Chipping vs. Gluing

RRR wrote:

Actually I meant it as a non-rhetorical question that developers should be asking themselves before they make an un-reversible change to the rock. I guess I should have gone a step further and said "what are the all the factors at play including the variety of desires of future climbers have with regards to removing the crystal?". I agree some people will want the crystal to remain because they like the painful challenge, they like rock being left as close to original as possible, etc. But there will be others who would rather have that crystal removed. I'm saying as a developer you should weigh all the factors and let that guide you when you make the decision. Even if you think 95% of climbers would want it removed, that is just one factor. There's also the leave the climb as close as possible to how nature created it (leave no trace). There's your personal feelings. There's how much effort will it take to do it. Do you have the experience skill to do it correctly. There's the local style/ethic. etc. As a developer that's your responsibility and privilege. At least I would hope most developers as putting a lot of thought into it.

TLDR: it's not black and white issue IMO.

My apologies, then, I misinterpreted you the first time.

I think we mostly agree--it's definitely not a black and white issue. As I've said repeatedly, I'm not necessarily saying that chipping is always the wrong decision. I'm saying that you should put a lot of thought into that decision, and err on the side of leaving things alone.

The problem is, it's clear from this thread that some developers on this thread AREN'T putting a lot of thought into this. The thought process seems to be, "This hold is sharp, so I've gotta chip it, and invent the word 'comfortize' so make that sound better". When in reality there are a lot of other options. You could tape up. You could look for another climb to develop. It's not like these are obscure arcane secrets--they're extremely obvious options, that people in this thread are actively ignoring when they say they had to comfortize. If your thought process doesn't include these options, you're not putting a lot of thought into development.

rock freak wrote:

The great limestone walls of Europe like Ceuse, Siurana, Margalef etc are all "modified" to some extent.  In Europe, unlike America, little historical precedent existed with regards to route modification.  However, most bouldering areas in Europe have very strong anti chipping/gluing ethics.  These supposedly black and white ethical decisions oftentimes come down to historical coincidence.  Most limestone sport climbing areas have been comfortized, as a matter of fact.

The fact that they were comfortized, doesn't mean they had to be comfortized.

Oftentimes, having enough skin to grab a crystal or pocket makes or breaks a send. 

So what? I don't care if you send. You don't have some god-given right to send.

I'm going to assume (hope!) that when a climb is too hard for you, you don't say, "Often, having enough muscle to grab a crimp or pocket makes or breaks a send," and make the crimp or pocket bigger or more positive. Why is this suddenly something you think is reasonable when the hold is sharp instead of difficult?

At Wild Iris, if nothing had been comfortized, you would need tape and advil to send the warm ups.

So what? I don't care if you need tape and Advil to climb at a specific area you've chosen to climb at. Tape up and take Advil, or climb somewhere that doesn't require those things.

I think it's fair to wager that many hard climbs in the country would never have been sent without at least modest comfortization. 

So what? I wouldn't care if many of the hard climbs in the country would never have been sent. There are plenty of other climbs which would have been, and there's no harm in the forefront of the sport being a little less strong and a little more ethical.

Exceptions certainly exist, but that doesn't negate the point.  

No point has been made. You've just told me what I already knew--no one is confused about the fact that it would be more difficult to find enjoyable climbing if we didn't modify the rock. But you've still not given a single reason for bringing the rock down to your level of skill and toughness, rather than bringing your skill and toughness to the level of the rock, or finding another rock.

Again, I think this viewpoint comes down to either not understanding the process of sending hard rock climbs, or not understanding the process of route development on different types of rock.

Is it so hard to fathom that someone might understand everything you understand, and still disagree with you?

If you were to visit an area like Wild Iris, I would wager you would not be able to reliably tell what has been comfortized and what has not.  Indeed, many people, myself included, would be unreliable arbiters of rock modification.  This is a testament to the skill of the people who developed this area.  

If you were to visit an area like the Schuylkill River valley, I would wager you would not be able to reliably tell which streams have been contaminated with pharmaceutical waste and which have not. Indeed, many people, myself included, would be unreliable arbiters of water pollution. Is this a testament to the skill of the people who polluted this area?

If you were to visit an area like Minnewaska, I would wager you would not be able to reliably tell which plants and insects are invasive and which are native. Indeed, many people, myself included, would be unreliable arbiters of invasive species. Is this a testament to the skill of the people who introduced invasive species to this area?

Do you see how maybe the fact that we can't tell what's been modified, doesn't retroactively justify the modifications?

Mark Frumkin wrote:

hillbilly, everything you said is an excuse! Justifying bad selfish behavior.

Whether I'm on the trail or on a climb I do everything to mitigate my presence. I want the next person to never know I was there! I want them to have the feeling that they are among the first to be there. 

  

The hypocrisy of you "leaving no trace" but happy to walk on a trail that was cut by someone before you is pretty nearsighted. This is no different than someone putting up and cleaning a new route. Ironically, the damage done on the ground has a huge magnitude greater of real impact on the land and wildlife than practically anything climbers do up on desolate walls. What about that lot you parked in, or the road that got you there. Your excuses for not walking from your home to the crag are just that, excuses, and they're justified by your selfishness.

