Well, it's been an inspiring couple of weeks climbing with Blue Mountains strongman Mr Campbell.
Even though he puncuated his Pulpit climbing with trips to Frog (onsighting Future Tense 26 and others), it turned out that The Singularity really got under Nigel's skin. He said he thought it was a bloody good route with great movement. For Nige, it proved to be one of those lines where doing all of the moves is not the issue. The energy-sapping nature of the moves and lack of rest means it's difficult to arrive at the crux with enough juice in the tank.
After four days on the route and coming tantalizingly close, Nigel drove back from Stanthorpe (!) to have one final, all-out battle before needing to drive back to NSW the next day. He again came agonizingly close on several shots on the day. I also jumped back on to have a go with his beta and for me, it felt just as hard, but a bit more more secure and less of a 'percentage move'.
So the route remains unrepeated. We talked about the possible grade and Nige said it would be hard to say anything definitive without having sent the route. So we'll simply wait for the second ascent, and whatever the grade ends up being, it remains a quality route and a good challenge.
One month ago after completing my project The Singularity I wrote:
I have proposed the (no doubt controversial) grade of 32. I am not "setting" the grade of the route - it's simply my best guess; something to be confirmed by future ascentionists. We hopefully have a brigade of strong southerners coming up for a winter trip this year, so I hope they'll be keen to jump on and tell me what's what. Regardless though, it's my hardest piece of climbing, and I'm really happy to have done it, and sad that the long, repetitive journey is over.
Well, I got my wish. On Thursday, quiet achiever of Australian climbing Nigel Campbell had a crack. His Blue Mountains crimp strength really paid off for him on this route. He actually looked more solid on the tiny crimps of the crux section than on the easier sections with bigger holds! The real news however is that he devised a sequence to avoid my strength-sapping dynamic throw down low, and also came up with a way to eliminate my low percentage slap to the crux crimp (the move I fell off about 50 times). Amazing!
This just highlights to me what tunnel vision I get while working a project, and the enormous benefit that can be gained by working hard routes with someone else to bounce ideas off. While he hasn't sent the route yet, his sequence looks significantly easier and a lot more solid and controlled - perhaps a grade or two easier than my original proposal? The draws are still on and he'll be back on it soon. We'll see.
On Saturday with cold, windy, near perfect conditions, I finally climbed my project at the Pulpit. I have named it 'The Singularity'. I started working on it in September last year before the season got too warm. I started back on it in March this year and have been stubbornly trying it pretty much every week since then. 18 days and 67 attempts. I imagine that will seem pretty insane to most people, but I did enjoy the process of doing it. It is a bouldery route up a smooth 30° overhung wall, with an unusual and very powerful crux coming at move 20 after you have skipped a clip, resulting in big swooping falls back to a few metres above the ground. This was designed to keep my belayers from falling asleep. I probably fell from this spot on 50+ occasions. The crux is the hardest sequence I have ever encountered on rock.
I have proposed the (no doubt controversial) grade of 32. I am not "setting" the grade of the route - it's simply my best guess; something to be confirmed by future ascentionists. We hopefully have a brigade of strong southerners coming up for a winter trip this year, so I hope they'll be keen to jump on and tell me what's what. Regardless though, it's my hardest piece of climbing, and I'm really happy to have done it, and sad that the long, repetitive journey is over.
Thank you firstly to my main climbing partner, Duncan Steel. Duncan helped me envisage the line, and belayed and encouraged me through the entire, drawn out saga, as he has on all my hardest climbs over the past eight years when I started climbing with him as a grade 21 climber. I can't imagine the level of frustration there must be for a belayer to see their climber fall at the same spot on a climb for months on end. As a twist of fate, on the successful shot, it was Gareth who was holding the rope, and Duncan was up on a climb around the corner and out of sight! Thanks also to everyone else who has held the rope - and therefore been catapulted - Ross F, Gareth L, Glenn F & Adam P.
Finally, thanks to everyone who has given an encouraging word. I'm the least hippy-like person you'll find, but I am a believer in vibe, psyche, positive energy or whatever you want to call it. When you're at the cliff, you can choose to contribute positivity (encouragement, energy, help, laughs, happiness) which enriches the climbing day, or the opposite. I'm sure you've all experienced it. Whether it's two people or twenty, there's nothing better than a day where the cliff is really firing with positivity. Individual successes often come so much easier.
