It's Not Because I Love You
I want to talk about quickdraws this week. In particular the perma-draw.
When I started climbing as a youngster back in 1992 I was
eleven years old and sport climbing had been around long enough to have escaped
the bolt wars, the rap-bolt wars, the trad wars, the sad wars, and any other
kind of war you can imagine. Although I’m
sure sport climbers still received a vast amount of judgmental anguish from
trad climbers. I won’t even go into
bouldering since crash pads hadn’t even been invented yet. However the quickdraw seemed paramount to
attaining any kind of climbing glory when I was introduced to the activity of
climbing on a rope. In my recollection
the only permanent draws I ever saw were in the gym. It seemed ludicrous to place your own gear in
a controlled environment where people
went to learn how to climb and become
more proficient at it in order to achieve their goals outside (in an uncontrolled environment). When I went climbing outside my most prized possession
was my sport rack; which I had to beg my parents for the money for, thwarting
video game systems, soccer cleats, new roller blades, or Magic cards. Climbing outside always meant placing your
own draws, I never saw permanent draws, probably because they hadn’t been
invented yet either just like the crash pad.
This definitely resulted in a loss of gear from time to time. But so it
goes.
When I picked climbing back up in 2006 I was mainly climbing
5.10’s and 5.11’s and just starting to break into the 5.12’s. My experience with other crags and their
inherent ethics was minimal at best and even in 2006/7 the perma-draw had still
not been invented (if it had I never saw one).
I can remember my first trip to Smith, full of hubris and gym inflated
ego and flailing my way up someone’s pre-placed mank on Churning. Thank god those draws were there because I
pulled on a lot of them. Back in
Washington my introduction to Little si was slow, but I remember it well. The only routes that had any gear on them at
all were what I considered in those days (and still do) ‘the big rigs’,
basically anything 5.12c and harder.
Climbing a line easier than that on what we consider perma-draws now
would have been bizarre. We always
placed our own gear on sport climbs unless we were projecting and even then at
the end of the day we would take our mank off the route and home with us. Little si has grown in popularity just as the
nearby cities have grown in population and about 4 years ago there was a major effort
on the part of some incredibly diligent and loving locals to replace a lot of
the nylon and aluminum ‘perma-draws’ that blanketed popular hard routes like
Propaganda, Chronic, Techno extension, Psychosomatic extension and Flatliner,
Porpaganda, Hydrophobia extension, Enigma, Dr. Evil, Extended Illness, Lizard
Prince, Porn Star, Black Ice, and the Whore of Babylon. Everything else no matter how classic or
popular was left blank, and for a good reason.
1)
It is, and always has been, my understanding
that we place permanent draws on routes that are hard to clean. Any other
argument goes down a philosophical rabbit hole that only ends in us chasing our
tales as we go round and round on a carousel laziness and bullshit reasoning.
2)
The other reasons are simply because the route is hard and it’s hard to
place the draws each time when you want to work the moves, but since hard is
subjective to the user this reason falls on its face. What’s hard to a 5.9 climber is laughable to
a 5.12 climber and so on and so forth.
3)
We put perma-draws on a route because it’s popular. This argument is stupid because it faces certain
economic downfalls like the free-rider problem and the tragedy of the
commons. If a resource is free (at least
to the majority of users) it becomes over-utilized and eventually destroyed,
which has been the case in certain
climbing areas. So this argument is
fucked as well.
You can see why this topic is difficult to address.
Now, within the past year, slowly, more and more perma draws
have made their way onto some of the lower end yet highly popular routes. At first it was the majority of Abo that received
perma-draws. Okay, I get that, Porn Star
is awesome and ridiculously hard and it’s nice to have draws on Abo when your projecting
Porn Star, even though if you’re strong enough to project Porn Star you are obviously
strong enough to place your own draws on Abo as well as retrieve them at the
end of the day; however Porn Star wanders far left from the original line of
Abo so cleaning the draws would be nearly impossible and actually would force
the climber to have to re-climb Abo to get the draws off. So perma draws on Abo seems to make sense.
