence.

feel free to correct me if I’m misunderstanding some aspect of this system.

Uh oh… this could be a big thread

I've done many mixed routes that were mostly sport with a mandatory piece or two so having that T next to the S helps

When did the definition of troll become “says things I don’t like   “

J Ewrote:

When did the definition of troll become “says things I don’t like   “

About the time Jaggers created his second account.

J Ewrote:

When did the definition of troll become “says things I don’t like   “

Always been that way on MP. I’m the OG.

As for your OP, people regularly misuse the terms here, the description will usually clarify though. IMHO any bolted climb with a piece of gear or two should simply be called “mixed”.

Ground-up, onsight, FA, or else it's sport ;) 

You could also just look at the recommended rack and go climbing….

Making a big deal over what to call your climbing is just a D*ck measuring contest.

if adventure isn't your thing, why not just stick to the "S" routes?

J Ewrote:

what someone’s sense of adventure is, is irrelevant to the conversation. The point being: it’s a shitty categorization system that causes confusion and misrepresents the ratio of sport versus Trad versus top rope of crags, especially when viewing from the map.

You could spend the time you are debating on here to just go through a few routes in a place you are interested in going and see what the actual make up is. Or do you just want to shout into the troll filled void about it? Willing to provide entertainment if so.

sidenote: most trad is not sketchy. Most moderate trad is safer than sport climbing since you can inspect and maintain what is holding your rope to the cliff

J T wrote:

Jared…. You seem to be the only one who is getting confused my man…

Maybe 80% of routes or something like that could adequately be described with the labels provided by mountain project but there are loads of edge cases that cause confusion. Pinnacles having lots of routes labeled both trad AND sport is an excellent example. MP's system is shitty and in need of an overhaul. 

Ricky Harlinewrote:

Maybe 80% of routes or something like that could adequately be described with the labels provided by mountain project but there are loads of edge cases that cause confusion. Pinnacles having lots of routes labeled both trad AND sport is an excellent example. MP's system is shitty and in need of an overhaul. 

like maybe have to pass a test before you can label a route? Bring back gatekeeping, corral the confused?

PWZwrote:

like maybe have to pass a test before you can label a route? Bring back gatekeeping, corral the confused?

No. Let's take Feather Canyon as an example. It's labeled sport because that's how you communicate to people to only bring quick draws, and it's labeled trad because it IS trad and has less than twenty bolts over something like ten pitches and has some shitty alpine style belays. 

Those that labeled it on MP labelled it the best they could with what they had, it's just that the tools MP provides are inadequate. We could go on and on like this with each edge case if you like, but the point is that there a really massive number of them, especially here in sport-hesitant NorCal where a lot of routes blur the lines between sport and trad and make communicating anything useful with just the labels MP provides very difficult. 

J T wrote:

I don’t disagree about categorizing routes as both, though reading the descriptions solves the issue on literally 95% of those routes and the other 5% get climbed so little it doesn’t even matter for all intents and purposes.…and even if it didn’t we are really making a fuss over less than 20% of routes on here?

Your point has merit, but if we can both respect tradition and history better and communicate route info better then why not do that? There are lots of ways to do that, such as categorizing routes based on protection and not ill-defined categories, or adding a traditionally bolted category, or probably lots of other solutions. 

MP is contributing to confusion by propagating bad and unuseful definitions of trad and sport. That isn't a good thing. 

Ricky Harlinewrote:

Your point has merit, but if we can both respect tradition and history better and communicate route info better then why not do that? There are lots of ways to do that, such as categorizing routes based on protection and not ill-defined categories, or adding a traditionally bolted category, or probably lots of other solutions. 

MP is contributing to confusion by propagating bad and unuseful definitions of trad and sport. That isn't a good thing. 

Again I don’t disagree necessarily, but this thread is about an individual being confused regarding whether specific routes are actually sport, mixed, trad, TR, etc…. Not whether the system is right or wrong on here. The same token could be argued in some guidebooks classifying some routes as only sport or only gear. One could argue that classifying some routes as both sport and trad is actually more beneficial and/or accurate like China Doll (which is listed twice on here) or Proper Soul. To me it’s not much different than a route that can be aided and/or free’d. For many routes it seems the options are to either list it twice and create even more (actual) “confusion” or list those routes as both sport and trad and allow the human, who is capable of reading, to figure it out. The issue in this situation is that some people can’t read for themselves the descriptions in order to determine what category they fall under lol

J Ewrote:

I propose we start with mount woodson.

J Ewrote:

maquinna, you climbed a bolted Trad route.

Climbing is so confusing sometimes!