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Show 2 December 2009 Russell Jacobs RJ: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I could, I was comfortable in leading say medium to ... I'd say medium-classified climbs and maybe in order to understand what. .. how we use or how we grade climbing, and each country has got their variation, but when it's translated through, their difficulty equates to what our difficulty is. It's straight across, but they just have different classifications. But ours is basically, uh, starts at 5 and, well, it starts at 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and then 5 is broken down from 5.1 to 5.14. And 5.14 has just, I mean I'd say in the last ten years, actually broke through to a 5.14. It's said now today, there's, I think there's two routes in the world that actually have a difficulty of 5.15. MD:Hmm. RJ: Two routes in the world, you know, thereabouts. So that gives you ... and typically people will rope up for, uh, a climb that's maybe 5.2, 5.3. Um, I don't rope up anymore, or I didn't, until it got to like 5.8. Um, I just felt comfortable soloing climbs ... of 5.7. All the time. I mean, probably not so much now, but every time I guide someone on the Grand Teton, they never belay me. I run the rope up. You know, anchor in and then belay them up through. Uh. So that gives you an idea of how difficult. My level of, uh, ability at the time was right around that, 5.6, 5.7, at that time. Uh, maybe 5.8. But I was well-qualified in guiding people on 5.6, 5.5, uh, in a classroom scenario. MD: Um-hum. So how did you advance as a climber at that point then? Um, you know, your. .. did teaching, did instructing, help you in your advancement? Or, you know, was it, you know, exposure, you know, to other instructors, um, interested in doing other things? So basically, you know, how did you ... how did you start moving forward? RJ: From that, the instructors, most of the instructors didn't have, .. or really didn't want to progress much further. And they just wanted to be, you know they're getting paid and 15 |