Good luck on your personal challenges. Dream big!
Lee's Manifesto for Progressing Oz Climbing! (or 'Why Southerners Are So Strong!')
Posted by Lee Cujes Labels: GradingBased on some qurank discussions on ego and new routing, I've worked on this little comment piece over the last couple of weeks as the ideas have rolled around in my brain. See what you think...
If you read the news in CRUX or ROCK magazine and it always seems that the crew from NSW are cranking so much harder than the rest of the country -- well, you aren't imagining it! The graph below tells the story...
New South Wales currently has six times the amount of hard routes than Queensland, and is less than half the size! One surprise was that Tassie beats out Queensland, which is largely attributable to the recent(ish) development of the amazing Star Factory.
One immutable climbing law is "hard begets harder". The more hard routes there are, the more likely people will get on them, get stronger and get inspired. As this happens, they get keen to put up their own routes, climb even harder, and the whole thing snowballs.
On the other side of the coin, if the hard routes aren't there to climb, it's a lot more difficult for the standard of the climbing community to progress - it's like a glass ceiling. To get an appreciation of what 'harder' feels like they have no option but to travel (and it's hard to do hard routes on a trip due to the time factor) or establish new routes (perhaps less than 5% of climbers actually establish new routes). There's also some pressure (whether conscious or implied) on the new router to not grade a route higher than what already exists in the local area.
Goal
Remove the glass ceiling. Help each State have equal opportunity to 'compete' in the difficulty stakes.
Proposals
- Establish hard routes
People often only bolt what they think they can climb. Instead, use the European Model and if the line is good but ridiculously hard, establish it anyway and leave it as an open project. It will get done eventually and be a source of inspiration. Also, don't assume that all new hard routes are going to be completely amazing, independent King Lines. Seek out difficulty. Examine where it may be possible to link up cruxes of several side-by-side routes. Or climb up part of an existing line, then bust out into brave new territory. For example, let's look at the hardest routes in Oz (all 8c+ or 34) -- Mechanical Animals is squeezed between two existing routes, Sneaky Old Fox is a link-up and White Ladder is an extension. - Kudos to the equipper
To facilitate the establishment of more hard routes, we need to start giving credit to the equipper of routes in our guidebooks, topos, and news reports. The equipper had the vision and deserves as much or more credit than the person who does the first ascent. - Open projects
New projects are a source of inspiration and motivation for the climber who equips and tries to send them. We should all respect 'closed projects' that are being actively worked on. However, if you honestly have no realistic shot in a season or so of completing some beast of a new line, just leave it open for anyone to try. It helps the whole community a hell of a lot more to have people getting on and climbing at a high level, regardless of who eventually sends it. - Online register of open projects
We need an easy online listing of open super projects. This will provide some nice motivation for climbers to travel and send. An obvious place for this to live is the Australian Climbers Association website. - Welcome cross-pollination
Invite out-of-state hardmen and hardwomen to your state (and if you're a hardperson - travel!). Host them and guide them around. Suggest the hardest routes and open projects for them to try. This serves several purposes. It helps to validate and bed down the grades at local areas, and the crushers can either establish other hard lines, or suggest new routes and link-ups that could be done by locals. A fresh pair of eyes often have the clearest vision.
Lee Cujes
Grading. Always a hilarious subject. Once bandied around the campfire, now bandied around the virtual campfire, i.e. internet forums :)
Jens Larson (8a.nu webmaster) recently posted a controversial grading proposal dubbed the Time Comparison Grading Theory.
Jens wrote:
"Climbing grading is based on how difficult it is to do a climb, measured by the time and effort, that has to be invested. A climb that take 2 days should be graded harder than another climb that takes 2 hours. The grading scale has very wide steps. On an average, a climber that can do an 8A (8a) on 2:Go should be able to do 8A+ in two hours (8a+ in 1 day), 8B in two days and 8B+ in 20 days and maybe 8C in 200 days. The above Time Comparison is a speculation and 8a do not have the truth. However, it is based on the 8a grading theory. Feel free to comment!"This led to tons of people bagging Jens and calling him an idiot. There's currently over 54 comments on the post, so he's stirred the pot, that's for sure.
