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Analysis of Filip Babicz and Bring Da Ruckus The Ticklist

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Analysis of Filip Babicz and Bring Da Ruckus
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Analysis of Filip Babicz and Bring Da Ruckus

In this week's episode of The Ticklist, Rob Greenwood attempts to navigate through the tricky and often confusing world of Scottish Winter Climbing ethics.

On Feb 22nd, visiting Polish climber Filip Babicz climbed Greg Boswell's Bring da Ruckus (XII 13) but was criticised for the lack of rime ice and snow on the route. We attempt to answer the question: was this a valid ascent?



7 Mar, 2023

This seems a fair presentation but I think a couple of points have been missed which seem quite important Rob! You did ask for comment's below, so here you go... :-)

Regardless of whiteness of the cliff or not, the turf needs to be frozen to protect it. Filip notes himself in his longer instagram post that the turfy section below the roof wasn't frozen so he dry-tooled a different line to get to the roof. Well done him, for not ripping that turf off, but it suggests that turf elsewhere on the route may well not have been frozen either.

The other point is related to what Dave Macleod was saying about Anubis. Filip on his instagram post quoted this - I'm sure accurately - as "I shake my head when people think about the presence of hoar/rime frosting as making a difference to routes getting scratched..." So Dave's point is about people claiming the rock will get less scratched if climbers wait for routes to be covered in hoar and/or rime, and I think we all know that Dave is completely correct there. Actually when you can't see small rock features to put your front point on you are far more likely to just scratch away at the rime desperately hoping your points will catch on something! So it seems pretty clear that rime/hoar/snow covering makes scratches more likely. But that's an entirely different claim from whether a route should be 'white' to be a 'real' winter ascent - which as Rob argues in the video, currently is the accepted norm.

1 Apr, 2023

Watch a video made by Filip concerning all questions about the "validity" of his ascent:

winter conditions route inspection cleanliness of the style

https://youtu.be/ykWq28ImQUQ

2 Apr, 2023

Totally dependent on where the turf section that wasn't frozen was (deep in a crack? north facing? On a drip line?) and how far below the chimney it was... As he's commenting on avoiding unfrozen turf already, I think we can presume he's being attentive to that ... unless he's saying the turf was unfrozen below as some sort of reverse psychological trick to try to convince us he's being careful but in fact wasn't (in which case why wouldn't he just not mention the turf below?)

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