Friday glee is not entirely convinced by that mat arrangement

[rydra_wong]

The Friday post of glee is where you get to tell us about your climbing-related happiness this week.

It can be a new achievement or adventure, or just that you climbed and had fun; it can be that your favourite climbing wall is expanding or that you bought new rock shoes or that you found a cool ice-climbing vid on YouTube. No glee is too small -- or too big. Members are encouraged to cheer each other on and share the squee.

N.B. Please feel free to post your glee on any day of the week; the Friday glee is just to get the ball rolling.

To enhance this week's glee: Ryan Pasquill onsights James Pearson's route "Power of the Darkside" as a highball boulder problem, then gets his finger stuck in the roof. Featuring the mat stylings of Dan Varian.

Comments

[rydra_wong]

I wonder if you have to reduce the E8 bit of an E8 6b you do above mats :-)

There's an epic ongoing climbing wank about whether you're allowed to claim the E-grade if you do a route without gear but above mats, or whether the route should get a separate V-grade or Font grade instead. It seems to be one of the faster ways to start a flamewar on a British climbing forum.

I'm unable to bring myself to care very much, but that may be because I'm not ever going to be climbing at that level anyway. *g*

Yay for pinnacle climbs! That looks amazing.

[emperor]

Yeah, I can see it's an interesting question, but people get far too heated about it!

[rydra_wong]

I think it's important that people are clear about how they did a route, and I'm sure it does affect the experience and the psychological challenges.

But there's a weird metaphysical extreme where some people seem to feel that if you do a route placing lots of gear or you solo it or you do it with gear that wasn't available to the first ascentionist, it's all the same thing, but if you put a bouldering mat at the bottom, it suddenly becomes a a completely different thing and somehow you haven't really done the route. That, I do not get.