I thought I would weigh in with my 2c, based on the data I have about my own climbing. My view is that it is useful, but only at an individual level.
"The time comparison grading theory is useful, but not universally as Jens is suggesting. The only way it would be able to be universally applied is if all other factors were equal. As we know, they are not.
However, it is not without merit. It's useful at the level of the individual climber, particularly when it comes to suggesting the grade of FAs. I can graph the grade of my ascents with the number of tries, and I get a very predictable curve - an exponential curve (like that shown at bottom).
This provides the individual climber with a model of sorts, which predicts an 'expected' grade range for a route based on number of tries. But of course, there will always be influencing factors.
I would also suggest this theory would work more successfully for routes than boulders. As Sharma has noted, routes are generally more predictable, whereas boulders are more likely to have weird moves which expose advantages or disadvantages based on climber physiology and body type.
--Lee Cujes
What do you reckon?
Every area has its route progressions. If you were in the Blue Mountains and asked around for a good 25 to do, many people would point you at Madge McDonald at Centennial Glen. If you were successful on Madge you might step it up to its companion route Trix Roughly 26.
What follows is a little diagram which details a couple of route progressions for climbs in Queensland. These aren't necessarily benchmark routes at the grade. Some might be easy or hard for the money. But they are good progress routes. Meaning that completing one of them stands you in good stead for being able to progress to the next level in the same genre.
Notice the steep route genre focuses solely around Mt Coolum and Mt Tibrogargan in the Glasshouses, while in the face genre, we have routes from Kangaroo Point, Tibro, The Pulpit and Frog Buttress.
This also doesn't take into account the idea of consolidation, or building a solid base of ticks at a given grade before moving on, which is obviously important to do, and something we put a big focus on at Upskill.
You'll undoubtedly have your own ideas about possible progressions, and if you're not from Queensland, you might give some thought about how this idea relates to your local crags. Post up a comment if you're keen to share your ideas.
One characteristic of my latest climb, the first ascent of Evil Wears No Pants (30) at Mt Coolum was that I didn’t have any beta (information) on the climb, and had to work out all of the moves myself. I hadn’t seen anyone on the climb, and the only pointers I had was some telltale chalk on some of the holds.
The majority of hard routes I have done in the past few years have been climbed in tandem, with another climber also trying the route. You work as a pair, sharing beta, watch the other person climbing and generally feed off each other’s energy and experience. Moves get refined and the easiest sequence is solved much more quickly than working alone.
Sport climbing cliffs with dedicated locals and regular traffic often lend themselves to the beta feed phenomenon. The cave at Mt Coolum is a case in point. The contributing factors are a limited selection of routes, few easy climbs, highly specialised and abstract moves required & enthusiastic locals keen to share their knowledge.
There is no doubt that having the beta fed to you as you climb makes the process of sending a route much easier. Fewer shots are required. This is great on a roadtrip when you have limited energy to expend, and want to return home with a bulging scorecard of ticks. But what does this do to grades?
We can roughly equate Mt Coolum’s development to that of Rifle Mountain Park, America’s preeminent limestone sportclimbing area. During the 1990s, as increasing amounts of kneescums, kneebars and other “trick” techniques were brought to bare on the routes, the grades across the board began to be “condensed”. This has occurred at Coolum with routes such as Wholly Calamity (27) and Grazed Anatomy (28) each having a grade knocked off recently.
So do we grade for the onsight, or the worked redpoint? And more topically, do we grade for the seasoned local, or for the new, unfamiliar climber? My impression would be that routes up to grade 25 (7b or 5.12a) are graded for the onsight by the new, unfamiliar climber. And routes 26 (7b+ or 5.12b) and up seem to be graded for the worked redpoint by a person with some experience at the cliff.
So what does all this mean? Well, routes are easier with beta. That being the case, you cannot compare the first ascent to a beta-riddled repeat of the same route. The circumstances are entirely different, and the former far eclipses the latter in difficulty. Some cliffs provide more onsightable routes than others, particularly those with easy to read, generic, gym-like pulling. The more unusual the climbing, the more chance of downgrades by savvy locals. And if you’re climbing at Mt Coolum, it’s de rigueur that you’ll switch your brain off and plug in to the beta stream.
