UKC

Is it possible to dog an aid route? Asking for a friend...? I was wondering what the ethics are around this weird pastime consist of.

If you're dogging aid routes it's surely time to hang up your boots

Hah! Not sure which activity you regard as weird - the dogging or the aid climbing. Both, possibly....

It might be best to start by precisely defining the first of these two. It [still] refers, as far as I'm aware, to the practice of using one or several protection points on a free route - either sport or trad, but now more usually the former - as temporary suspension in order to work out and rehearse the moves on a hard bit. It derives from the earlier derogatory term 'hangdogging' coined in the US during the 1970s to describe that same activity - usually, in the pre-sport era, on normal gear - that was just starting to occur there and which was quite controversial. Nowadays, of course, we just call it 'working' a route prior to a redpoint. Aid climbing clearly also involves hanging on pieces of gear, usually in a manner that allows the maximum reach above them - ie 'top-runging', Russian aiders, etc. What it lacks by comparison is the idea that you're in any way practising for the next bit - which with aid climbing is simply placing the next piece of gear and getting onto it; at that point you're not practising for anything - you're simply just doing it. So, at least with that definition, it would appear to be meaningless to refer to 'dogging' an aid route.

There might be a more general use of the term - synonymous with 'frigging' - meaning the abandonment of free climbing and simply getting up a route by pulling on the gear; this is, of course, itself simply a form of easy aid climbing.

If the route had bolts on it or other fixed gear you could possibly use a clip stick to reach these and pull yourself up therefore by passing any aid moves to get to such fixed gear!

More cheating than dogging perhaps? 

On involved and time consuming aid pitches, we sometimes used to lower off to share the work and the boredom of belaying. So yo yo ing , halfway to dogging?

Can I now simply claim all my dogged ascents as aid ascents instead?

Indeed, Rick - although I think that in the UK the term 'varied leads' was more usual at the time.

Possibly, if one member of the party leads an aid pitch, obviously using aid etc, if the 2nd cleaning the pitch doesn't just aid but uses the ropes that are there for protection to help them get through the moves sitting on the ropes etc where the leader could not they are dogging the aid and not doing it clean. However it is aid so anything goes? An interesting conundrum.

Pop 'dogging aid' into a search engine and see.

No, its such a simple answer

Recently read that you originally aid climbed supercool at gordale rick! Blimey that must have been tricky and really scary. Did you place many bolts? 
 

in reply to the op I’d say that every aid pitch is dogged. But an aid pitch is either led successfully or not surely? So the various terms aren’t needed.

 On the line left of Cave Route, that became Supercool , I only drilled one shallow hole that took two channel peg tips back to back and tied off with 3mm.  No bolt kit , just an old star drill. The last twelve  metres to the belay was brill, ten knife blades all placed up vertically under shallow flakes. Pleasingly, repeat aid ascents added more bolts.

Not over scary, no falls, unlike the pitch that became Obsession , one sprained ankle from a ground fall at 5 metres and a 20 m fall stopping , body horizontal , less than one metre from the terrace , all the knifeblades but one not behaving on that occasion. The tie off tape was cut two thirds through, I still have it pinned up on my home office wall.

As said a few posts above, in a simple answer no.  Interestingly the ethics and kudos involved with a hard aid pitch are sometime opposite from free climbing, in that on-sighting a hard free pitch gets you kudos and ethics points, whereas taking a 40 foot whipper when your tipped out beak blew and you ripped the next 4 pieces below - but you still got back on a finished the pitch gets you aid kudos without any detriment to your style of ascent......

There are also now 'Clean' aid ascents, which are done hammerless.

http://www.supertopo.com/a/Clean-Aid-and-Hammerless-Climbing-Top-11-Tricks/...

I just did this and the got "Fascinating Aid(a)" and a reference back to this UKC thread! We own dogging aid!!

To the brave go the spoils!

Wow!! 
 

Now unsure if Those first ascents are more impressive than your Dove crag ones.

I'd say yes. If you were on an A4 and thought you were going to die and use a cheater stick to clip a bolt 2m above your head.

E

Is it possible not to dog an aid route?!

all aiding is dogging, but not all dogging is aiding...

i have never heard french free referred to as 'frigging'... back in school frigging had a whole different meaning, not something you would want to be doing on a cliff face! 

What we called "Tension climbing" in the 1960s? Whereby the leader hammered in a peg at his/her maximum reach whilst standing in an etrier with the second puling the rope tight against the crab on the peg so that the leader could reach up using both hands to bang in the next peg.

Required little if any climbing skill. Just great strength and stamina for both the leader and the second. Exhausting work with little finesse! 

So beta sticks are not in an aid climbers arsenal? And if not, why not?

