UKC

Saw someone at the crag recently red pointing a project. Each time they tried it (without ticking it) they would rethread and clean it, then put the draws on again in the next attempt....and the next....is this a purist thing? Just never seen this before!

In reply to Elle Bells:

Isn't that the difference between a pinkpoint (using preplaced draws) and a true redpoint (placing draws on lead)

In reply to Elle Bells:
Too much faff, not enough climbing. Purism should be for a good reason and IMO adding a cliping mechanism to a situ bolt each time isn't close to being a good reason. It's not like they're actually placing the pro.

Each to their own though, if they think otherwise.

In reply to Ron Rees Davies:
It might have been once, but not any more. All redpoints these days are generally done with the draws in.

In reply to Elle Bells:

trad climber gone bolt clippin'

In reply to Ron Rees Davies:

No.

In reply to john arran:


Well indeed. Here in Belgium, my clipstick was referred to as a 'sissy stick' . I explained, basically, if it's not trad, then as far as I'm concerned pretty much anything goes that doesn't constitute physical aid. If I want bold, plenty of that in the Peak and elsewhere where it actually counts for something.

In reply to planetmarshall:


Actually you're wrong...

Pinkpoint used to mean just that... But nowaways it is more commonly used to mean successful leads or trad-routes with preplaced gear.

In reply to HeMa:

Used to maybe. Not sure it does anymore. Never hear anyone use pinkpoint, everybody seems to leave the draws in and call it a redpoint.

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

Just because it's not used... doesn't make it untrue.

And as said, nowadays with permadraws and such, having the QDs in place is still considered a valid redpoint...

In reply to Elle Bells:
I think 20/30 years ago this was fairly common with all but the best Brits abroad, who (me included) didn't really know how to sport climb . So 2 x 50m 9mm clipped alternately , any falls meant lowering to the ground , once at the chain draws stripped as a matter of course. All very silly on reflection but trying to transfer a trad ethic to sport climbing . One didn't get the full tick unless you put the clips in . I m reasonably sure I didn't own sport rope until my forth or fifth sun rock trip . It was also probably also that long before I stopped carrying a set of nuts on every sport route .

In reply to HeMa:


If true then I stand corrected, but never heard of anyone requiring placing the draws to get a redpoint.

In reply to planetmarshall:


Yeah exactly. I reckon sport should just be top rope, as its supposed to be safe.

In reply to planetmarshall:


I think on another thread it was concluded that for French Sports graded routes the grade includes the use of pre-placed quickdraws and hence if you place them yourself it maybe (a bit) harder than the given grade.

So you can claim on-sight (with beta?) if someone else has lead the route first and left the draws in place.

In reply to Long Pinky:


I'd have no problem with that, but someone has to get the rope up there, and to be honest more often than not a top rope gets in the way.

In reply to planetmarshall:


True.

In reply to Elle Bells:

It is purist. I am a fan of it.
That's not to say your less pure ascents should mean anything less to you.
Make it easier or harder, climbing is climbing.

In reply to Elle Bells:

Who else has heard that standard accepted practice is on sports routes is that you can pre clip the first TWO bolts, even if the route is two bolts long?

I'm sure I read that in article years ago about one of the hardest routes in the US (Rumney? Somewhere in the NE, maybe Maine?) because that had two bolts in it.

In reply to TobyA:


Nope, you're allowed to clip the 1st bolt...


That 8c+/9a/9a+ is more like a glorified boulder with a really bad landing... and I seem to recall there are 3 bolts on it (plus the anchor). Crux being the lower 2 though. I think it's Jaws II or something like that. I also seem to recall Jason Kehl highballed it or something.

In reply to TobyA:

youtube.com/watch?v=cftiJB6-uYY&

It is the Fly at Rumney which is a 4 move top rope Boulder problem.
As far as taking the clips out after each go, it's not something I've ever seen because the it is commonly accepted that you can take the tick if the draws are in.
If people want to use different rules then they can....which is why climbing is so much fun.

In reply to HeMa:


Says who?

In reply to HeMa:


Might vary by country, but over in the UK it's a redpoint whether the draws are in or not. Language changes and nobody differentiates, so it's a historic fact and not really relevant anymore.


See!

In reply to TobyA:
You can clip as many bolts as you like to make it safe. Its sport climbing it aint supposed to be about risking your neck. So long as you're honest about your ascent like anything else noone except elitist tossers care. Sometimes I wont preclip any bolts, sometimes the first, rarely the second. Couldn't care less what anyone thinks of that its a sport route...

In reply to planetmarshall:

Haha, when I arrived in Australia 6 years ago, the clipstick was labelled a sissy stick too! Now they're everywhere, I like to think we started a trend better sissy then broken ankles....

In reply to Elle Bells:


When no-one is around and I'm feeling particularly useless, I've been known to top-rope lead entire routes, clipsticking as I go...

