2023/03/29

4 Year Summary...Kyushu Climbing Situation page 7 final

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■ Grading should be appropriate, though...

On the other hand, the fact that grading is hard is understandable to some extent, given the circumstances in which pioneers are placed.

Let's say you are the best climber in a group. You have pioneered a route, but no one can climb it again except you.

If the route is harder than that, he will go up a grade, if it is easier, he will go down a grade...because that is the only reference he has.

If someone like me, who is just barely in the teens, and 5.9 is not too bad, I can put 5.10c if it's where I would fall. I can put it that way. Or, how many tries did it take to redpoint? By counting the number of tries, you can give a grade. At my level, redpointing 10c in 2 or 3 tries is my current skill, so I can figure out the grade by the number of flights it took me to redpoint.

However, it is almost impossible to get a wealth of test climbers in pioneering, so it would be nice if the grades were properly aligned from easiest to hardest within a single crag....

The problem is the runout.

Free climbing is a climbing sport where you can fall anywhere and not die, so the problem is not the grade but the runout. In other words, it is a runout where you are not allowed to fall. Especially, the easiest problem at the crag.

First-timers, after all, tend to climb the easiest problems. If the problem is marked as 5.9, even if it is 10c, and you can fall down anywhere, you just say, "Oh, that was difficult," and that's the end of it.

However, if the task is made in such a way that you cannot fall, you are forced into a corner, and you have no choice but to fall and get seriously injured. This is the case of the Indian Face at Ya-ya. On the first day we went there, we met a person who had broken his lumbar vertebrae in a ground fall.

I am sorry to hear that, but it appears that the accident report was not carried in the Freefan. If information about the accident is not posted anywhere, the fact that the accident occurred at the crag will remain unknown.

Of course, if this was an alpine climber, he would have thought, "If I fall here, I'm in trouble! As soon as they realize that they are in trouble, they can take out their aids, such as skyhooks, and climb down to safety. Of course not. No one has ever heard of a skyhook....

Of course, no one would take a skyhook to a slope where they are not going to compete.

So, for those who only do normal free climbing, you should honestly put an "R" on any run-out or non-fallable task.

Free climbers are usually people who think they are climbing a safe route based on their trust in the bolt when climbing a sport route, or bolted route.

Again, they are being deceived by the route.

In the first place, free-climbing education does not teach you to use aid techniques to get out of an emergency situation.

Of course, they don't teach you that if you fall, the belayer will run behind you.

Not even alpine climbers know that these days. There are no alpine rock routes where you can belay running backwards.

Only ice climbers know that. Fortunately, I come from an ice climbing background.

Screws are expensive in ice climbing: 10,000 yen per screw. The momentum and the number of fulcrums are limited, so the belayer below has to take as many of them as possible to save money, and the belayer below has to say, "Hey, let's get them already... This means I have to run far back..." Of course, the belayer was lighter.

Of course, if the belayer was lighter, it would be pointless to run backward, because if he fell, he would be pulled forward. In fact, if the climber is pulled forward and crashes into the ice, the belayer may die and the climber who fell may be saved by the cushion of snow.

In Kyushu, old climbers may not understand the meaning of the word "runabout" itself.

https://allnevery.blogspot.com/2022/10/blog-post_28.html

Summary

So, to sum up,

Alpine routes = to design routes where you remove the bolts and make your own fulcrums.

Free climbing routes = solving the runout problem and designing free climbing routes where the original bolts can be trusted.

Kyushu has two issues to solve.

The other is to improve topo. It should have a top-rope assignment, R, X, etc. The same goes for the date of installation of the bolt and the name of the builder. Was the route started by an aide? Is it a ground-up pioneer? is also a very important context.

In view of the state of climbing today, the aging of the population has, in essence, made climbing lazy... For alpine climbers, it's free and comfortable climbing if you don't have to make your own fulcrums.

If not laziness, then, in a good way, it was ignorance to try to rebolt a cut anchor to a cut anchor in modern times, not knowing that a cut anchor is not a proper bolt in modern times... but anyway, that's 40 years, and it's not a respectable act, is it? Is it a respectable act? Is it a respectable act? The answer is obvious. No matter how remote Kyushu is, it is probably only 10 years behind the rest of the world, and that excuse is acceptable.

The fact that a free climbing route does not follow the logic of free climbing is also basically just a replacement for an aid, or a botched bolt position, rather than a well-meaning ground-up challenge.

I have to say that I would be happy to have a 5.9 to climb after I can climb 5.11. It is a route that I have always wanted to climb. It is a route that I have always wanted to climb. But it needs a historical background. And it needs to be widely recognized as such a route, and it needs to be mentioned in the topo. After all, the topo is there to convey context.

In Kyushu, we are paying the price of the previous generation...even in the 2000s, future generations have had to endure cut anchor bolts that have long since been retired in Honshu, free climbing routes where the bolts are unreliable...and so on.

In this case, it is not the most elite competition climbers who are getting an elite education these days, starting before the age of 10, who are in danger. They can get new bolts (in Goujon) to climb. The budget for this comes from the government.

On the other hand, the average civilian climber, who has been exposed to climbing as a hobby in a non-climbing gym, does not have a coach. They have no mentors. There are no climbing gym managers, no climbing guides, and no climbing seminars in Kyushu.

Even if a climbing course were to be held, the knowledge would not be passed on for fear of local protests.

By the way, a senior member of the Misaka Alpine Club was transferred to Kyushu, and he quit climbing as soon as he could.... That was the reason.

So, this is the end of my four years of climbing.

I am glad that I don't have to climb anymore.