The Aid Rant, Annotated
Chris Kalous is a climbing darkhorse-turned-icon. He runs the most famous climbing interview podcast in North America (The Enormocast) and has written for media for as far as I can remember. He’s also a strong climber and a well rounded wall-rat who used to spray endlessly about his aid climbs in the meadow. However, he is reformed and has also been discussing the repercussions of his aid rant since it was posted on Splitter Choss.
I think Chris deserves a huge amount of respect for speaking truth to power and moving the sport forward. Why the danger rating for aid climbing hasn’t changed isn’t much of a mystery, really, since it isn’t really a physically challenging sport in the way free climbing certainly can be. However, the grade inflation aspect of all sports needed to be discussed and I appreciate that he allowed himself to be recorded.
Below I’ve added the rant and the transcript with annotations.
when you’re up on The Diamond you rappelled and pulled your rope what happened
I dropped my rope, and I startled an aid climber and he yelled at me because he said that he was on some hard fucking aid man.
Do you know what route he was on?
just to the left of The Casual Route
just to the left to The Casual Route?
just to the left
to the left? probably diamond…
one pitch off the ground
he must have been on like Smash the State or something real –
no. no Smash the State’s way right
well, it must have been hard whatever it was
no, it wasn’t it wasn’t hard.
it was aid climbing.
so why isn’t aid climbing hard.
dude aid climbing’s fucking wicked hard.
all right I’ll do it alright
you ain’t got the guts
aid climbing is hard okay but it’s not like, you know, really out of shape people who don’t train at all or whatever, can go and climb really hard aid, and I think that’s wrong. I think, I mean, I think it’s cool but don’t sit down in the meadow and spray on and on about how death-defying your route was, because nobody that I know of, and every there’s a bunch of climbers here, has anyone here, like I said, ever heard of anyone dying on A5 because they fell and they hit the ledge or they ripped the pitch or they ripped the the belay out or all these other stories that you’ve heard?
Anybody?
In the history of climbing, I haven’t, and I used to be super into it. That’s all I’m saying is it’s not as hard as people say it is. I fell on a RURP in the Fisher Towers and it held me, a RURP, in sandstone
mud
mud
mud stone
hard mud
this isn’t working I’m not feeling it
yeah fair enough
I’ll get to the point. The point is, and this is this is where it gets good, the point is, is if aid climbing has a system has a grading system that’s based on the danger, it’s not like free climbing where you can have a hard climb that’s very very safe, everything is predicated on how dangerous the climbing is right? A3 you can fall a long ways, A4 you can fall and get hurt, A5 you can fall and die that’s roughly the way it’s supposed to work. But it never happens. so if you if you’re going to push aid climbing to its to its logical extension you should, we should get to the point where people are doing routes, okay, where five people let’s say, leave the ground and two people summit, because if it’s that hard I mean imagine sending someone up on a 5.14 pitch they’re gonna fall off before they figure out the move right? a few times, a bunch of times but if you send someone up on A5 it should if it’s that hard if it’s at that close to the edge of what’s possible shouldn’t someone fall off? And shouldn’t they then hit the ledge and die, because it’s A5? and what you would have to do is untie them and then look around at your partners and say who’s going up, who’s gonna finish this pitch? this A5? we have a confirmed A5 pitch, here’s the corpse. Go. it’s your turn. you go. you drawing straws or whatever you know and that’s that’s where it has to go if you’re gonna push it any further than it already is.
and that’s the deal is that aid climbing, the pinnacle of aid climbing was, was probably Sea of Dreams on El Cap. Everything after that just [noise indicating the same grade] because that was the first real sort of sick A5 you fall you die. and no one’s been able to go any further
has anyone died on an aid route on El Cap?
yeah, people died but not because of the difficulty of the climb. they fall and like their rope got cut or…
like the same mistakes that you get occur in free climbing
yeah like they they, like I was saying, we’re on A2 and we’re back cleaning and then something blew you know because they’re trying to save cams or whatever so, so, that’s just that I mean it’s not really a rant because it’s only logical, right? I mean A5 you fall you die that’s what the that’s what the rating is based on. And Bridwell knew this too and he he tried to get rid of the ratings but it didn’t work, he had like Pretty Damn Western, and because he realized that to rate something A5 someone had to die, because otherwise you don’t know. because those little heads can hold. that RURP in sandstone, it could hold you. you don’t know until you fall off, and no one ever falls off, so.
So, then it’s automatically A4 then?
and I’m not some morbid person that wants people to die it’s just sort of a logical argument
you just don’t want them to aid climb
no I just wish it wasn’t like
you don’t want them to spray in the meadow
yeah and and I wish they would turn their their efforts to to advancing the sport like the people who have free-climbed El Cap, you know? and that’s that’s like a step. it may not be like a leap but it’s a step to saying, like they stopped doing, they stopped doing expedition mountaineering you know? people still do it but it’s seen as, you know? you know, not really part of the sport, because aid climbing is like that.
the other problem with aid climbing, especially with a drill, like doing a new route with a drill is you’re guaranteed to get up the route unless something like this happens [pointing to the raining sky] you know the logistics can shut you down but the climbing will not shut you down. a free climb, if you’re not good enough, you’re not going to climb it by the rules you’re going to fall off okay and for instance that Vista Del Condor was originally an aid line and so they they bat hooked up this pitch that subsequently became 12a, okay? so, they’re drilling little bat hook holes and then they put a bolt in every once a while and it’s been free climbed but it’s super scary because there’s the bolt and no one’s added any bolts to it so it’s kind of like why not get to that point and realize you’re not good enough to climb that pitch and go down, and say I’m not good enough? it won. the mountain won. it’s kinda like the Messner thing, like give it a fair chance. I’m not good enough I should come back. No, you pull out the drill and you start drilling your way up it. and anybody can do that.
is that common ethic for putting a hook in? is drilling like enough to put a hook in?
oh absolutely
like it happens all the time
oh yeah all the hooks in El Cap are drilled hooks unless it’s like a monster edge
and that’s bomber then, right?
like I mean it’s not pro once you move past it it falls, yeah, but I mean it won’t pop on you, no.
a fairly competent aid climber could do that with a near 100 percent success rate?
even a fairly incompetent aid climber do that.
and those are the A5 routes?
yeah.
like The Reticent Wall was there ever time on it when you’re like I’m gonna die?
yeah, but you know but I’ve free climbed routes and thought I’m gonna die, you know? I mean those thoughts go through your head on a, on a like barely safe 5.10 if you get 10 feet above your pro, yeah, you’re like, I’m gonna die, you know? so and that’s just a thing is for some reason that that is, you know? I know that after I do that free climb that I was just freaking out, right? I was just up there, I know the reality of it is why don’t we make that extension with aid climbing? where we look at it would go well the reality of it is, I probably would have been fine. but instead we, they come down. They. We. I was one of them. See I’m reformed. I did all this stuff. I sat in the meadow and sprayed you know I’m like “I was so close to dying,” you know it’s right no you weren’t!
so that’s just that’s the rant it’s not very good you’d have to follow me around in Yosemite with a cam…
