UKC

All of my accents have been done without the use of a mat and have often refused to climb a route with a mat purely for ethics sake. But thinking about it why are mats any different to sticky boots and cams? Joe Brown didn't use stickies or cams so why are the grades the same now as they were then, yet if I were to put a mat at the bottom of a route the grade is reduced?

In reply to jamiegoscote:

Use the mat if you want to. don't if you don't. You don't have to ask permission.

jk

In reply to jamiegoscote:


They're not the same


because the routes are graded without the use of mats.

In reply to jamiegoscote:

I think the best thing to do is to decided for yourself. If a route is given a higher abjective grade because there is little in the way of gear and a fall would most probably result in you hitting the ground then the use of a mat is going to change the abjective grade.

At the end of the day if your worried about breaking your ankle falling off something and then reduced the risk when you can fall off it countless times and walk pretty much unscathed then your reduced the psychological burden inherent with the risk of falling off massively.

Grades are something we apply to a route based on general consensus of opinion, at the moment sticky boots and cams are regarded as fair game and routes a graded accordingly. I can imagine sometime in the future when a pad is seen as an acceptable means of protecting a trad route, and all those trad lines that have higher abjective grades because theres a hard move above no gear will need to have thier grade adjusted.

Good food for thought on this monday morning!

In reply to mlmatt: Mats are just another tool for making climbing safer,
and of course we usually want to be as safe as possible.
Will you impress yourself more by doing the route with or without the mat?
People often do my routes with mats,and that gives them satisfaction.
They haven't accepted the challenge I set,but of course that is their privilege.As yet climbing involves personal choices and motivations,and we are allowed to climb as we wish ,hopefully without being nagged by evangelists who think they have found the true path.

Opinions expressed on this website are just that;not laws.

Mitch

In reply to jamiegoscote: I wonder if John Culshaw, Rory Bremner, etc. have to use mats to do their accents?

In reply to jamiegoscote:

I think Paul Mitchell's reply sums it up nicely.

Plus if it's kudo you're after (which when it comes down to it that is all these finer ethical points achieve) I rate someone who does a ground up with a mat higher than a headpointed ascent without.

In reply to jamiegoscote: The names of the grades are the same, what they mean has changed entirely. Very few people would find a Dif difficult, a VDiff very difficult, or, in many cases, an E1 particularly extreme

In reply to jamiegoscote:

*Kudos, obviously.

In my opinion, I can see how it affects the grade, but with this logic should you not wear a helmet if the FA was done without one then?

In reply to jamiegoscote:
The real question is: Who are you trying to impress? if you are going to boast to others that you can climb X grade then that's one thing, if you are just out climbing for your own enjoyment you know you used/didn't use a mat and you know your limitations.
I'd be willing to bet that when people started using sticky boots rather than nailed boots there were people (obviously not on the internet) arguing that they were cheating.

In reply to gethin_allen:

This is pretty much it isn't it.

Provided you're honest with yourself and with others (if anyone cares), the only halfway sensible points of contention are what, out of all the possible styles - toproped or lead or soloed, with mats or without, with aid or without, with toprope practice or ground up or onsight, with all your nuts or with only odd numbered ones, in sticky shoes or trainers or hobnails or rollerskates - is used for a) giving the route a grade and b) claiming a new route.

In reply to jamiegoscote:

This whole debate is only really relevant if you're climbing on gritstone and doing something which could just as easily be called highball bouldering (and sometimes just straight bouldering)

Probably more than anything shows a flaw in our grading system.

In reply to jamiegoscote:

It doesn't really matter to me, use one if you want.

The whole mat debate is only relevant up to a modest height off the deck, say between 4 and 8 metres depending on the nature of the terrain and how many mats used. Above that height your chance of actually landing where the mat is or of the mat(s) preventing serious injury gets less and less.

