Funny name for a climb

Honestly, I am just tired of looking at the title of the previous thread. Anyway, there is this offwidth in Squamish called "the March of the Kitchen Utensils". Even though the climb is only 5.9, I think the name says it all. That name still cracks me up.

"only 5.9"?? Don't you realize that back when the earth was cooling,5.9 was the extreme upper limit of human endeavor? Frankly, it has always been a psychological barrier for me.....

Did you try those 5.9's in EB's? Or were you wearing the old boots? I've got a relatively new pair of 5.10's (climbing shoes) that feel like cheating even compared to the EB's! Surprisingly, they are size 14 . I feel lucky ... my criteria for picking out climbing shoes was that they big enough to fit my feet! Thank goodness I can get them resoled later and I may have a buyer for my old EB's.

I know for a long time, 5.9 was assigned to the hardest routes. I have been going up the Tahquitz and Suicide Rocks whenever I get a chance lately. Lots of history with that place. Interesting stuff to read about.

Climbing ratings have suffered grade inflation just as our public school system. Many of the classic traditional 5.9 climbs are now rated higher.

Be leery of 5.9's put up in the era when 5.10 was the limit. Until it was acceptable to "break the limit" everything "hard" was rated 5.9!

Gear as much as climbing skill have allowed us to climb harder stuff. Every try to pound in a piton on a 5.9 hanging by your fingernail? And if you could even get it in without falling off, when you actually did fall off higher up, you could never be sure it would hold. The old truism was the "leader never falls".

WD
I've free climbed pitches of old pin scars in Yosemite Valley at the base of Royal Arches. You slip two fingers into the scar and toe the lip of the crack with sticky rubber climbing shoes. Its pretty satisfying to free climb the scars left by a prior generation who could not have free climbed the scars, not because they were'nt strong enough, but because they didn't know how. When I was 21 I laughed at the veertical rock in Yosemite - you obviously can't climb it - its vertical, and 21 years later I came back and started climbing it because someone showed me how.

I guess I don't get the OPs joke though. Does the name imply that by the time you finish you will have used every piece of hardware in your kitchen for protection (The whole rack?)?

I climbed one in Pinnacles where the first move was a pendulum across space and a grab onto the other side - at the top of an overhang. It was called Cantelope Death - refering to what might happen to your head if you screwed up.

Jim

I had not thought of it that way before... But after inching up the thing by heal toe jamming and chicken winging, it felt like all the sharp utensils from the kitchen had marched over your body. Well, I could relate.