5.15 on gear?

With the push of sport grades going from .14d to .15c over the last 10 years or so, the hardest trad climb still remains pegged at 5.14c. Are we ever going to get to 5.15 on gear? Can it even be done?

I don't think that there is a question as to whether or not it can be done, I believe that it's more a question of when. Think about how many people are climbing 5.15 sport routes and pushing the grade, versus how many people are on the cutting edge of trad climbing. It's a very lopsided ratio, so I think it will just take longer to develop 5.15 trad. It's also worth noting that there are more blank overhanging sport cliffs than there are hard protectable faces, so it will likely take more than the strength and technique necessary to climb that hard, but a commitment to go out and find a line hard enough to call 5.15 while still being able to place protection on it.

roof cracks. Perhaps something at T-wall

It'll happen soon. All you'd have to do is find a gear-protectable face that has a ~v12-15 boulder problem on it somewhere. I can think of several here at the NRG.

The real rarity and challenge will be finding a pure 5.15 jamming splitter.

A pitch or two up on "the wall" there is a rising roof Crack that is probably 4-5 body lengths longs. Probably .3 to .5 in size, stuff like this exists. It's a lot of trouble to get to and there is a fine line separating impossible from hard.

At the rate current grade inflation is going it'll probably be done tomorrow or the next day and see subsequent repeat ascents by sponsored climbers seeking to fluff their resumes and pad their pockets. And then the Mortimer brother will move in to video and pimp it to the masses followed with a congratulatory call from President Trump!

Im newer to climbing and even newer to trad but to me it seems much more difficult once the line is actually found. In all of the Sharma and Ondra videos I've watched the draws are already placed on the bolts on these hard climbs. In most if not all of the trad videos I've seen the gear needs to be placed while they are climbing. I think if the gear can be pre-placed then heck yeah 5.15 trad can be done sooner than later.

That being said I would really like to see sharma and ondra climb that hard while placing their draws.

shoot I'm happy just climbing 5.4 and 5.5 right now. so maybe my vote doesn't count yet.

Depends because all the hard trad climbs I have seen are people who memorize and know exactly what piece of gear to place at every spot. Sure it makes it harder than sport but it still isn't really trad climbing. If you already basically have all your gear marked and know exactly what piece to use at what spot.

I would call it half trad half sport.

It is kinda like climbing an old sport route and clipping into a rusty bolt that you question. You know the clip is there you just aren't 100% sure they will hold.

i thought tom randall and his partner were working on some 5.15 level roof cracks in the desert?

Pnelson wrote: The real rarity and challenge will be finding a pure 5.15 jamming splitter.

This seems to be an obvious contender.

Edit: cross post with mpech

Daniel T wrote:Im newer to climbing and even newer to trad but to me it seems much more difficult once the line is actually found. In all of the Sharma and Ondra videos I've watched the draws are already placed on the bolts on these hard climbs. In most if not all of the trad videos I've seen the gear needs to be placed while they are climbing. I think if the gear can be pre-placed then heck yeah 5.15 trad can be done sooner than later. That being said I would really like to see sharma and ondra climb that hard while placing their draws. shoot I'm happy just climbing 5.4 and 5.5 right now. so maybe my vote doesn't count yet.

Yeah, it'll be more difficult for sure, but that difference in difficulty could plausibly end up being marginal. At the point at which people are climbing 5.15, they are projecting and dialing in every micro move. At that point, even the gear placements are memorized precisely, and can be thought of as "just another move."

The real trick, as others have pointed out in this thread, is finding a line that is conducive to adequate gear and high difficulty. It's not coincidental that Meltdown, one of the hardest lines ever sent, has pretty bad gear. Good gear happens in good features, which are much less likely in ultra high difficulty climbing. Much easier to find a line of super hard grades when you are not restricted by the availability of gear.