EDIT: Just catching up, looks like a few people had the same thoughts about Mark's soap box BS.

RRR wrote:

The hypocrisy of you "leaving no trace" but happy to walk on a trail that was cut by someone before you is pretty nearsighted. This is no different than someone putting up and cleaning a new route. Ironically, the damage done on the ground has a huge magnitude greater of real impact on the land and wildlife than practically anything climbers do up on desolate walls. What about that lot you parked in, or the road that got you there. Your excuses for not walking from your home to the crag are just that, excuses, and they're justified by your selfishness.

Also enjoy how up in arms people get about preserving the integrity of the rock and leave no trace but seemingly gloss over areas such as Red Rocks and Red River Gorge which are enjoyed by a huge portion of the public but are lit up with copious amounts of chalk and permadraws that are visible from huge distances away. Seriously, some of these crags look like Banksy ripped a line then started sending and tagging you lines.

pkeds wrote:

Also enjoy how up in arms people get about preserving the integrity of the rock and leave no trace but seemingly gloss over areas such as Red Rocks and Red River Gorge which are enjoyed by a huge portion of the public but are lit up with copious amounts of chalk and permadraws that are visible from huge distances away. Seriously, some of these crags look like Banksy ripped a line then started sending and tagging you lines.

That's because they're hypocrites. Climbing is a sport, just like needing to dig up a chunk of the earth to put in an in-ground swimming pool, just for sport. David K and Mark probably both have swimming pools. The holier than thou comments are hilarious. Based on their opinions, we should all only boulder, and only if we leave the brushes at the house. Hope Mark and David never place another cam in their life, for fear they may chip and accidentally change the rock FOREVER!

David K wrote:

Jim, a justification is something which justifies your actions.

Phew! Glad that's clear.

Jim Titt wrote:

Phew! Glad that's clear.

Hey man, you're the one who wanted to rebrand excuses as justifications. Don't blame me when the discussion gets inanely semantic.

Will you at least acknowledge that comfortizing isn't the only option? That we COULD go find different rocks to climb, that don't require comfortization? Is it such an unreasonable thing to demand that people explore those other options before comfortizing routes?

There are some reading-comprehension-impaired folks here who seem to think I'm completely against any form of rock modification, even though I've said repeatedly that I'm not. But you don't strike me as one of those people. Let's just forget the excuses/justifications and chipping/comfortizing semantics for now and talk about what we're really trying to talk about.

HUGE Tradifan wrote:

There are some things out there that are necessary in order to climb in general, a trail to the crag might be one of those things. 

Trails are never necessary, weakmo. 

I only go to crags without approach trails, and if I happen to see a trail I choose to avoid it, tromping through underbrush instead.

Pnelson, you're an admin. You're supposed to be the adult in the room. Do you really think the two cheap insults you've just posted are representative of that role in this community?

If what someone says is wrong, then you can attack what was said rather than attacking the person who said it.

David K wrote:

Hey man, you're the one who wanted to rebrand excuses as justifications. Don't blame me when the discussion gets inanely semantic.

Will you at least acknowledge that comfortizing isn't the only option? That we COULD go find different rocks to climb, that don't require comfortization? Is it such an unreasonable thing to demand that people explore those other options before comfortizing routes?

There are some reading-comprehension-impaired folks here who seem to think I'm completely against any form of rock modification, even though I've said repeatedly that I'm not. But you don't strike me as one of those people. 

There's a thousand other things I could do, take my dog for a walk or whatever rather than climb any particular route. That I choose (as first ascentionist and equipper of a new route) to remove unpleasantly sharp holds to make the route more accessable and pleasanter to those that come after me is my justification for comfortizing as it is for the other posters. Anyone who doesn't like my views will have to do the FA before me as retro- comfortizing is definititely not in the climbing ethic book.

We are creating a climbing playground, we know that and this seems to be a popular decision in the climbing community. Like it or not that is the way climbing is and always has been.

Todd Berlier wrote:

PAGE 6 SURVEY:

1. Enter YES if your opinion was changed.

My mind as been changed on one point.

There's one anti-chipping argument I always thought had merit- "chipping is stealing routes from future, better climbers".

Now I realize that those better climbers can just hike further and look harder and they'll find plenty of rock to put up their own futuristic routes.

Probably good for them too, a little more hiking.

David K wrote:

Pnelson, you're an admin. You're supposed to be the adult in the room. Do you really think the two cheap insults you've just posted are representative of that role in this community?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

David K wrote:

Hey man, you're the one who wanted to rebrand excuses as justifications. Don't blame me when the discussion gets inanely semantic.

Will you at least acknowledge that comfortizing isn't the only option? That we COULD go find different rocks to climb, that don't require comfortization? Is it such an unreasonable thing to demand that people explore those other options before comfortizing routes?

There are some reading-comprehension-impaired folks here who seem to think I'm completely against any form of rock modification, even though I've said repeatedly that I'm not. But you don't strike me as one of those people. 

