Would this count as a flash?

Tal M wrote:

Nice opinion, just one tiny problem with it. Inspecting your comment, it looks like your opinion is different from mine. Let me tell you something, I am the baseline for opinions. Any opinion I hold is objectively correct and as a result, any other opinions are wrong. Guess what? You happen to hold the wrong one! I hope you know that your opinion is now illegal. I have contacted the FBI, CIA, the NSA, the navy seals, secret service, and your mom! You'll be sorry you ever shared your opinions, by the time you're reading this, you'll be done for. Nature will punish you, humanity will punish you, space will punish you. We decided just to make sure we'll nuke your house from orbit. So there's no chance you can run away, everyone will know you will die. It's a small price to pay, to remove your wrong opinion from this world.

I always thought tradiban was the baseline for correct opinions?

Reviving this thread because I’ve been giving this some more thought. Here’s what I think.

I think we first have to consider what it means to flash a boulder. A definition of flash that prohibits any touching of the holds would be too restrictive imo. It’s the standard for boulderers to feel holds before they give flash attempts, so if you say that you can’t touch any holds, you’d be negating many boulder flashes, and almost certainly some of the hardest ones ever. It would also feel very weird and arbitrary to say that you can only touch x% of holds.

So, you can touch holds from the ground, but you can’t pull on/try any moves. I’ll proceed assuming that’s accepted. Now we can imagine a lowball boulder where you can touch every hold from the ground. Given my previous claims, this boulder could still be flashed even if someone touched every single hold but never pulled on before trying it for the first time.

This starts to get funky when we consider sport climbs, like the OP brought up. If there are boulders where you can touch every hold before trying them and still flash, how can we say that you can’t rappel down a sport climb to touch all the holds without pulling on? I’m having trouble drawing a distinction that doesn’t allow rappelling down a route to touch holds, if you can touch every hold on a boulder and it still count as a flash.

What do people think?

Well, you bumped the thread...

As someone said earlier, the 8a.nu guy has thought about this more than anyone, except maybe Ondra. He's even made charts! So I went back and looked at what his latest thoughts were on a bouldering flash: "It is OK to watch a video and touch any holds you can reach from the starting position. If it is a roof near the ground it would NOT be OK to feel every hold and work the sequences just by dragging a foot on the ground. You are not allowed to rappel down the boulder and look at all holds. Once you leave the ground you can NOT reverse and save the onsight as sometimes is done in route redpoints."

The bolded part is I think the argument against your position there. Yes, this definition takes away from a lot of boulder ascents reported as flashes, including e.g. Ondra climbing Jade.

Its a flash if you didn't ask for an opinion on Mountain Project, since you did ask now nobody knows what it is.  Next time don't ask and call it a flash.

WWOD?

Why is it so important to you, that you didn't flash this one route?

Sam M wrote:

Well, you bumped the thread...

As someone said earlier, the 8a.nu guy has thought about this more than anyone, except maybe Ondra. He's even made charts! So I went back and looked at what his latest thoughts were on a bouldering flash: "It is OK to watch a video and touch any holds you can reach from the starting position. If it is a roof near the ground it would NOT be OK to feel every hold and work the sequences just by dragging a foot on the ground. You are not allowed to rappel down the boulder and look at all holds. Once you leave the ground you can NOT reverse and save the onsight as sometimes is done in route redpoints."

The bolded part is I think the argument against your position there. Yes, this definition takes away from a lot of boulder ascents reported as flashes, including e.g. Ondra climbing Jade.

Jens has thought about it a lot, sure, but also is known for having kooky outlier ideas on many topics. I think it's a mistake to view that 8a article as definitive on anything. It's just another weird Jens ramble.

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Regarding some of the prior debate on this old thread: it seems that in practice the standard for a flash is different, in certain ways, for bouldering vs sport climbing. I don't see any problem with this; they are different genres of climbing.

Only god knows.

You leave the ground, it's not a flash anymore. Same with bouldering, you can only pull on holds you can actually reach. How anybody would consider stick clipping up something to brush and hang draws, then climbing it a flash is beyond me. I don't know a single person that would consider this legit. Stop kidding yourselves.

Pino Pepino wrote:

You leave the ground, it's not a flash anymore. Same with bouldering, you can only pull on holds you can actually reach. How anybody would consider stick clipping up something to brush and hang draws, then climbing it a flash is beyond me. I don't know a single person that would consider this legit. Stop kidding yourselves.

You must not know any sport climbers.

Where did those draws come from?

Matt Himmelstein wrote:

You must not know any sport climbers.

Where did those draws come from?

I know plenty. And I’m fairly certain somebody else put those draws in. 

Pino Pepino wrote:

I know plenty. And I’m fairly certain somebody else put those draws in. 

So the stick clip is fine then?

I am old school, ground up, sport or trad you place your own gear or clip your own draws.  Pre-hung draws are a pink-point, but the world has left me and my way of thinking in the dust.

Pino Pepino wrote:

I don't know a single person that would consider this legit. Stop kidding yourselves.

When one cites real life friends as evidence in the court of internet, then they must also provide evidence that the real life friends exist.

Matt Himmelstein wrote:

So the stick clip is fine then?

I am old school, ground up, sport or trad you place your own gear or clip your own draws.  Pre-hung draws are a pink-point, but the world has left me and my way of thinking in the dust.

No, I don't think it is in this case, although I'm not as hung up about in-situ draws. Most routes in that grade range have project draws on them pretty much permanently. But putting the draws in yourself and brushing/checking holds is still a level above somebody putting in draws in your absence. 

Pino Pepino wrote:

No, I don't think it is in this case, although I'm not as hung up about in-situ draws. Most routes in that grade range have project draws on them pretty much permanently. But putting the draws in yourself and brushing/checking holds is still a level above somebody putting in draws in your absence. 

I don't climb the sort of routes that need perma-draws (except in the gym where that's all they have), but to me that takes away from the flash.  I do plenty of routes where a friend leads, I pull the rope, then lead it on his draws.  That is a pinkpoint.  Since we don't have that option in the tick list here, I add a note that I climbed on someone else's draws.  But, the world has passed me by on this issue.  Should someone working a route at the edge of our climbing ability be given greater deference than someone leading it at the edge of their own ability.  If there are pre-hung draws on a 5.14 and someone later removes or ignores them and places his own, does that degrade the previous climbs?

Rap down a route and I would say it isn't an onsight, but it can still be a flash.

pinkpoint 

What if rapping down the route is the only way in? Should I shut my eyes to preserve the on sight?