However, this seemingly unobtrusive gesture to lace an
entire 5.11b route with perma draws was setting an invisible standard that we
locals were somewhat blind to. By doing
so you send a message to visiting climbers that this is business as usual. If we are willing to spend the money to put
perma-draws on a route graded 5.11b than why not put perma draws on every 5.11
route? Why not put them on every
5.10? Where does it stop?? If I was a visiting climber I would look at
that and immediately assume that the locals here don’t mind perma-draws
everywhere on everything.
So it does not come as a shock to me when I showed up to
Little si this past Saturday to yet another popular 5.11 route completely laced
with perma draws. I wasn’t mad at the
fact that these new perma-draws were uglier than the usual ones
found on a lot of the other hard route here at Little si, (they were some kind
of ‘franken-draw’ with a long and short draw option, the short draw kind of
protruding out of the top of the quicklink, it looked like some kind of weird
kitchen utensil), or the fact that no one understood why they had been put on
this route. I complained about them not
knowing that the equipper was actually at the crag that day. Upon returning the next day I saw that he was
there and had a somewhat passive exchange with him about the draws. My position was that I just didn’t see a need
to equip this route with perma draws.
Especially the kind he had put on the route (the weird double ‘franken-draw’
that gives the climber a short or long option).
He explained to me that he wanted to make everyone happy and give the
climbers who were trying Psychowussy the short option, and climbers who were
trying Psychosomatic or Flatliner the longer option. My response was simply, why didn’t you just
put short draws on the entire route and then when you project Flatliner place
your own long draws on it (which is what I did). He didn’t seem to understand the need to do
that. I’m not trying to bash on the individual
who put these perma-draws up. After
climbing with him that day he is a great guy, a strong climber, and I’m sure
his intentions were coming from a place of wanting to contribute and help.
So here is the conundrum.
How do we police our local crag?
Do we let anyone with the means to do so equip routes no matter what the
level of difficulty? Am I being an
outdated douche-bag? Is the problem with me and my inability to
adapt to or accept change? When do we equip a route with perma-draws,
what kind of perma-draws do we use, and at what level of difficulty warrants
the equipping of a route?
In closing I would just like to say that if I could snap my
fingers and return Little si to the way it was -approximately four-five years
ago - with no route below 5.12c being equipped with perma-draws, I would do it
in a heartbeat. I think placing your own
gear up to a certain level is a rite of passage. I think using perma-draws up to a certain
level of difficulty is acceptable considering the nature of the climb and how
difficult it is to clean. But this is
all very new to me, and this is also just my opinion. I would really like to know what the climbing
community at large thinks about this issue.
I have not really been privy to any in-depth conversations surrounding
this issue. And I’m sure the statements
I’ve made above are riddled with hypocrisy.
In the end it would be awesome to have some kind
of standards and criteria made for equipping routes, as well as some kind of
local governing body that visiting climbers could contact in order to consult
about local ethics and permission to equip certain routes. I definitely do not think this should be a
free for all. Never in the history of
anything has that worked out well. I
also want to make it overtly clear that I am not bashing the guy who equipped
Psychowussy. He invested time and money
in something he thought would make the crag better and I want to encourage that
behavior but maybe with a more conservative approach. Again, locals set the standard with their
behaviors and their actions which can be interpreted in a myriad of ways by
visiting climbers. Not every crag has
the same ethics, and not every climber shares my opinion or experiences. I want everyone to enjoy this crag in a safe
manner, I want everyone visiting this crag to be challenged, awe inspired, and
psyched on climbing. But there has to be
a balance between a clean climbing aesthete, and the aesthete of a gym. I think I know what that looks like, but I
would definitely like some help fleshing it out.
Comments
You are right, we generally accept permadraws on routes that are past a certain level of difficulty to make the climbing easier, and many climbers purposefully adjust the length of draws to make easier clipping positions.
While I aesthetically dislike the idea of putting permadraws up easy routes, it has always seemed unfair to me that we relegate acceptance of permadraws for hard climbs and climbers, but not for novice climbers trying easier routes (which, to be fair, 5.11 for a 5.1 climber can be as challenging as 5.14 for a 5.13 climber).