This is precisely what I'm asking. I get that aid climbing involves pulling on gear. But does a 'clean' ascent mean not weighting the rope? And if it does, like someone mentioned a tension traverse? Then where is the line?! And if that's allowed then why not a beta stick? And I also get the point about a hammerless ascent but now I think we're all splitting hairs. I'll just go do it and see how it goes...

We call that "expedition style", even in sport. Climb to the fifth bolt, retreat, hand over to the other guy..

CB

I don't think the term is uncommon in a non-smutty context; and not to be confused with 'frogging', of course!

It appears I misunderstood your question; apologies.

In aid climbing no distinction is made between weighting the gear and weighting the rope; it's all the same thing. As Trangia pointed out upthread aid climbing was once sometimes referred to as 'tension climbing' due to the required participation of the belayer. This practice died out, not due to any ethical/style consideration but simply because it was inefficient; better étrier technique plus the use of cowstails, fifis, etc rendered auxiliary rope tension unnecessary, and on harder aid with 'bodyweight' placements you clearly don't want the belayer's weight added on as well. Tension traverses and pendulums are simply additional tools in the aid climber's arsenal, with no ethical baggage attached - and would obviously have to be free-climbed if making a free ascent of the whole route.

In the event of a fall, and unlike modern free climbing, there's no sense in which one is supposed to take all the gear out and start again; you simply regain the highest surviving piece and carry on. This difference makes sense when you think about why it would be considered poor style when free climbing. You might well fall off free climbing due to being completely pumped, or just sufficiently pumped to no longer be able to do moves that you could manage when fresh; to continue from where you fell off, therefore, would effectively be an aided rest and thus not a 'proper' free ascent. You don't get pumped aid climbing - at least, not in the same way. Falls aren't due to an inability to hang on any longer, or to stay in ones aiders; they're simply due to a placement blowing. Carrying on from your highpoint therefore doesn't convey any advantage, and to do otherwise would just waste time and add to the wear and tear on the rock.

I hope that's a more helpful answer than the first one!

Hooooooray! Thank you Ian Parsons. I'm off to Thor's cave next time it rains...

I'd say a 30cm stiffy quickdraw is valid (just) but a 2/3m long cheater stick and you can bring A4 down to A2. You might as well just top rope.

There's a reason why Tom Evans used to have a cheat of the day photo on his El Cap Report.

E

Only really cheating if used to clip fixed gear. If used to access otherwise out of reach spikes,  skyhook ledge or nut/cam placements, could be considered fair game.

Ha, yes I forgot about cheat sticks and Tom's "Stick of the Day".  Good description Form Ian about the ethics and why stripping the route makes no sense.  Yes totally agree if you are using a big stick to clip fixed gear then you are definately reducing the grade - no matter how much you were filling your pants in the preceding moments.  We all know that the main reason for climbing a wall is to look good in the report and wouldn't want to risk getting our the big stick to compromise the kudos.

Regarding Clean Aid - personally I have no time for those that claim "hammerless ascents" unless they are on a FA on virgin wall - pretty much all aid routes in the world (admittedly I have only done Yosemite big walls) are scarred by pins etc and have fixed bolts/rivets so just because you got that black totem to stick (which btw are god's gift to the aid climber) in the pin scar where nothing else would doesn't make you a badass

You're right. You can't do much about what has gone before but you can prevent further damage. Whilst badass is too strong a word it did feel good doing Zodiac 99.9% clean.

E

yes yes of course we shouldn't be banging in pegs where they aren't necessary - it was just more that with the amount of fixed gear around on some routes "going hammerless" isn't actually that hard when the person in front of you has panicked and irretrievably welded all their beaks into the pitch making it a bit of a clip up.  

Aid climbing grades are based somewhat on the difficulty of placing the gear, but more on the consequence of what happens if a piece fails and you therefore fall. So, if the route is A4 (i.e. long fall with serious consequences) and you use a cheat stick to reach up and clip the belay bolts rather and stand on that RP, then the pitch might not now be A4. Hence in some ways you will not have climbed the route. Aid climbing is about how you solve engineering-like problems on lead when facing bad consequences.

However, the short might well carry a stiff draw to bring them up to average height. Many on a multiday route might carry a cheat stick in the haul bag as a get out of jail card. Using the cheat stick is bad form, but better than dying. 

Each flavour of climbing has its norms. In aid climbing, one thing that would be seen as really bad form would be practicing the pitch on top rope, or abseiling down it to check there are enough good placements within reach that you feel you will be okay. Aid is more about, let's give it a go and see what happens. It is very much an on-sight activity. And often about spending time near your personal red line - for days. This distinguishes it from for example from alpine climbing where it is the norm to go "I normally lead VS on grit, but this thing is 20 pitches long, a storm might happen, let's stick to S". Hence most people finish most alpine routes. With aid it kind of works the other way around. More like, "I've done three A2s, I wonder what A3 on El Cap would be like.....". Hence the bail rate is very high in aid. I was once told it was 60% on El Cap.

jetpack.