I'd never tell anyone that, though.

In reply to Pete Houghton:

Thought that was called working a route...

In reply to Cheese Monkey:


Though if you pre-clipped, say,10 bolts out of 11, most people would just be too busy laughing to care.

Actually, I think most people would consider it a bit rubbish to pre-clip more bolts than are necessary to prevent possible injury.

In reply to Robert Durran:


I definitely think it is, and I do it all the time.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Couldnt care less personally, I wouldnt laugh at anyone doing that because I like to think I'm not a tw*t. What difference does it make its a sport route, head game/risk shouldnt be any part of it.

In reply to Cheese Monkey:


In that case you might as well take the tick if you just top rope. Up to you, I suppose, but you'd be in a tiny minority.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Na I find stuff on my limit easier to lead. Easier to clip than unclip (for me anyway), rope aint in the way, no threat of accidental assistance from the belayer! Not concerned about falling in the slightest at any point.

In reply to Cheese Monkey:


You must only climb vertical routes, some sports routes have a real risk of hurting yourself on the rock during a fall.

In reply to springfall2008:


Overhanging routes are also vastly easier, and mostly safer, to lead than top rope - as are routes that wander. Which only leaves non-wandering slab routes.

In reply to Robert Durran:


It would be interesting to know why the dislikers object to my statement of the obvious that hardly anyone would tick the redpoint when they've only top roped a route!

In reply to springfall2008:


You certainly can't claim onsight if you have beta since onsight refers to the fact you have no beta other than what you can see for yourself from the ground.

However assuming you don't have beta you can onsight a route with draws already in. Adam Ondra who possibly did the first 9a onsight did it with the draws in. (You can watch the vid here. Very impressive: youtube.com/watch?v=qA8Bjp4SOkA& )

In reply to Cheese Monkey:


Erm says who? The term 'sport route' just means a line is bolted and you don't need any trad gear. It says nothing about the distance between the bolts which can be close together or very far apart. There are few runout sport routes in this country but in certain areas in France and elsewhere there are plenty. In fact that type of route was something Edlinger specialised in. The routes can be every bit of scary as a typical runout trad route - sometimes more so - with massive fall potential.

In reply to stp:
Says me

In reply to stp:
I thought it was Alex Megos who first onsighted 9a?

In reply to Elle Bells:

Quite aside from the "ethics" considerations, removing the draws after would be a bit anti-social at a busy crag. If anyone else also wants to RP / work the route, taking up time removing draws and also preventing someone else from trying the route with draws already in would likely be seen as a bit unreasonable somewhere like Malham - where everyone tends to try a route with the first person's draws in for the duration of the day.

In reply to stp:

Edlinger didn't really specialise in runout routes or at least that wasn't his intention; he simply had limited funds, but wanted to bolt as many routes as possible As a result you can witness some epic falls in Ceuse :P

In reply to Robert Durran:
I disliked your comment just now, if you are interested, not because of the top rope comment (that has already been answered higher up the thread) but because you were disagreeing with this statement in a throwaway, sarcastic manner:

"What difference does it make its a sport route, head game/risk shouldnt be any part of it."

...which I consider to be a very valid point of view, and certainly not one of a tiny minority. Almost certainly, in fact, the view of a majority of people who sport climb regularly ie most weeks.

At the end of the day though this all comes down to personal ethics and specific routes. I take the approach that makes me safe while not feeling like I have limited the route at all. So I'd never attempt a sport crux above a leg breaking fall before an un-clipped first bolt, but I might risk a longish but safe fall from before the second if I felt clipping it was part of the route's true challenge. It often also depends on what your peers have done and what you see done in any videos of the route, if you watch any. This is often what drives your expectations and personal values on a particular route.

So there isn't a fixed rule.

In reply to Removed UserZebdi:


It was...

Ondra OS 3 or so, but downgraded them all to 8c+ and others have agreed. Megos was the 1st to OS and established 9a.

In reply to Si dH:
Thanks for your reply.



And I took this to mean that if you want to reduce the head game of leading (and for very many people it is partly a head game even if leading on bolts is risk free) then you should be free to clip as many bolts as you like. I was simply taking this to the absurd logical conclusion that you would then be free to top rope the route and still tick the redpoint. I fail to see why this argument is either throwaway or sarcastic.


I thought it was clear that I was meaning that only a tiny minority would consider a top rope ascent to count as a redpoint.

You seem to be interpreting my comment as being against preclipping enough bolts to prevent possible injury, which I think it clearly wasn't; in fact, if you had read my earlier post you would have seen that I explicitly said I though this was acceptable. If you need to top rope the route in order to avoid possible injury then it is just inexcusably badly bolted.

the only one who has been making silly throwaway comments is CheeseMonkey.