It almost seems backwards - the harder you climb, the more acceptable it is to prepare the route to make the send as easy as possible, but the newer you are to the sport, the more you are expected to climb "pure." Thoughts?
I guess that's a preamble to saying that all these things seem like uphill battles. Regardless of my opinion about the permadraws, they have no real impact on my climbing experience save for being somewhat of an eyesore. I suppose one real issue is that if a steel biner ever needs replacementcent, you'll need a cutter to get the tamper proofing off the biner.
Now in terms of impacts there are others that have or may soon have much greater impacts. Excessive cleaning of boulders and routes comes to mind. Crazy, power tool facilitated landings for boulder problems come to mind. Via ferrata and bolted-on holds come to mind (i shit you not, those two things have happened recently ay a crag near and dear to all of us). This isn't to say that you shouldn't raise an issue about permadraws. It's more to say that there might be other more dire transgressions occurring in the meantime.
As for the easy\hard fixed draw question, I think people are crazy for spending the kitty to equip evwry route, but in the end it's not really up to me. If it were me doing it I would have put them on hard clips only, but maybe that's because i can't recall a time when $2000 was burning a hole in my pocket for something convenient but hardly a strict necessity.
Anyhow, discussion is good and sport climbing is neither.
This post is mainly to vent a building frustration about how people have become lazy, stupid, and entitled when it comes to (everything) climbing, especially sport climbing. You’re also right by the fact that overall it does not affect my climbing experience (permadraws that is), but, and here is where it gets selfish (on my part), it triggers my adult onset OCD, my right eye twitches, and I can’t help but become staggeringly annoyed at the sight of yet more and more permadraws cluttering up an already grid-bolted wall. Especially routes that have ZERO reason to have permadraws on them (Rainy Day, Psychowussy, Bust The Move).
Of course I have no careful way of conveying my message of ‘ethical elitism’ (as you put it) except to plead to the audience at large for their ideas. Surely we can come to a consensus about exactly what should be equipped and what should not. Or can we? Surely the people who deplore you to ‘just climb man’ have no real sense of why it is you ‘just climb, man.’ And that’s yet another reason for the post. Am I being petty? Should I just shut up and climb? A large part of who I am and why I gravitated to climbing in the first place won’t allow it. So here we are. In the end I ask for other’s opinions to either reinforce and validate my own, or reinforce the fact that I’m overreacting. It’s a learning experience.
It’s kind of my belief, and I hinted at this in the post, that new climbers should in fact be placing all of their own gear as they climb the ladder of grades (excuse the pun). For one, it teaches them about the importance of wear and tear on said gear, how to use and understand the construction of their gear, the ethics behind leaving gear on a route, taking care of your gear, and for all intents and purposes will make you a better more knowledgeable climber. By equipping easier routes I feel as if we rob new climbers of this process, this ‘rite of passage’.
Again, I would make the case that there is only really ONE valid reason to PERMANENTLY equip a route and that would be because it’s difficult/impossible to clean which is usually synonymous with the route being difficult/overhung/wandering etc.
Advocates of permadraws will undoubtedly point to the tragedy that took Tito Claudio Traversa to bolster the use of permadraws as a solution to this kind of fatalistic misuse of gear. And my response would be: read the first paragraph of this comment if you truly want a solution to fatal climbing accidents related to gear failures. Even permadraws wear thin, especially on popular routes and have even been known to shear and/or severe ropes.
The overarching problem, and the thing that is really stuck in my craw, is that we just constantly want to make things easier for ourselves. How can I make the world easier for my brain? Thinking and learning is so taxing, can’t we just put safeguards in place so I don’t have to waste time thinking and learning about my environment? And what do we do with all that extra energy once the safeguards are in place? We spend it writing diatribes about said safegurads I’m certainly not in one extreme camp or the other. I’ve done a TON of climbing on fixed gear, I’ve also done a TON of climbing on my own gear. I guess what I am advocating for is a realistic balance. Let’s equip the routes that actually need to be equipped, and lets not equip routes just because we can.
