Hi all,
I'm just back from a trip to Geyikbayiri, Turkey - warmly recommended by the way, with further details here:
http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=134
Over the years I've done a lot of outdoor climbing, and in the run up to this trip I trained a lot indoords and had a good sense of what grade I was onsighting (at Ratho, with its long stamina routes). The routes out there were obviously graded for a redpoint ascent and naturally an onsight outdoors is harder than an onsight indoors. I'd expected this difference, but I'd never before thought about how many grades difference it makes. Other people there, particularly people climbing in the lower grades, were saying that everything there felt 'hard', but I wonder if that's the case?
We're so used to big colourful projecting holds, pockets where the direction of the hole (undercut, sidepull etc) is obvious and footholds that you can see from above. There are few if any decoy holds indoors, so you can move confidently and dymanically through a planned sequence, onsight. I found myself wondering to what extent indoor climbing dulls our ability to onsight outdoors and give us a false sense of confidence and a sub-optimal style for outdoors. So much is different - the reading, the remembering of possible footholds, the pacing and the way in which you need to approach possible holds. Outdoors, there are many possibilities, and some of those holds will be rubbish, yet might still be covered in chalk. Move dynamically to one of those and you'll probably fall off...
So, I wondered, what sort of grade difference do people typically experience when moving from onsighting indoors to onsighting outdoors? To what extent can that gap be closed with practice and experience, or changes in climbing style? And should indoor grades or routes in some way better prepare us for climbing outdoors? Should there be more rubbish decoy holds on routes, for example? Or should the indoor grading system be changed to protect people's egos?!
I'd be interested in hearing other people's thoughts and experiences.
Ben