How do the differences in A and C grades really play out?

I've never aid climbed, but looking to start testing those waters this year. I know that A= a hammer and C= clean, but I wonder what your experience is when going up A1-3 single pitch that's mixed with free climbing. Are the placements generally pitons on A1? Do you usually see other parties left gear fixed? Do you some times go up an A aid route and end up clean aiding it? I will be starting out around T-wall/sunset if that adds any input.

Thanks!

Try to do it without hammering anything first. Unless you’re climbing a rarely repeated or new route, you should be able to climb a1 pitches mostly clean. It really depends on the pitch. You could have an A1 pitch that’s all bomber cams with one aid move off a mandatory piton. An a1 pitch can also be a thin crack that will only take pitons the whole way but it’s still A1 since they’re all bomber. You most likely won’t find the later on a well travelled route since it will be scarred out and the piton scars should take clean gear.  Bring cams hooks, hooks, tiny brass, ball nuts, beaks, offset cams and totems. Any well traveled a1-a2 pitch probably will go clean with that rack if you can be creative with gear. Obviously there are exceptions 

Most guidebooks have not updated the ratings to use C, so most A pitches go clean.

^Especially true for a guidebook that shows that one old aid route at an otherwise free climbing locale.

If you can get an idea of how long ago the FA was that can give info too. I have climbed an "A4" pitch that was actually C1/C2, and another "A4" that was actually A2 beaks. 

I'd pay as much attention to the rock type as the grade when deciding what gear to bring. Old A2 on granite probably means double set of cams, new A2 in the Fishers probably means a dozen beaks.

It used to be that a 5.10 hand crack was A1.

The age of the route does indeed matter. An A2+ route in Yosemite put up in the last decade is going to be significantly harder than most A4 routes put up 30-40 years ago. (Unless that A4 was due to hooking, yikes)

Fail Falling wrote:

The age of the route does indeed matter. An A2+ route in Yosemite put up in the last decade is going to be significantly harder than most A4 routes out up 30-40 years ago. (Unless that A4 was due to hooking, yikes)

I concur 

Fail Falling wrote:

The age of the route does indeed matter. An A2+ route in Yosemite put up in the last decade is going to be significantly harder than most A4 routes put up 30-40 years ago. (Unless that A4 was due to hooking, yikes)

Due to new gear making those old A4 pitches easier, or due to general grade deflation?

NegativeK wrote:

Due to new gear making those old A4 pitches easier, or due to general grade deflation?

New gear.

So when you look at A4 and above routes from multiple decades ago before beaks were a thing, a thin bottoming seam would need to be heads, tied off blades that were not fully driven, rurps, and things of that nature. Horror shows put up by men and women with much bigger balls and ovaries than I could ever pretend to. Those same sort of lines now can be done with bomber beaks where the previous available gear was bodyweight only. Even Totems on a nailing line can turn a bottoming crack that would have been a tied off angle and make it into a bomber or at least bomber enough placement. 

Routes being put up now are part of the new gold rush of beaks. Modern FAists seek out the pitches that used to make older FAists run away from the hills, not because we're better, but because our gear makes those pitches relatively solid for us and relatively easy-ish. Lots and lots of virgin lines out there that have been passed over again and again by the previous generation and their tools. Thus the modern A2+ being a grade given during an FA that generally now means lots and lots of beaking and knowing when a beak is bomber and when a beak is not bomber. And that's the rub,  getting enough practice with beaks to know how far into the red you can take them. (spoiler alert: you can take them really far into the red.)

Fail Falling wrote:

New gear.

[good info trimmed]

Hm, why aren't newer guide books downgrading routes, then? Fear of getting yelled at for yet another thing?

Or, if I got sandbagged on modern A2+, I'm sure it'd be hilarious. For others. ;)

NegativeK wrote:

Hm, why aren't newer guide books downgrading routes, then? Fear of getting yelled at for yet another thing?

Or, if I got sandbagged on modern A2+, I'm sure it'd be hilarious. For others. ;)

Tbh obscure old nailing routes need to be climbed and the info need to be shared with the guidebook authors. Take the small percentage of bigwallers that climb obscure routes then take the small percentage of that small percentage that bother to tell guidebook authors what their experience indicates for regrading the route  and then consider that consensus requires multiple people to do this and that's why older routes seldom recieve an update in the guides. 