I would be just as happy with completely outlawing perma-draws, I personally find them pretty hideous. But, my experience is that the trend at steep sport crags is that you either get nasty tat, or nice perma-draws, and nothing inbetween. So perma-draws seems like the lesser of two evils.
Interestingly, I'm pretty sure that the perma-draws on abo are ones that I originally hung on Oval Orifice to encourage more traffic on that route, but slowly they got shifted over to abo for some reason.
That said Micah, I agree with much of what you said. People are lazy and expect that safety will follow them outside to the crag. I've railed about this temdency ad nauseum, hence my being branded elitist. Rather, I think the attitude is reinforced by a love of climbing and the sense of exploration that spurred most of us to pursue climbing in the first place. As I said I welcome and attempt to incite the discussion, but there's increasing resistance. Convenience is king and people see climbing not as a space for the pursuit of personal knowledge and power but as a kind of casual sport with a very rote system of measurement as in other sports, where dealing with actual risk or fear is an alien concept.
This is an overgeneralization though and I acknowledge that, but the general trend is unmistakable to me. If everyone could spend a day on alpine rock, I think they'd better understand the relativity of risk and the value of climbing not as a means to an end, but as a continuum of experience that has unimaginable value to so many of us.
Rant over! Sport climbing is fun. It should be fun, but it should remain part of a greater set of challenges that we call climbing as opposed to becoming even more of a sort of conveniently casual pursuit, which it already is to some extent.
Morgan, I think what you said in your comment is exactly what I’m advocating for; “Up until that point, nobody had placed perma-draws on the warm-ups, and we assumed that would continue.” This strikes at the heart of my post. Why didn’t it continue? Why are we starting to see random permadraws on lower end, easy to clean climbs? Followed suddenly by the equipping of entire routes (warm-ups) with permadraws?
What Eric is hinting at is, I believe, probably the purest way to go about dealing with a sport crag and maybe historically speaking the way it has traditionally been handled. It does seem, given the current climate dealing with sport climbing and all of its ingratiated ethics, a tad puritanical and maybe even unrealistic to assume climbers will follow this style. However, now I’m starting to feel as if all of my ascents don’t count anymore (kidding of course).
In the end I would uphold what Andrew has said: “Best practice is to use the permadraws. Sport climbing is fun. It should be fun, but it should remain part of a greater set of challenges that we call climbing as opposed to becoming even more of a sort of conveniently casual pursuit, which it already is to some extent.” The most important part of what he said is that ‘it (climbing) should remain a greater set of challenges’. Yes, exactly. There is much more to be said here but I believe what he is saying creates a platform for my point about finding a balance in sport climbing; between having every route armed to the teeth with steel or having nothing fixed to aid our quest for physical and mental revelation.
I don’t want to be labeled as the ‘permadraw-hater-guy’; I understand the need for permadraws and all the associated safety they provide. I’m trying to understand our (the climbing community’s) philosophy behind their utilization as a whole in order to provide the framework for their use in the future.
It seems to me that saying ‘we should only put permadraws on hard climbs’ creates the backdrop for a slippery slope-style discussion in which we chase our tails talking about the definition of ‘hard’ (your warm-up is somebody else’s project kind of deal).
But we still have not addressed my question: So how do we decide what gets permadraws and what doesn’t and how do you go about explaining this reasoning to someone who wants to put permadraws on a route that you deem doesn’t need/deserve them?
The climbing community is notoriously passive aggressive and maybe posting this only adds to that affect. We seem to be hesitant in electing a clear, black and white method for dealing with the use of permadraws, their maintenance, removal, and placement. I would suggest that we create a kind of ’local crag council’ that has the experience (such as you three) and knowledge about the crag, it’s history, and the local ethics that have been practiced there. There needs to be some kind of mechanism for a negative feedback system here. I personally do not want to see the entire crag permadrawed. Without sounding like a total elitist douche my vote is to only have extensions, or even certain extensions, equipped with a community approved permadraw. And even then, someone should be designated as the equipment checker.
Maybe we need to bolt a plaque with a list of recommendations for crag maintenance to the base of the crag, I don't know how else you'd maintain continuity.
A few questions I'd like to ask.