In reply to Elle Bells:

Does seem strange to me, they can do what they like of course but I wouldn't bother myself, to much effort and time for just being able to say I put the draws in on lead which means nothing anyway.

As far as "pink pointing" goes, I've heard the term documented on here in the past but have never heard anyone use it for real to describe some climbing they have done. These days if you're working a route then draws in place is standard practice and the term you use to describe such an accent is a redpoint. I'd say the term pink point has become obsolete in modern sport climbing.

In reply to stp:


I think UKC supports 'on-sight' and 'with-beta'. It's a bit of a grey area if you watch someone else climb it first as you may or may not benefit from beta - I tend to mark mine depending on if I felt I used the first climbers Beta or not.

In reply to Lord_ash2000:

I find that there can still be a difference in the amount of effort involved in getting up a route cleanly (no falling, resting etc) with QDs in and QDs not in, so you have to put them in on the way. It takes a bit more time to clip the QD to the bolt and then the rope into the QD which can use up more energy eventually; you might need to change position a bit, and, for example, use some smaller holds to reach the bolt in order get the QD in, again increasing overall difficulty/effort involved. So a red point is going to be somewhat harder than a pink point. So is the grade actually for the pink point?

In reply to CPH:


There are routes where I don't think I could even hang on to put the draw in and clip, I have to extend it first to clip from a better hold.


Isn't it generally by consensus, and everybody leaves the draws in.

In reply to CPH:

I'm not saying there is not technically a difference in difficulty. Depending on the route it can be from almost nothing to a significant factor. What I'm saying is, saying you lead a route you've worked putting the clips in on the way makes no real difference from saying you've done it with pre-placed draws, no one cares, it makes no real difference to your achievement.

In fact a better way to look at it these days is to say climbing it with the clips in is the standard and climbing it while placing the draws is some sort of handy cap you've needlessly set yourself. It would be like working a route to then do the final lead accent carrying a 5kg weight up with you, yes it would be harder but there is just no reason to do that.

In reply to Lord_ash2000:


I think it's personal. Slightly different scenario, but I tried to ground-up a sport route for no other reason than I fancied the challenge. Whether it was a better style or not wasn't the issue, I just chose to make it harder for the fun of it...and didn't get up it, grrrr!!! :S


As above.

In reply to Elle Bells:
The distinction between red-pointing and head-pointing on trad routes seems to be getting increasingly blurred in my recent experience - I suggest ginger point.

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

And that's fine if that's what you want to do. I don't have a problem with people climbing a route in whatever style they like. I was just saying that the term redpoint has now expanded to incorporate what pinkpointing used to cover, so making the term pinkpoint redundant.

Therefore if now someone climbs a route in what would have once been refereed to as a pinkpoint style (which they are perfectly free to do), it would simply be refereed to as another redpoint and so indistinct from someone redpointing it in a normal style with draws in place. They have simply chosen to achieve a redpoint accent in a more faffy manor than was needed.

In reply to Lord_ash2000:

Ehm, pinkpoint = draws in place. redpoint = placing draws during the ascent. But yes, the term redpoint now covers pinkpoint as well.

In reply to Lord_ash2000:


It's sport climbing; it's fully contrived, very faffy, and definitely not needed whatever you do!

In reply to Robert Durran:


There's an argument to be made for taking the tick. The french grade is supposed to be about the gymnastic movement, not the danger. Surely the main reason sport routes generally are lead instead of simply top roped is that it's not practical to top rope a steep wall.

In reply to gurumed:


But if you're working the route anyway putting a top rope up wouldn't really be an issue.

And I suspect that for most people leading is harder for purely psychological reasons - and overcoming that is a significant part of the challenge. Certainly let for me, top roping just doesn't seem anything like a proper ascent, but that may just be because I'm an old fart with an ingrained read mindset. Anyway, as things stand, a top rope ascent just doesn't count as a tick - except as a to rope one!

In reply to Elle Bells:
Definitely purist and each to their own. Obviously makes it harder, would require more endurance, ... In the vid of ondra on the onsight 9a / 8c+ he's on the route for just over 10mins. If you add potentially another minute or 2 at that grade, to place the draws on route, it could become even more than 1 grade harder.
I currently struggle with 2.5 to 3mins of being on an indoor 6c.
Having watched alot of the sharma, megos, ondra etc ascents of 9's, especially sharma, they can be seen high up to miss out clipping 1 or 2 adjacent bolts so as to get through the crux to an easier clip? Did they cheat / make it easier / need to downgrade their ascent?
Can u imagine actually placing those draws on a redpoint if the current cream need to miss a few clips to bag it! Future climbers may have a go at pinking, but as there would be harder top routes to climb, it wouldn't seem like there wasn't a better? challenge available
Its personal, make it harder if u want, but the accepted minimum standard has seemed to be stable for ages that for you can work, place drawers, leave draws in, then lead a sport route to claim redpoint ... If someone pinkpoints a 9b, at that level it would be newsworthy, more wow power! it was harder than the first ascent, but that would be like trying to outdo the first asentionist, if that was a redpoint,.. Why though if you could just find a harder route to try? Personal choice, make a note in your ticklist, do it for your own fun or whatever, doesn't matter much but to you.

