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Please help gym etiquette advice needed urgently 27-Feb-2019 At 8:05:30 AM IdratherbeclimbingM9

Message

On 24-Feb-2019 Stugang wrote:
>Hey all question for you masters of all knowledge.....
>
Encourage them to participate in Chockstone themselves for accessing a source of greater collective wisdom?

>I’ve never considered myself anal regarding being super safe. Not that
>I seek danger just that I think climbing safety has most to do with being
>practical with what you’ve got and common sense once you’ve got an understanding
>of the basics.
>
The basics are different these days, perhaps other than trial by error as the folk you’re dealing with seem to be doing.
If they survive then they too will consider themselves experienced!

>I’m climbing a lot more in gyms now than I have ever and I’m now getting
>exposed to stuff that seems just stupid. To make it worse some of it is
>done a lot and condoned by “instructors” (allegedly).
>
>Am I going crazy and getting old and becoming mr super safety but is the
>following situation kosher or bullshit......two people leading different
>routes but clipping into all the same QuickDraws. Ie. two ropes on different
>routes going through the same draws climbing at same time (one higher than
>other though).
>
>To me it seems dumb to put it a polite way. Apart from being rude you’ve
>got possibilities of belayers colliding and also seems that risk of unclipping
>yourself during a fall is increased. If you really do have to share bolts
>isn’t unclipping their rope and then clipping yours safer? (As long as
>they’ve got a couple clipped below them).
>
If I ever have my rope unclipped without my asking for that to happen, then it’d be on for young and old literally as well as figuratively!
Heh, heh, heh.

>Have I been living in a cave to long? Is this behaviour OK and I need
>to catch up with the times? As I was met with a fair bit of hostility when
>I suggested that it was a bad idea.

Yes you’re getting old and retreating to a gym-cave is proving to be a mirror of the difference in the times.

I experienced similar on the last Buffalo Aidfest when I was exposed to the ‘new’ concept of quickdraws consisting of a single lightweight krab with a dedicated loose-weave polyrope attached that has a doubled-back end loop in it, that cynches to bolt heads when tensioned; similar in concept to a glorified hero loop.

That climbers rack was only a very small weight fraction of mine... and although I can get my head around the strength properties of the ‘rope’ involved and the weave-trap concept of tension-strength (like the finger-trap novelty items in showbags when I was a kid), it was in a climbing sense still new and different for me, so provokes thought before trust in usage.