In keeping with today’s theme of R-rated gear climbs is news of a new R-rated gear route in New York’s Adirondacks. Climbing a series of poorly protected seams with poor feet, Matt McCormick did the FA of Wheelin N Dealin’ (5.13c R) this weekend after taking some 20+ falls from the crux while working the route. Writing on his blog, McCormick describes the climbing:
The route follows a 12cish seam to a rest at a horizontal and then through some entry moves to a V8 boulder problem a ways above your last gear. The gear includes three hybrid aliens including a tipped out green/yellow at the crux and several questionable micro rps which fortunately were never tested. This route forced me to use the worst feet I’ve ever had to use on a route and completely changed my perception of what is possible to stand on.
As I noted above, success did not come easy and McCormick took several big falls. One of the falls ended in a rather terrifying upside down slam into the wall that McCormick was fortunate to walk away from with only a bruised elbow.
Check out the video below to see him working the route, falling and eventually sending. Hit McCormick’s blog for the rest of the story.
Awesome Narc! Good news find!
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That fall reminds to me always wear my helmet. Which I don’t.
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Good point!
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videos like this only affirm my position to only boulder, i would have pissed my pants up there
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Some good climbing and even better falls! I’m mostly with Ian, but it’s a great way to really test your head / mind strength!
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Devil’s Advocate:
Is it really possible to take 20+ falls on a climb without ending up seriously injured and have it actually be rated R??? I agree that the cartwheel fall looks scary as hell, and the placement looks dubious, but if it has held that many falls looks can be deceiving…
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I agree w/Yosh, shouldn’t the R rating be for actual danger as opposed to just “scariness”? If you’re repeatedly taking the crux whipper and nothing happens…I mean there’s bolted sport climbs where you could blow a clip and hit the ground from 30 feet up, and they’re not rated R, WTF?
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I also struggled with the decision of whether or not to give this route an R rating. I guess time will tell as others try it. The crux itself is not R rated as you both point out but the climbing above the crux is over 2 extremely dubious offset rps that might hold a downward pull but definitely no outward pull. A fall from above those pieces would likely pull them and land you on the ground from 80′ or so. Also the lower .12cish crux which is not included in the video clip is protected by 1 #2 rp and a dubious black/blue alien that I never fell on.
I guess this goes to a larger discussion of how a route gets it’s protection rating. Do you rate it based on inspecting the gear prior in headpoint style or do you give it with the onsight climber in mind? I’m not sure… Also, does the protection rating only apply for the crux? I guess this is another larger discussion.
Many climbers could definitely onsight this route but would most likely not be able to find the placements I did when inspecting the route from above. The extremely specific gear that fits these placements really would make it difficult to protect onsight.
These were some of my thoughts in giving this route an R. Others who have played around on it with me agreed. So were some of the thoughts I had in mind when I gave it an R. Let me know what you think!
Matt
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“I guess this goes to a larger discussion of how a route gets it’s protection rating. Do you rate it based on inspecting the gear prior in headpoint style or do you give it with the onsight climber in mind? ”
Wait till it gets retro bolted, then you get to see how hard it actually is without the contrived difficulty of climbing on bad gear, and with no headpointing, the rehearsal doesn’t dilute the actual move difficulty. Till then it’s just someone conjecturing about how hard they think something would be, not how hard it actually is.
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I can’t decide if this is a really great troll attempt, or just incomprehensible intornets jibber-jabber.
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I was going to say the same thing. That quandry has been eating away at me…. can we either make bad points that are really super super sarcastic or good points that are obvious? Please? Or shall we start using the /sarcasm tag?
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Excellent work, Matt!!! Looks like an amazing route. Very proud!
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Ditto that! It looks fantastic!
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ay yi yi! i need to get on some trad and whip!
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