Do we use grades as a crutch to justify not cleaning routes that are not that steep?
At what point do ethics over ride safety?
Do we care to quantify or even consider the reduction of commitment enabled by leaving draws of any kind (nylon or steel) on routes?
My opinion on the first question: While overhanging just about all routes at Little Si could be cleaned on lower. Perhaps Pornification, since it traverses so far, but I'm pretty sure flat liner, pornstar, techno etc would be fine. Using the cleaning excuse for propoganda is laughable. I dont have insight into the 14s.
I'm not in this for the drama. I'm an outsider, not a visiting climber. And yes I was trying to contribute in a positive way.
As an aside I'm curious about Andrews point about not trying to reduce sport climbing any further. I think this is a going to be very relevant in the modern age where more and more people are going outside.
Now to your questions.
Do we use grades as a crutch to justify not cleaning routes that are not that steep?
No, and in fact I debunked this reasoning behind equipping difficult routes in my post and in some of the commentary. In short, difficult is subjective; what’s difficult to me is not to you and vice versa and what’s difficult to a beginner is, well, essentially everything. So the reasoning behind permanently equipping a route based solely on its difficulty falls on its face due to a circular logic quandary which I’m sure would even have the guys and gals on the supreme court asking for a longer lunch. There are dead vertical 5.14’s in the Frankenjura that haven’t seen steel since their inception, their hangers lonelier than Kim Davis at a gay pride parade. Propaganda is permanently equipped for reasons that have to do with a climber who was dear to the small NW community and left us early in his life (or at least this is my understanding).
At what point do ethics over ride safety?
Unfortunately I would not know how to go about answering this question seeing as how, in my opinion, safety is but a component that makes up the spiral staircase of DNA that creates the ethics we see enforced and internalized within climbing. Why do we teach people how to use their gear at all if we can simply cut out the middle man and equip everything? Would that not in a sense make sport climbing ‘safer’ thus qualifying it for a higher ethical grade than other ‘extreme’ sports/hobbies? No, in my opinion it wouldn’t. Is it ethical to send lines of high paying gumbies up Mt. Everest when they don’t know their assholes from a jumar? It’s my experience that when people start questioning the ethical validity behind local traditions they use ‘safety’ as a guise to override and undermine those traditions in order to supplant them in favor of their own agenda and views. I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing here, but is this really about safety? Are permadraws going to make rock climbing safe? Safer, maybe, but I’ve been at World Wall on two separate occasions where I’ve had to call 9-1-1 as a result of a ground fall in which permadraws would have done nothing to help these naive cads who hurt themselves because they didn’t know what they were doing. Spurred on by their friends, alcohol (in one case), and blind ignorance about climbing, how to use their gear, and knowing their limits. Another accident this year had to do with someone being lowered off the end of their rope, one woman is now paralyzed as a result of falling off the ledge. My point being that WE cannot simply snap our fingers, replace some aluminum with steel and credit ourselves for making the crag a safer place. Safety is an illusion. If we truly cared about being safe we would stay home and do nothing. So, in the end, I don’t buy this whole safety argument. There are too many vagaries, too many grey areas, too many philosophical loop holes. What’s ethical is teaching people how to treat the crag respectfully, teaching people the importance of their gear and its use, teaching people how to engage in this sport with a modicum of humility, grace, fear, confidence, and adventure.
I’m running out of steam and time here. But I’ll try to answer this. Which is to say, I’ll simply divert to Andrews incredibly well written blog. I’m a little confused by the question itself (which shouldn’t come as a shock since I’m confused by a lot in my life) but if you’re hinting at the effect equipped versus non-equipped states have on the difficulty of routes than I think a combination of Ellis and Andrew could answer that. I definitely think it would change my approach on several routes at Little si.
Before I go, thank you again for engaging! Love the conversation and look forward to continuing it. In the end, we are all here to challenge ourselves (hopefully) and through that challenge learn something about our preconceived ideas of our finite capabilities.