In reply to Elle Bells:

I have a mate who always wanted to place all the draws himself as he saw it as part of the climb. I was always ambivalent - if the draws were in fine, if not place them. Mind you we aren't sport climbers - just traddies doing occasional bolt clipping.

What I would say is that in my experience, the difficulty in placeing your own draws isn't always physical - its sometimes spotting the bloody bolt !

In reply to richrox:


Apologies if I've misunderstood you but I think you have the terminology back-to-front here. Placing the draws while redpointing has always been called redpointing; it's the use of pre-placed draws that was sometimes referred to as pinkpointing. As many people have pointed out the distinction has largely vanished; "pinkpointing" has for a long time been the standard way of doing things, and is no longer called pinkpointing!

In reply to Ian Parsons:


Whether you place the draws on lead or not it's always been called redpointing. As far as I'm aware pinkpointing was only ever a temporary distinction made by tradders wanting to pretend there was still some advantage in placing gear on lead even though by definition the gear was already in and didn't need placing!

In reply to john arran:

Absolutely, John - hence my qualifying "sometimes"! My point, though, was in response to Rich's apparent understanding that "pinkpointing a 9b" would, by eschewing pre-placed draws, be "harder than the first ascent"; in all probability it would be - but that was never what was meant by pinkpointing.

It may well have been a trad-climber's term; it's one that I mostly associate with the 1980s (hence why many people now have never heard of it) when just about everybody climbing in the UK would have come from a trad background. Not only that: as you'll recall, before the development of places like Portland "sport climbing" only really got started at about the E4 level - so most participants were probably already pretty solid trad climbers. What I can't recall is whether or not the term was used - and, indeed, the practice - for other gear; with many early UK sport routes being of a somewhat hybrid nature it might not have been simply a matter of pre-placed draws.

In reply to Ian Parsons:

I think it was only really applied to sport routes in the early days, then very quickly dropped altogether for obvious reasons of pointlessness. But that was all before headpointing took off, and since then the pinkpoint term has seen something of a revival when applied to gear routes, and with some justification since it then describes a notably different style of ascent that makes a lot of sense in the right circumstances, particularly on long multi-pitches where stripping gear isn't a practicable option. Should really be a 'pink head point' though

In reply to Ian Parsons:
Apologies, yep, i misunderstood! Thanks for pointing that out
I suppose pinkpoint term was coined, as pre clipped bolts left in after working the route and before finally making a complete go to the top ascent, is easier than stripping and reclipping on a fresh successful to the top lead attempt (redpoint).
So redpoint is nowadays what pinkpoint was, but you could do the hard mans redpoint version if u still prefer!

Reposting my comment below with corrections...
Definitely purist and each to their own. Obviously makes it harder, would require more endurance, ... In the vid of ondra on the onsight 9a / 8c+ he's on the route for just over 10mins. If you add potentially another minute or 2 at that grade, to place the draws on route, it could become even more than 1 grade harder.
I currently struggle with 2.5 to 3mins of being on an indoor 6c.
Having watched alot of the sharma, megos, ondra etc ascents of 9's, especially sharma, they can be seen high up to miss out clipping 1 or 2 adjacent bolts so as to get through the crux to an easier clip? Did they cheat / make it easier / need to downgrade their ascent?
Can u imagine actually placing those draws on a lead attempt if the current cream need to miss a few clips to bag it! Future climbers may have a go at this harder style, but as there would be harder top routes to climb, it wouldn't seem like there wasn't a better? challenge available
Its personal, make it harder if u want, but the accepted minimum standard has seemed to be stable for ages that for you can work, place drawers, leave draws in, then lead a sport route to claim redpoint ... If someone (hard-original-style-) redpoints a 9b, at that level it would be newsworthy, more wow power! it was harder than the first ascent, but that would be like trying to outdo the first asentionist, if that had been a (pinkpoint style) of redpoint! ,.. Why though if you could just find a harder route to try? Personal choice, make a note in your ticklist, do it for your own fun or whatever, doesn't matter much but to you.

Hope this confuses no-one, and confirms im no longer confused..

In reply to john arran:
Yes - I think that's what Bulls Crack meant upthread by "ginger point".

In reply to richrox:

Bingo; and some people find snooker complicated! Bluepoint, anyone? And I suppose that a whitepoint would be the equivalent of an own goal in football - albeit, probably, rather more painful.

In reply to Removed UserZebdi:


Some say that Estado Critico might actually be 8c+ rather than 9a.