Port? That's the stuff our grandmas nipped while cooking Thanksgiving Dinner, no? No, I don't think port quite gets the job done anymore.

X-tacy and viagra dude. Where ya been??? The stiff guy dancing by the door is pointing the way...

DMT

I think you may have missed the point. If all you know how to do is climb until you top out or fall, then you can only climb at or near your limit in environments that are condusive to that - like plastic and steep sport routes.

The idea of working the grades and not falling in trad is that you learn the valuable skills of downclimbing and retreat.

Without practice, downclimbing anywhere close to your top grade is not going to happen. And, without the safety net of knowing you can back off, the gear factor is going to cap your trad limit. I think that is why so many wicked strong young climbers, honed on bouldering and plastic, still hit a wall at 5.9 in trad.

How else would an old duffer like me wind up retrieving gear from a 5.8 climb for 5.13 sport climbers?

Another issue is building judgement, it takes quite a bit of experience in trad for most climbers to be able to identify 'benign' falling conditions.

Funny, will you examine the reverse... why so many trad climbers hit the wall at 5.11 sport? Will you take a hard look in that mirror too?

*One particular route can only teach you so much about climbing. Climbing one route has a limited number techniques and demands on the climber. If you are only working on the skills necesary for that particular route, then the other skills tend to fade.*

Except that, obviously, the skills learned on one climb apply to others, like the chords learned to play one song on guitar are used on other songs. Projecting sport routes will not make you less skillful on sport routes, there is such a thing as carry-over benefit.

*If I get stuck on a power move that keeps spitting me off, and I keep trying it over and over to the exclusion of anything else. Then I will eventually improve my power to the point of being able to do that move, at which point I will most likely have lost the endurance to finish the route.*

This makes no sense. In the course of repeatedly trying one move, you're "most likely" going to lose your endurance? I have never had this experience in 15+ years of sport climbing, you have MORE endurance after the crux feels easier, not less. Maybe if you have no endurance to begin with...

"Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question. 'Does this path have a heart?' If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use."

--Don Juan to Carlos Castañeda

*One particular route can only teach you so much about climbing. Climbing one route has a limited number techniques and demands on the climber. If you are only working on the skills necesary for that particular route, then the other skills tend to fade.*

Except that, obviously, the skills learned on one climb apply to others, like the chords learned to play one song on guitar are used on other songs. Projecting sport routes will not make you less skillful on sport routes, there is such a thing as carry-over benefit.

*Bouldering while hangdogging or while bouldering tends not to be good for endurance. That is pretty basic.*

yeah but according to you if I try the crux repeatedly I will "most likely have lost the endurance to finish the route", which is just a ridiculous statement.

Here is another take on 1 try vs. 20:

Realization 5.15a 35-40 tries spread over 3 years, 3 years later still world's hardest route, monument to human perseverance and willpower

Stand at the base of this thing and tell me trying it over and over again will make you weaker. Oh but I guess that since failing repeatedly on it was "reinforcing repeated failure" and that it was "bad for (his) on-sighting skills in the short run at least" that he should have just given up.

*You climb up to the crux and fall off, repeat for a month and tell me your endurance would not suffer.*

Well, working something that far out of my range would be pretty stupid to begin with unless I had already done every other route at the crag, even then I know when I'm licked, if I still can't do the moves after a month of trying I'd be pretty stupid to keep going. Linkage is another story though, if I can do all the moves but can't put them together, and I like the route and the line, *then* I'm in for the long haul.

I hate to fall but should more often.
But one thing I've noticed is that grabbing runers is often worse than falling:-

Used to be, I'd go to great lengths to avoid grabbing pro and 'tainting' the ascent. Tell you want... I'd rather taint a f---ing route than taint my leg or ankle.

One of the most satisfying moments in climbing for me is when I'm above my gear and faced with making moves at my limit, where the possibility of falling is equal to the possibility of success. ...... What it comes down to for me is that a willingness to fall is proportionate to my commitment level........ Generally, the more willing I am to fall, the more commited I am to a climb. Sounds kinda contradictory, but when I accept the possibility of falling (and don't dwell on it), I often pull through the move and don't fall....,

Kalcario, Curt, Dirtineye, et al,

I'd like to introduce a notion I got from Vermin's writings. I bring it up because I think in this 1 try versus 20 argument, you're all kind of missing a huge issue. To borrow a phrase from acting - where's your motivation? Here's the idea. If you want to get strong, fast, then when deciding what to work on, _f*ck the grade_. Find a line or problem that makes you get all creamy just looking at it. Never mind how hard it is, just work on it. You will be inspired to succeed on this problem, where another problem of equal or lower difficulty would have bested you. Alternatively you may find that after much work, the problem is simply too much for your current abilities, in which case you may want to return to it later (as Largo suggests). But either way, you will be guaranteed to have pushed yourself _to succeed_ in the process, and that is what will make you stronger, and inspire you to improve your technique. Not because of some desire to "be a V9 climber" (what the h3ll kind of inspiration is that?), but for the love of a beautiful line.

I learned Leavittation. It took me literally hundreds of attempts before I could get up a twenty foot overhanging offwidth, but I did it. Why? Because it seemed so unbelievable that it could be done, I just had to do it!!!

But truth be told, I think that this whole sub-thread is beside the point. The above advice is really only relevant for bouldering, sport climbing, and _experienced_ trad leaders.

The real issue is that there is a process involved in becoming a competent trad climber. There's a lot to learn, and it requires climbing a lot of rock to do it. In the process, it is expected that you will work your way up through the grades. And falling during this process, to steal a line from Brutus, is a "BAD IDEA". The point I take from Rich's post is that until you've reached a certain level in that process, you don't have a full enough bag of tricks needed to deal with the stuff that starts going wrong right when it can hurt you the most. Those skills are not just about gear placement. They're also about such wide-ranging skills as reading the rock (for line of least resistance, availability of gear, solid rock, etc), reading the weather, self rescue, knowing whether you'll fall off a given move, and having a fine-tuned guage of your own abilities wrt all of the above.

Or, more simply - you need to fill your bag of skills before you use up your bag of luck. Start falling too soon, and you'll use up that bag of luck real fast.

As it happens, I'm now in the middle of my fourth season of leading. Just in the last few months, I've already taken perhaps 4 times the number of falls that I'd taken in the entire last three years (maybe eight and two). As it happens, it's also my first season of seriously taking on 5.10 trad. But Dingus is right too - this has simply seemed a natural state of affairs for me, given my confidence level and the relative safety of the climbs I've been on.

Oh, and I still don't like to fall. It's just that I'm now finding myself on climbs where I have a well protected sequence at the edge of my ability, and the confidence to push myself to the point where there's a reasonable chance that I may fall. If all the signals in my head say "go", I'll go for it!

GO

I hate to fall but should more often.
But one thing I've noticed is that grabbing runers is often worse than falling:-
I know of cases where people have unclipped themselves from rings, many cases where people have lifted out trad gear, and two cases where a leader broke a finger grabbing gear.