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General Climbing Discussion

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Sport grades 'higher' than trad? 15-Nov-2011 At 10:55:39 AM PThomson

Message

On 5/11/2011 Wendy wrote:
>Sport is scary. Someone else has decided where the gear should go for
>you, and it's rarely in agreement with where I think the gear should go
>(which is usually about every 30cm!).

I seem to recall hearing you say that somewhere before, Wendy. Satanic Majesty at Frog, perhaps? =P

With respect to grades... I accept that pumping out placing gear, and being scared of falling on gear are definately factors... But I also think that most trad climbs seem to be put up by "harder" climbers than you're average sports climber, for whom Excalibur isn't a sandbag at 17 (that would be at least a 19 if it was on bolts).

As Wendy said, I also find that Trad climbing -because of the availability of gear placements, and also what constitutes a climb safe enough for trad- tends to result in less "ladder-esque" movements than your standard sport routes (all the weirdest moves I've ever done have been on trad climbs), which make things FEEL harder than the grade solely because you're not used to doing them (or have an opportunity to practice the move all that often).

These things also -I think- would be a piece of piss to your average "hard man trad climber" (the sort of climber who actually does the off-width start to Infinity) because he (or she) probably HAVE had an opportunity to practice these sorts of weird moves.

**

As others have said here... When I look at going out to lead a trad route (a multipitch in particular), I usually add 2 grades to the official grade of the climb, and then re-evaluate how confident I feel about climbing it.