I get that you aren't completely against any form of rock modification, but I think you can forgive anyone who didn't come away thinking that after reading your posts. It's not really clear why you are demanding people say that they don't _have_ to comfortize. Everyone knows that they don't _have_ to, just like we don't _have_ to climb rocks at all. It's baked in. So when you write paragraph upon paragraph splitting hairs and calling out people for making excuses you come off as a anti-rock-modification zealot.

Is it such an unreasonable thing to demand that people explore those other options before comfortizing routes?

Is it such an unreasonable thing to demand that people explore climbing purely-trad-protectable routes before bolting? The general climbing culture has decided that yes, it is unreasonable to ask that we exhaust all trad routes before we consider bolting. Comfortizing is small potatoes when compared to bolting when it comes to impact on the rock.

Matt Wetmore wrote:

Bolting is small potatoes when compared to climbing when it comes to impact on the rock.

ftfy

David K wrote:

Pnelson, you're an admin. You're supposed to be the adult in the room. Do you really think the two cheap insults you've just posted are representative of that role in this community?

If what someone says is wrong, then you can attack what was said rather than attacking the person who said it.

"At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed."

--Frederick Douglass

Pnelson wrote:

Trails are never necessary, weakmo. 

I only go to crags without approach trails, and if I happen to see a trail I choose to avoid it, tromping through underbrush instead.

Have you ever been to Joshua tree and seen what happens when people don't use designated trails?

David K wrote:

Pnelson, you're an admin. You're supposed to be the adult in the room. Do you really think the two cheap insults you've just posted are representative of that role in this community?

If what someone says is wrong, then you can attack what was said rather than attacking the person who said it.

It is true though. It's totally fine to not climb hard or not want to leave the gunks.  But as a result of these stances this discussion is outside of your experience.  I don't even really understand the ethics used to develop limestone either, but I can see it is a huge gray area compared to the ethics of the Gunks or Yosemite.  

You're bothered by ethics used on grades you don't climb, and ethics at crags you don't visit.  The gunks are not my crag and changing the rules there will have little effect on me other than to satisfy my desire to see fewer pitons.  Similarly, if somebody sands down a tooth inside a pocket on a 5.14 in the hills in Wyoming, this really does not affect you in a meaningful way.  Just go bask in the ethical purity of the Gunks, don't try to dictate the ethics of crags you have never been to.  Gunks rock is so different from limestone it makes little sense to try and apply the ethics you have formed in the Gunks to limestone sport climbing.  

If you were to visit an area like the Schuylkill River valley, I would wager you would not be able to reliably tell which streams have been contaminated with pharmaceutical waste and which have not. Indeed, many people, myself included, would be unreliable arbiters of water pollution. Is this a testament to the skill of the people who polluted this area?

This is a classic example of something called a false equivalence, a type of logical fallacy in which two things share a trait (in this case alteration of something in nature) and then it is concluded that they are identical morally or otherwise. In this case, the equivalence is false because rock alteration is a clearly visible trait, whereas measurement of soluble chemicals is by definition not visible. In fact, many people complain about the more obvious examples of route alteration at crags. Another way in which this is a false equivalence is that water pollution hurts everybody and is a public health issue. Route comfortization hurts nobody.

TL;DR, your argument is really weak.  Not only is it logically incoherent, but it's about things completely outside your experience.  Do I tell Adam Ondra how to climb?  Do I tell Chris Sharma how to develop routes?  Hell no.  So if you want to decide which piton to replace this year in the gunks, fine, just don't broadcast these ethics to the rest of the world.

Im gonna step in a reiterate a couple points that I think are particularly powerful.

1) Some folks in here are equating chipping with comfortizing. Clearly the climbing community has different definitions of what these two actions are, but I think most climbers can tell the difference and are ok with comfortizing, but would oppose chipping. If you are opposed to comfortizing because you see it as chipping, you are fighting an apparently lost battle against the history of sport climbing development.

2) If you are against comfortizing, chipping, or gluing because it modifies the rock, then you must be against fixed gear of any kind (because fixed gear such as pitons and bolts clearly alter the stone). You must also be against webbing tied around trees (because that permanently alters the trees by killing the bark) and you must be against belaying from a clifftop (because that causes erosion, which exposes tree roots and further kills trees). Come to think of it, you must also be against walking along and belaying at the bases of cliffs, because that causes significant erosion, killing plants and altering habitat for animals. I think if you are really honest with yourself, you would quickly realize that all climbing has an impact on the natural world, and we must decide where to draw the line between what is acceptable and what is not. For me, comfortizing does not equal chipping, so I comfortize my new routes on sharp Utah and Nevada limestone. I clean my routes to make them safe, but I do not create new holds to make a route easier. 

Gumby boy king wrote:

Have you ever been to Joshua tree and seen what happens when people don't use designated trails?

you do realize that you missed the whole gist of the comment...right?

I think we have pretty much exhausted this topic. Typically for mp the debate has devolved into those with actual experience with the issues versus those who dont but like to argue opinions they formed to make themselves feel better after commuting 2 hours in their Ford Explorer to their "local" crag from their suburban sprawl with electrical power supplied by coal.

Thank god for cheap gas and pass the chisel I've got some art to make.

So much rock, so little time.