It reduces commitment for climbers attempting a route that is too hard. There is no risk of lost equipment. The experience is changed but I think the tendency to try harder routes is increased. My opinion is that this is a good thing. I want people to push themselves and in a way fixed draws enable this. Perhaps a flawed argument with a clear rebuttal but I go sport climbing for the physical/mental challenge of climbing at my limit. Clipping is not part of the equation.
Perhaps it irrelevant but I do often climb alpine/trad routes. Maybe this skewes my perspective since the climbing experience I seek when sport climbing is vastly different than on sighting long trad routes.
But coming back to my main point. It is damn convenient to have fixed draws that are steel. There is minimal wear risk for years. I see no reason for nylon draws to be left fixed at the crag at all.
I don't buy the tragedy of the commons excuse for maintenence. World Wall is small. At rifle or the jailhouse the number of perma-draws is more than double the total number of bolts at the world wall. Maybe 10 times. If the community supports perma draws they can maintain them. As a new member of this community I'm more than happy to help. I also intend to help replace old bolts at Little Si as I've done at numerous other areas.
Steel biners and perma draws are not that expensive. As an example there are 6 bolts on psycho wussy. 2 of which already had fixed draws placed by other people. Thus my total cost was ~$80 for the 4 remaining bolts.
But I'm losing the plot again. The final point I'd like to revisit convinence. A big benefit of fixed draws and even more so, fixed lower offs is the time savings. This applies in both to putting draws on a route and taking them off. This may be small on a single climber level but the amout of time for everyone equipping and cleaning could be significant. I have gone to world wall after work and time is precious. Same with the weekends where the number of suitors for routes is high. Again it's a personal opinion but I would happily sacrifice making people put their own draws on a route in exchange for everyone getting another few attempts on their project.
This leaves me with the final question. How long is acceptable for leaving draws on a route? After a single attempt? The end of the day? The weekend? The end of the season? How does this vary if the draws are steel? What about the color of the draws?
I ask this not to try to be pointed (and please don't take it personally) but because I'm curious about the opinions. Eyesore has been mentioned and I think the newer grey climb tech draws are a vast improvement over the ugly green ones. But that's a whole other can of worms.
Thanks again for opening the dicussion. As you told me in person is is impossible to please everyone but at least this should help air concerns and foster conversation. I also really appreciated your support while I was out climbing last weekend.
So it boils down to this; I’m not arguing aluminum is better than steel, I’m not saying we should strip the entire wall of permadraws. I’m trying to understand why permadraws have slowly (over the course of the last 10 months) made their way onto the warm ups at Little si, and so far I’ve received no convincing reasons why this should continue. (Abo was permanently equipped about a year ago now and nobody really knows why, both Rainy Day and Psychowussy received estranged draws in even more estranged places about four months ago, and now you have equipped the entirety of Psychowussy with draws; this is a VERY recent thing in the comparative timeline of the crag)
You want to equip the warm ups at World Wall One so you can:
1) Have more time to try your project
2) Encourage people to try harder
3) Be less inconvenienced when you are strapped for time
4) Focus more on the movement and less on the clips
I just want to make sure I understand what your arguments are for equipping routes that have, in the history of the wall, never been permanently equipped (in any form aluminum OR steel, if I misunderstood please correct me). I am certainly all for keeping the extensions equipped, for one because I don’t want to lug up 30 or 40 draws to the crag just to do a few pitches, and two, because a lot of people (some of them I know) spent time and money making World Wall an equipped, safer, and more convenient crag. I have aluminum long draws on Gerbil Killer right now and they have been there for months. I leave them there mainly for my convenience and because no one ever tries that route. If it were a gumbie highway you better believe I wouldn’t leave them up for more than a weekend. When I was working Flatliner I would show up on Saturday around 2, place my long draws on Psychowussy, and leave them there until I left for the week on Sunday evening. People climbing Psychowussy were free to use them OR place their own shorter draws if they did not feel comfortable using my long slings. But my draws were never a permanent fixture of the route itself. I also don’t think what I’m pointing out is so out of the ordinary, take a look at Smith; do you see any of the warm ups there permanently equipped? If you put permadraws on Magic Light I guarantee you people would throw a shit fit. Same for the Red, Owens, Pine Creek, Checkamus, Skaha, and any other obscure or popular crag I’ve been to (which admittedly is not a lot). I’m not entirely sure why this is common practice, but I’m willing to bet it has everything to do with what you said earlier about Psychosomatic, a sentiment I’m not debating here. Harder routes demand more physical and mental attention and thinking about how I’m going to get my draws back if I can’t do the route is the last thing you want to think about. Better to just leave them right? If people are going to leave draws on these harder routes anyway why not replace them with safer, longer lasting steel. Voila, here we are, for the better I’m sure. But lower level climbs that get sent constantly do not need this kind of attention or equipment for obvious reasons. Especially at a small crag like this where on any given day someone will be waiting in the wings to clean a warm up that just might be somebody else’s project.