And modern A2+ isn't a sandag; it's that many climbers just aren't experienced enough with beaks to know what's bomber and what's only bodyweight 

Kevin... So you're saying we should all start nailing up more obscure routes?! How dare you suggest we all get off the trade routes and actually have to figure it out for ourselves!!!

In all honesty. You've inspired me to maybe buy some beaks...

Greg Gavin wrote:

Kevin... So you're saying we should all start nailing up more obscure routes?! How dare you suggest we all get off the trade routes and actually have to figure it out for ourselves!!!

In all honesty. You've inspired me to maybe buy some beaks...

The thing about trade routes is that you spend more time climbing other people's manky fixed gear rather than actually placing the gear to climb it yourself. 

For all of the talk about climbing a route put up by this dude or that chick back in the day, on a trade route, you're not really climbing the route as they put it up both because of the fixed gear and the blown out placements from years of ascents. Even the blown out placements require weird funky placements to get by them that have no relation to the experience of what the FAists that actually climbed the route had.  When you climb an obscurity, you're more likely to actually climb the route and have the experiences that the FAists had. 

If I see an "A3 heads" pitch on a trade route on the captain, I'm pretty sure that it'll go pretty quickly as it tends to be mostly fixed gear making it effectively a crappy ladder (where the bolts are all crappy rusting timebombs) with maybe a few placement I have to make myself or weird funky placements to deal with the deadheads and other crap those pitches have picked up from other climbers over the years. If I see an "A3 heads" pitch on an obscurity, I'm pretty sure it's going to take a long time to work my way up the pitch as I attempt (and often fail lol) to actually step in the ladders of the FAists that came before. At the same time, I'm also pretty sure that I'll be able to replace a lot of those head placements with beak tips so who knows?

I try and stay on routes with less than 20 ascents 

You know the 80-20 rule? It actually has a te helical name. Someone help me. 

I bet on El Cap it's more like 90-10 - 90% of the climbers climb 10% of the routes. Seriously. 

If you want to learn to aid climb, get yourself a bunch of beaks* and Totems, and go climb some old obscurity. Here you will learn how, noy just clipping fixed gear. You will have the place to yourself, and have more fun. 

*Tie a backup-racking loop through the tops of your beaks!

Pareto Principle (or rule)

I remember learning that aid ratings were getting downgraded the hard way. We also had a lot of 5.8 and 5.9 in northern Arizona that were pretty hard. It makes sense to open-end a rating system, but of course now we have a lot of 'soft' ratings...

But I always felt the objective descriptions of aid, as it was before, would be fine to keep everything organized well enough. How many body weight placements in a row? How subjectively difficult it is to place the gear is really dependent on technology, and how much you've bought and brought. 

Even aid climbers disagree and don't understand aid ratings. 

Fail Falling wrote:

New gear.

Routes being put up now are part of the new gold rush of beaks. Modern FAists seek out the pitches that used to make older FAists run away from the hills, not because we're better, but because our gear makes those pitches relatively solid for us and relatively easy-ish. Lots and lots of virgin lines out there that have been passed over again and again by the previous generation and their tools. Thus the modern A2+ being a grade given during an FA that generally now means lots and lots of beaking and knowing when a beak is bomber and when a beak is not bomber. And that's the rub,  getting enough practice with beaks to know how far into the red you can take them. (spoiler alert: you can take them really far into the red.) 

Do you have any info about the history of beaks? Was it a development in metallurgy that allowed for the design, or was it just a different design that the old guard hadn't considered?

Gregory H wrote:

Do you have any info about the history of beaks? Was it a development in metallurgy that allowed for the design, or was it just a different design that the old guard hadn't considered?

John Middendorf is your man.  Subscribe to his substack. 

duncan... wrote:

John Middendorf is your man.  Subscribe to his substack. 

Good shout! Lots of interesting reading over there. Cheers!

Any pitch of guidebook A3 I did was always way chiller than any pitch of guidebook C3.  YMMV.

Darin Berdinka wrote:

Any pitch of guidebook A3 I did was always way chiller than any pitch of guidebook C3.  YMMV.

That's because C3 is a more modern grade whereas much of the "guidebook" A3 is usually an older grade that hasn't been updated based upon new gear and/or is generally fixed pretty well. Ironically, the easier grade these days (on routes that see one or more ascents per year) is actually "A3 heads" as they tend to be fixed gear ladders as I've said upthread.