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General Climbing Discussion

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Should you put climbs up for others? 24-Jul-2007 At 7:49:44 PM Take!

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Milk wrote:
"this comment does not make sense... blah blah blah"

OK light white, I don't know what climbing gym you live in but it happens, i'll spell it out so it makes sense.

It's not so much on modern sport routes with rings every x metres. But, as mentioned, a bolt will often be placed so it can be clipped from a "good stance" to protect the following hard moves (OR because at that point the climb is becoming runout) and it sometimes is placed high so that it can best protect the following section.
The short climber gets to the 'clipping stance' then has to pull a funky move (often dynamic) to get up to the hand hold which average height climbers use to clip the bolt.
The climber then has to hang around and clip the draw/rope with poor feet on the section of wall above the 'clipping stance' foot placements. Then, after all this, try to successfully continue through the hard (for the grade) moves which the bolt protects. She can't clip it later, as you so helpfully suggest, because by then she's well into the hard/crux moves or runout. I've seen it happen a few times and it certainly makes the climb a lot more dangerous/hard for her. It turns the first ascentionist's "bold" marginal climb into a death climb. It can be hard to know this at the bottom of the climb too.

My original post was not suggesting that 5' tall climbers must be taken into account whenever putting up a climb - she lives with it and climbs around the issue. I 'spose I mentioned this because it sort of bankrupts the "Well they have to be as bold as me or they can't repeat my climb in my style" macho crap.
Now the 5' tall the girl has to be much more bold (not to mention a technically better climber) if she wants to "onsight" these climbs using the accepted ethics. She never gets to do these climbs in the style of the original ascentionist - she always does them in a much more bold/hard manner, and never bleats about how tough or bold she is.

Remember, when the "I only put up the climb for me and I don't place many bolts, cos i'm hard" people actually do place a bolt they are saying "here is where I got scared - here is where I decided that love of life overrules my worship of style".

OK so now this is sounding a bit troll-like, sorry about that.