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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

 Page 1 of 3. Messages 1 to 20 | 21 to 40 | 41 to 50
Author
If its A5 where are the bodies?
PDRM
4-Feb-2008
2:11:29 PM
This is a bloody classic but completely logical argument that if an aid route is graded A5 then a number of people *should* have died in the process of validating the grade. It's accepted that people will fall validating the grade of a difficult sport climb, and maybe the same of trad (?) but if it's an A5 aid route then by definition a fall could result in curtains.

http://www.splitterchoss.com/blog/2007/10/17/the-aid-climbing-rant/

.M

IdratherbeclimbingM9
4-Feb-2008
2:43:33 PM
This one has appeared before ...

On 1/11/2007 brendan wrote:
>i found this video from a link off andy kirpatrick's pychovertical website
>http://www.splitterchoss.com/blog/2007/10/17/the-aid-climbing-rant/ this
>should stir up some people

& I replied;
Quite an interesting link brendan. Thanks for posting it.
I tend to agree with Chris Kalous's 'rant', which is why (amongst other things), I am a staunch supporter of Australia retaining its open ended 'M' system of grading Aid Climbs.
PDRM
4-Feb-2008
3:00:46 PM
Apologies - delete if you wish mods. Clicked through to it from the link the Trango Storm Shelter - hadn't seen it.

.M

IdratherbeclimbingM9
4-Feb-2008
3:52:55 PM
It was contained deep within a five page thread and probably did not get much coverage due the obscure topic, so leaving it as a stand-alone item would be appropriate.
brendan
4-Feb-2008
8:27:11 PM
yeah i think it deserves a seperate thread
brendan
4-Feb-2008
8:40:29 PM
actually i think it deserves a lemmings type effort from a bunch of young aid climbers to jump on A5+ climbs and die then we'll confirm the grade

sliamese
4-Feb-2008
10:11:47 PM
if this is the clip i think it is its a stupid and illogical argument. doesnt a grade indicate the POTENTIAL of what could happen?? by the same logic for a free climb to get and R or even X rating the FA party have to fall at the bad bit. isnt it possible to climb something and not fall, while realising the potential to F&@^ yourself up was pretty high! i dont think objective dangers like ledges need to be proven killers for them to be dangerous!
uwhp510
5-Feb-2008
1:36:46 PM
On 4/02/2008 sliamese wrote:
>doesnt a grade indicate the POTENTIAL of what could happen??

Clearly it does, but if, in the course of a statistically significant number of ascents, these potential dangers are never realised, then either the dangers are not as bad as they're made out to be, or else everyone is very lucky (in which case your sample was too small anyway).

Its not quite the same as in scary trad, because the gear on a scary trad route would hopefully be seldom tested whereas on a scary aid climb, every bit of gear is tested every time the route gets climbed. I think the same sort of argument applies to run-out slab climbing. It definitely feels insecure, but then again, people don't fall much, so its demonstrably not as dangerous as it seems when you are up there.

IdratherbeclimbingM9
5-Feb-2008
1:50:36 PM
>so its demonstrably not as dangerous as it seems when you are up there.

... unless you fall.

mousey
5-Feb-2008
2:04:51 PM
exactly... its all A1 till you fall :)
PDRM
5-Feb-2008
2:29:26 PM
On 5/02/2008 mousey wrote:
>exactly... its all A1 till you fall :)

Which is part of the reason I started the thread.

(SNIP) M9
>"I have been giving the Aid Grade conversions some thought and have come up with the following if anyone is interested.

>USA Australian
>A0 = M1
>A1 = M1
>A2 = M2
>A2+ = M3
>A3 = M4
>A3+ = M5
>A4 = M6
>A4+ = M7
>A5 = M8
>A6 = M9 (theoretical)

>Feedback (pro or con) welcome."

If we have a one to one grading match up with the seppos, why be the one country in the world (that I know of?) not to use the New Wave Ax system? Unless we have something better?

