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General Climbing Discussion

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Ability of sport vs trad .. 22-Apr-2004 At 6:10:46 PM Estey

Message

On 22/04/2004 Edward Frillypants wrote:
>In reply to rodw
>> blueys is notorious for softer rock than araps. Its easier to push the"trad"
>barrier when you know the gear below has a better chance of holding.
>
>Whilst I appreciate your later point about diversity, I would take issue
>with the picture you are painting above of Blue Mountains trad climbing.
>The Blue Mountains has a considerable amount of terrific trad climbing,
>much of it on excellent rock with bomber protection.
>
I believe you are both correct. The Blue Mountains has hundreds of quality trad routes in the 13-21 range. However apart from a handful of classic finger cracks in the 22-23 range there are not many trad climbs above 21. There are probably two reasons for this. Firstly as Rod pointed out the rock generally isn't strong enough to support small gear (ie micro cams/wires). Secondly Blue mountains sandstone has less features that take natural protection than say the Gramps or Araps (with the obvious exception of the standard corner cracks and horizontal breaks that the Blue Mountains is famous for). The blank walls lend themselves to bolt protected climbing.

I'm not sure how much geography effects your trad-sport grade spread. Perhaps because of the above points a high end Blue Mountains climber would have a higher spread than a Mexican with the same ability.