There's a lot of word substitution in this thread. If you guys would read the rules, and stop substituting translations in place of the literal words, the rules are quite clear.
- The rules don't invalidate a climb if a robot isn't supported by a level on the way up (i.e. if a 'robot' flew to the top while sequentially touching the horizontal rungs on the way, it'd be a valid climb)
- The gusset plate is a perfectly valid thing to touch on the way up
- The 0.25" above the gusset plate on the angled bar is a perfectly valid place to touch on the way up (good luck proving to the refs that your bot ONLY went that high)
- The angled bar above the horizontal rungs are the next zone up, no matter how the rules are interpretted.
- -Literal- The pyramid is a steel structure. Climbing is defined as robot contact with the pyramid. Zones are defined by planar dimensions.
-Derived- Steel isn't made of air. Zones are not made up of air.
-Conclusion- A robot doesn't contact a zone.
The laws of physics pretty much derive everything else we need to know. Just like inserting one's own wishes into the laws of physics leads to epic fail, replacing rule wordings leads to unhappy FRC teams.