As I understand it the start of the M system came from Ewbanks as well and was initially used to designate the number of M (mechanical) moves in an otherwise free climb. It was not really initially intended as a specialist aid grading system. If we take it literally then a multi-pitch aid climb could end up with a grade like M60...

If we are going to go it alone and it doesn't mean mechanical and doesn't mean injury/death potential, what does the M system mean? If it's an arbitrary 'difficulty rating' (as the 5.x and Ewbanks systems are - they are just accepted now, and kept 'calibrated' by consensus), then how do we get consensus on thinly climbed routes? Maybe we don't and we just accept some degree of wigginess in Mx grades...

By definition a hard aid route is one with many precarious/body weight or less placements where a placement failure means a zippered (long) fall. To come back to someone else's point above, to get a long fall in either sport or trad climbing you have to have two events, a falling climber and one or more stripped pieces of pro. Hard aid is by definition aid where there is higher fall potential, and injury if the terrain isn't friendly. This is why to me the Ax system still has some merit, not withstanding its closed-endedness.

Thoughts?

.Macca

IdratherbeclimbingM9
5-Feb-2008
3:01:27 PM
Your quote of me is from the 'Defender of the Faith & Aid Grades' thread which has been superceded by events such as Copperhead Road being graded M9 ... ~> ... which is a perfect example of an open ended system working well.

On 5/02/2008 .Macca wrote:
>As I understand it the start of the M system came from Ewbanks as well and was initially used to designate the number of M (mechanical) moves in an otherwise free climb. It was not really initially intended as a specialist aid grading system. If we take it literally then a multi-pitch aid climb could end up with a grade like M60...

Not so.
Some may have misinterpreted it as that, but it was always meant to signify degree of difficulty/safety/exposure etc (ala free climbing), NOT number of 'mechanical' placements.


>If we have a one to one grading match up with the seppos, why be the one
>country in the world (that I know of?) not to use the New Wave Ax system?
>Unless we have something better?

We are not the only country to have our own system. South Africa, Russia, some European countries (and probably other countries too if I was to spend the time in research), all have their own Aid Grade Systems.

>how do we get consensus on thinly climbed routes?

By repeat ascents giving feedback to the climbing community.

>Maybe we don't and we just accept some degree of wigginess in Mx grades...

There will always be 'wigginess' in any grading system whether it be free or aid.

>Hard aid is by definition aid where there is higher fall potential, and injury if the terrain isn't friendly.
>This is why to me the Ax system still has some merit, not withstanding
>its closed-endedness.

So why did the yanks morph their system into the 'length of fall' criteria that they now incorporate into their Aid grading?, or in fact feel the need to overhaul the original with the 'New Wave'?

In my opinion it is because they couldn't delineate between extremely blerrie hard and harder!
The biggest drawback I see in their system is that as climbing standards rose and grades got harder they did not have the flexibility to delineate between the hardest grades. In effect they were 'scrunched up' in the top end grades.
Jim Beyer tried to break that mold by introducing his desert aid grades which extended their system considerably, though I admit it would take a sicko aficionado to appreciate the subtle differences, and not many have the experience at that high end to delineate.

Our Australian system has none of these drawbacks.

anthonyk
5-Feb-2008
3:04:11 PM
welll... there's still a difference between likelihood of falling and consequences if you do fall. thats sort of what the english free climbing grades cover. i guess they're a tiny bit more linked in aid climbing because you are moving off the pieces that would also hold you in a fall, but you can still look at them separately.


what the guy in the rant isn't taking into account is that people will be a *lot* more scrutinising of which climbs they are going to attempt if the risk and consequences are so high. you can still have routes that have high difficulty and high likelihood of dying and have no one die on it, because people are only going to get on it if they are very skilled and confident of being able to do it.

the argument i'm hearing is that if its hard and dangerous then statistically there should be bodies at the bottom. well maybe that would happen if you took a cross section of the community and threw them at every climb, you'd get more bodies at the bottom of the more dangerous climbs, but thats not what happens, the more dangerous a climb gets the more carefully people choose if they'll try it. it doesn't mean the grades are bogus.
uwhp510
5-Feb-2008
3:30:53 PM
On 5/02/2008 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>... unless you fall.

