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General Climbing Discussion

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Ability of sport vs trad .. 22-Apr-2004 At 7:35:05 AM ness

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8 grades between trad and sport was about all i could manage when i first started tradding (not that long ago!!), and the main thing that messed with me was how wasted i got trying to stop myself from dying. On slabby routes, the grade difference dwindled to about 2 grades, however, on more overhung routes I'd really get spanked with my pathetic attempts at saving my life and was truly unable to pull any crux move after that. Thats the difference for me - clip and go saves your power. If you can throw a good piece of gear in and go, or if you can hang around with your face in a crack stuffing rp's in all day then you probably climb similar trad and sport grades.

Other things to consider are confidence with trusting your gear - initially i wouldnt try to trad anything i wouldnt try to solo as i didnt trust my gear at all - but now I am happy to go for it - so long as I have a piece in. My grades are about 3 or 4 in difference now - and the gap is slowly shrinking.

Another factor is the style of climbing - trad climbs I've found have harder moves in the 18-22 grade range, whilst sport climbs are not really that hard in this range, but for some reason, once you break this barrier tradding the moves are often easier at 24+ grades on trad routes, so long as you can get gear in, whilst on sport routes the moves suddenly get quite hard. My point being - inherently there are differences in the style of climbing between trad and sport routes.