Please don’t feel like I’m taking on the role of the wise old know-it-all sensei who finds contentment in scolding others who disagree with him. I am certainly none of those things. I’m sure you won’t get a lot of negative feedback from people who frequent the crag about permanently equipping Psychowussy, in fact I’m positive a lot of people will thank you. I guess what I’m doing now is just pointing out how things have worked in the past. It does not mean they will continue to proliferate into the future.
Draws or no draws Little si is a place of deep introspection for me. I climb there to ultimately face myself, to do battle with my ego and see exactly where my ceiling is on that day. I also go there because it's kind of like a club house. I see all of my good friends, we laugh and talk shit to each other, drink beer, support each other on our individual challenges, and we seek to escape the monstrous clench of the clock. In that respect it's hard to keep it from becoming somewhat of a personal place to me. All of this may just be the outpouring of a disgruntled old man who wants the kids off his lawn. Ha! But it is also nice to sometimes delve into the deeper side of a very fuzzy understanding that all of us share when it comes to something as silly as clinging to the side of a rock face. I will see you all out there.
Thought I would share a true veteran of Si's view points. Thanks again for contributing Rudy.
Hey Micah...
Can't seem to post this on your blog...so i'm sending this via pm.
I've been climbing at little si off and on longer than most (all?) of you. I remember when many of you first start "cutting your teeth" so to speak. I have been going there off and on in about 2 to 3 year cycles since 1991 or so. If one views Little Si as a closed ecosystem, it's been evolvling. The cycles that i visit it in are perfect backdrops to this, as i almost get a time lapse of the evolution of si.
Micah, I think you hit the nail on the head with regards to what is going on as it's a convenience issue. The routes were first equipped as "individual projects" with personal gear (Drew, those DMM draws at the top of flatliner were mine, they were pretty much garbage when i put them up decades ago and i considered them sacrificial, but they were hard to see from the ground so i didn't care). I remember at the time, that i had a very specific rack that i used on psychosomatic, complete with a set of long draws, roller biners, etc. to cut the drag down on the flatliner portion. My warm up was to go up psycho and hang those. They always came down and home with me, mainly because putting them in didn't change the level of the warm up for me and i feared someone would take them. Flatliner was only fixed up in the crux portion because the route really was at my limit (actually past, never did finish it). I clipped all of the easy bolts from the ground. Most people climbed that way then (as you mentioned that you did) with their own gear and it was understood that everyone was free to use or replace what was left behind on the route.
Now, here is where the evolution portion that i was referring to comes into play. Back then, a crowded day was maybe 8 total people trying any of those routes. Now, there are 8 groups of 8 people or more, complete with dogs etc. It's an urban park akin to a skate park now. There's dogs, little kids, etc. Certain social groups that climb together and support each other, etc. Shoot, there's even fixed hand lines and belay bolts now. Good thing or bad thing, or just a thing that is??
The reality is, when its a small party there's different rules than when there's a large party. As Luke pointed out, he goes sport climbing at si essentially for the convenience of it. This is what MOST of Seattle's climbing community does with regards to Si. And its at all grades, but probably more concentrated in the lower grades. I don't think you'll change it by saying "only when it's hard for me, then we fix" because that's a line in the sand that gets moved arbitrarily.
PS: Abo was fixed with long draws to cut down on the drag, but you guys knew this already.
Cheers!
Rudy