Some likely candidates, as others have pointed out, are roof cracks. Another potential possibility is going bolder, such as a route with an unprotectable high grade boulder problem crux, but which has good gear below it for a safe, but huge, fall. Those would be harder to project for sure, unless they can be top-roped to death first.

Edit:
And at the risk of starting a stupid flame war, it's worth pointing out that projecting the crap out of a gear route is not very traddy, whatever that means. More along the lines of sport on gear. But these definitions are arbitrary and fluid.

This is why onsite trad climbing is the shiznit....
and the guys that do it at the highest levels are the real badazzes

ViperScale wrote:I would call it half trad half sport.

So in your world, you aren't really climbing full on trad unless you have never been on the route before, or it's been so long that you forgot what gear you used?

In my book, a climb is traditional as long as it is lead without any pre-placed protection on the route. If it takes you more than one try, and you have memorized the placements, then it's a redpoint. If someone told you where the placements are, but you have never climbed the route before, it's a flash. But it's still trad climbing.

What if the placement is the same #2 for 100 feet wherever you want it whenever u want it like Indian Creek? Then what is it? I mean I can climb there and not even look at my rack sometimes.

BigB wrote:This is why onsite trad climbing is the shiznit.... and the guys that do it at the highest levels are the real badazzes

The guys that onsight trad climbs, also flash them and red-point them from time to time. And they generally red-point higher grades than they onsight. So what is your point?

If you've never onsighted a route but you red-point 5.15, does that mean you aren't as much of a badass as some guy who onsights everything he climbs, but only climbs stuff he knows he can onsight (say 5.13c)?

You know who a real "badass" climber is? It's that guy who only climbs 5.10, but can down a 5th of whisky without getting buzzed, starts bar fights with 3 guys at once, and did time for using his hands as lethal weapons when someone insulted his GF. That guy is way more "badass" than Sharma, Onedra, Caldwell and Honnold. He is not as badass as Bridwell though.

Making hard line distinctions between trad and sport is silly, and I don't understand why we need a binary and exclusive definitions. There are routes and styles of climbing which are more sporty, and routes and styles which are more traddy. Pre-placed gear / bolts are only one of many dimensions which make things more of one vs. the other.

It's pretty likely that a lot of the first 5.15 gear lines are going to highlight the grey area and exemplify why such distinctions are arbitrary.

Tom Egan Memorial Route is a good candidate if someone climbs it stance to stance. As it is right now, its 5.14 with a hanging belay halfway up the head wall between the two hardest crack pitches.

I highly doubt that any line that clocks in at 5.15 would even have features that would take gear except maybe RP's. Any bigger and they'd be much needed holds.
Also, don't underestimate the rarity of 5.15 lines period. Ondra had to work that cave in Norway. How hard was that to find? That we're talking limestone as the best opportunity for lines that hard you are really getting away from protectability.

Weren't several of the pitches on the Dawn Wall 5.14c/d? Granted, they may have been bolted, but that doesn't make them inherently NOT trad (see: Slab thread). Still, I could see the line getting blurry.

Another problem is that Sport grades and trad grades do not necessarily translate well. You could probably argue that Century Crack and the other ridiculous stuff Randall and Whittaker do is basically the equivalent of trad 5.15, even if it's not rated that (everyone knows trad ratings are stiffer ;) ).

Finally, I would echo the sentiment that a gear protectable 5.15 would be very hard to find, as the nature of what makes it 5.15 also makes it hard (if not impossible) to safely protect with gear. Many of the 5.14+ pitches on the Dawn Wall were basically blank walls. Cracks and other features that could be used for pro could also be used for free climbing, so the options really come down to bolts or soloing. Roof cracks are a good possible contender, but TBH that's way beyond my ability so I can't really speculate if a 5.15 roof crack is possible. :p

"On gear". Lol
Bolted routes get done all the time with like 1-2 pcs of gear after much rehearsal then gets X rating and claims of an ascent "on gear".

Projecting hard trad stuff is commonly referred to as "sprad" because it has elements of both sport and trad climbing.