Which doesn't happen very often, which is exactly the point. (QED suckas)

IdratherbeclimbingM9
5-Feb-2008
3:34:52 PM
?
I am not sure of your meaning (particularly QED, ... something like quid pro quo?).

I fell three times off an M6 the other day. I am still here to talk about it. Does that mean it isn't M6?

I think your assumption(?) that an aid grade (mostly??), indicates potential for injury is erroneous.
This is but one factor in the over-riding consideration of degree of difficulty.

anthonyk wrote;
>but thats not what happens, the more dangerous a climb gets the more carefully people choose if they'll try it. it doesn't mean the grades are bogus.

Excellent point/s.
spicelab
5-Feb-2008
3:39:50 PM
On 5/02/2008 anthonyk wrote:
>welll... there's still a difference between likelihood of falling and consequences
>if you do fall. thats sort of what the english free climbing grades cover.

And on that topic, a similar derisory outburst could be made against English E-grades. Wasn't E9 originally spruiked as death on a stick and therefore the ceiling? Now we've got E10 and E11 and no-one has come close to dieing on them. What gives? Little shit though he may have been in the past, Toby Benham doesn't seem to have been too far off the mark in making untold enemies in England by mouthing off to the Brits about how the difficulty and danger of these routes is exaggerated.
uwhp510
5-Feb-2008
3:44:06 PM
I don't know. Maybe you fell before the crux? Maybe its not M6? Maybe you were lucky?

What I'm saying is that if you went back and climbed it 100 times and fell 100 times and didn't get hurt at all, it probably isn't M6 (or maybe it is and M6 isn't all that hard/dangerous... I don't know).

(caveat: I am not an aid climber, so this might all be tripe... but it seems logical enough to me).

QED is short for "quod erat demonstrandum" and means "what was demonstrated" in latin (you put it at the end of mathematical proofs as a way of saying "I'm right so sucked in!")

IdratherbeclimbingM9
5-Feb-2008
4:05:38 PM
On 5/02/2008 uwhp510 wrote:
>I don't know. Maybe you fell before the crux? Maybe its not M6? Maybe
>you were lucky?

It was the crux of that pitch.

>What I'm saying is that if you went back and climbed it 100 times and
>fell 100 times and didn't get hurt at all, it probably isn't M6.

Is this the same logic that would have me believe that Casey Stoner* is not fast on a motorbike 'cos he does a hundred laps without getting hurt?
[*current MotoGP World Champion, (~ and an Aussie!), ~ for those who don't know].

>QED is short for "quod erat demonstrandum" and means "what was demonstrated"
>in latin (you put it at the end of mathematical proofs as a way of saying
>"I'm right and your wrong if you disagree")

Thanks for the explanation. I think I have heard of the term before but it obviously never stuck with me.

>I guess I can conceive of the potential for an aid route that has a couple
>of severely dodgy pieces above some bomber ones so you most likely fall
>a few times with no consequences, but I didn't think these could be considered
>A4 (or M6 or whatever) and that's not what we are talking about here anyway.

I am talking nuances within grading system and you are talking statistics? No wonder we are not making much sense to each other!

Btw, why don't you think falling (without consequence), on crap gear located above good gear could be considered M6? I think you may have overlooked the 'degree of difficulty' nuance of the grading system.
:)
owl
5-Feb-2008
4:45:29 PM
Yeh, and the same's true for E10/11. I saw the E11 vid. I've seen scarier in Australia without making a big fuss about it. The guy's wire broke and he even had another one right next door to it! Soft!!! If you say E11 surely it's got to be the most extreme grade available.

gordoste
5-Feb-2008
5:04:11 PM
On 5/02/2008 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>Jim Beyer tried to break that mold by introducing his desert aid grades
>which extended their system considerably, though I admit it would take
>a sicko aficionado to appreciate the subtle differences, and not
>many have the experience at that high end to delineate.
>
>Our Australian system has none of these drawbacks.
>

Worth reading this article about a repeat of Jim Beyer's A6 "Intifada"

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