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Post links and comments about your favourite climbing flicks

Topic Date User

Czech Trad Climbing - 150 Feet With No Metal Pro! 25-Jul-2015 At 1:04:01 PM johny

Message

On 24/07/2015 Colg wrote:
>I've been going there for close to 20years and have climbed close to 500
>summits and thousands of routes.

I haven't climbed nearly as much in Czech but I am aware that some people there think the UFO is a little cheating. They are a massive game changer. There were some routes that had logged as many ascents in the last 10 years as in the previous 50 because of the UFOs. It is a bit like the invention of cams and some guys, like Henry Barber, refused to use cams. Personally I don't think UFO's are cheating. I actually tried using them but it was too much of a learning curve for me.

There is a level of technology that climbers make a choice to stop using. What Potter was doing with Freebase was probably insane but imagine if you had a foolproof BASE solution that would protect any fall... Dare I say, anti-grav boots... At some point all of the danger and with it, much of the adventure is taken out of climbing. Yeah so Perry used hemp ropes,etc. But 80 years later Burndt Arnold was onsite barefoot soloing, no chalk, grade 24s. So increase in technology does not mean that climbing has to lose its adventure. In fact it never has meant that. The level of risk some people are taking in mountain sports is as high now as it ever was. It is a choice if you want to use technology to kill the adventure.

I can see both sides too it. When I go back next year, I have not decided if I will use UFOs or not.