Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Uber classic oz offwidths 8-Jan-2017 At 8:55:01 PM PThomson

Message

You missed the point I was making above, though that's because I made it too ambiguously, without delineating:

It's one thing if taping to prevent damage to your hands doesn't change the nature of the climb at all for your physiology (for example, taping on Where Angels Fear to Tread -not that I really believe there is any reason to, I didn't earn so much as a single scratch on that thing- doesn't exactly make the climb physically easier), whereas the minute doing so -even for the purpose of "protecting your hands"- DOES change the nature of the jam, now it's having a greater unbalanced effect (that is to say, one which is NOT universal across all physiologies) than wearing shoes or using chalk (I see kneebar pads as a middle-ground of dubiousness between the notions of chalk/shoes and tape/jammies... not that I've ever used one). And doing it selectively to make a climb easier (which I've see numerous examples of) is a whole other ballpark of dubious ethics.

Whether or not that FACT bothers you is an entirely personal thing. A lot of it ultimately has to do with what you perceive as success at a climb, and your reasons for climbing. Unless you're a sponsored climber using these unbalanced artificial elements and riding on the success of hard sends, the reality is any ascent that those of us on chockstone achieve is likely to be forgotten 11 seconds after we achieve it (and anything I do is forgotten 6 seconds after I achieve).

But in reality, if one expands their fists to make it possible to fist-jam up the offwidth of Transcendental Meditation (a natural element of physiology which only a relative small volume of people will have... the same people who will be leveled out by climbs that feature tight hands, in "the great leveling" aspect of physiology that IS climbing), and then wants to THINK that THEY'VE succeeded as the climb qua "the climb"... they're fooling themselves.

I get that I'm in the gross minority here. Most people think that my approach to solving these climbs solely based on my physiology is an ethic which is irrelevant now based on the "accepted standard" (regarding taping) -in fact, Neil Monteith was busy telling me exactly that a few hours ago... But the Spirit of the climb, the challenge it presents, or -as in this case-, the slaughtering that I copped on it, is something for me to physically overcome with my own physiology, as a natural challenge, rather than an enhanced one. The reason I can accept shoes and chalk is -as I said before- the "artificial" element that they add is one that is ALMOST entirely equal across all levels of the field (tall, short, strong, weak, technical, burly... whatever), whereas taping isn't the same experience across the board based on physiology.