In reply to Kemics:

climbing is fun and climbing certain grit routes with pads is very fun (Hot ziggerty at Baslow, as suggested in the BMC guide is great, go do it) However, I do agree with Jorgenson's quote in 'Progression' about his preference to climbs with a consequence, its just the consequence becomes you might just snap something rather than a dance with death. An ascent without pads impresses me in it's boldness, I find the moves and position more impressive, and when this is combined such as in the recent highball video by blox(?) its fantasic

Autumn here we come

In reply to Jimbo C:

My friend fell (jumped) off the 8m Grand Potatoe at Baslow and he missed the pads so i'll back that theory

In reply to Pylon King: Ok the grades are different. But in most cases they have been raised. And yes, the routes were graded without mats, but in a lot of cases routes were also graded before cams and stickies.

In reply to jamiegoscote: in soloing it all boils down to confidence really; a mat is effectively an admission, if only to yourself, that you might fall and therefore need the protection. a matless solo is a demonstration that the moves are within your comfort zone and that you need nothing other than shoes and chalk to get up it.

In reply to jamiegoscote:

You can either choose to use a mat or solo without one.

The issue of what's right/wrong is not even up for debate as everyone is free in climbing to do as they please and for whatever reasons (be they f*cked up ones or not).

What should be considered (and these are the FACTS, not my opinions) is that if you put mats under a route then you have REDUCED the challenge compared to the same ascent without them (and that is regardless of height) and also that you have not climbed the route at the grade given, as climbs are always graded for matless ascents.

What is neither fact nor my opinion... but common decency, is that if you solo a route above padding, you should claim it as a 'send' not an Onsight Solo and that First Ascents of routes shouldn't be given a trad grade until they've been done padless.

In reply to Cragrat Rich:


You'd hope people would agree with that, otherwise they'd have to wonder why they're lugging the bloody things up to the crag...


Also true, presumably until such a point as mats are as standard a piece of gear as cams. Which I can't see happening in the near future.


This is a bit of a grey area, really particularly for first ascents with pads plus a rope. It's about the one place where you really have to draw a line between 'good trad style' and 'not good trad style' that anyone really cares about. I don't think there's an answer that's handed down on tablets of stone from the heavens or logically deducible from 'I think therefore I am', so it's probably a consensus thing for people who are putting up hard new routes. And I don't really know what the consensus there would be...

Also, as someone's already pointed out, it only really applies to grit and similarly petite crags. I mean, if Alex Honnold had stuck a pad under half dome he could probably still have claimed the solo!

In reply to Ramblin dave:



Yeah, but if it had a hard 6a start he'd have to concede the overall grade!!....





... and admit that he's a fairy chicken!

In reply to Cragrat Rich: Climbing on sight with a mat is more laudable than top roping or abseling,in order to get the sequence,but then,once one has the vital info,does one then claim a matted ascent is perfect and complete?I don't think so.The preinspecter on rope goes a stage further and risks greater injury when not using a mat.The matted ascent remains safer,and thus easier,than risking a preinspected hard landing .

Both styles give prior info at different costs,but then the choice remains to do the route in purest style;matless.The matted ascent is safer,
therefore easier.

Mitch

In reply to paul mitchell: Well I'm amazed that this debate is still going. We were all pissing ourselves down the pub the other day at the thought that anyone could think mats could make a difference to grade. It's just like putting rucksacks over sharp rocks at the bottom (traditional thing to do): just another safety advance. It is exactly the same as people in the 1890s suggesting the use of a rope was unfair. So funny...

In reply to Richard Baynes:
I basically agree, but surely the point there isn't that it doesn't make a difference to the grade, but that an ascent with a mat is still somehow incomplete and it 'needs' someone to come back and do it without a mat for it to really count... any more than we say "well yeah, sure, Dave Macleod climbed Echo Wall with a rope and gear, but it's a bit cheeky of him to claim the first ascent when he didn't solo it..."

In reply to jamiegoscote: i kinda think that if the 'route' is so short that you cab make it significantly safer with pads then it might not be worth the fuss/risk of breaking yourself anyway. May as well just go all out with pads and enjoy it as a highball problem