Chipping vs. Gluing

Justify it anyway you want you are still a baby.

M Mwrote:

And certainly you are unbiased. Ive personally known many sequences with sharp crystals, you have to be careful there. Or just hammer it until it feels good. Soft people should stick to gyms.

Thanks for reading my posts and seeing how I try to see things with as little bias as possible. I've never developed a climb on a crag with sharp crystals so I haven't had to decide what I thought the best thing to do for future climbers would be on those types of routes. It's interesting to hear from people who have put a lot of thought into this and realize it's not a black and white issue.

I really think that if you can justify sinking a dozen bolts into a cliff you can justify some comfortizing and maybe even some glue. I realize that "chipping" in the sense of hold manufacturing isn't different from the average land manager's perspective, but the climbing community seems to generally agree on there the line of acceptability is drawn. I say generally because horror shows like what happened last year at Tensleep show there will always be people willing to flout norms.

This is why I really don't object to needing a permit to do any kind of route development, because a total free for all for the next 100 years probably isn't sustainable, and a permit system if handled with a light touch should screen out 95% of bad behavior by establishing basic minimum standards for what constitutes acceptable route development, including issues ranging from chipping to gluing to removing vegetation to using expansion vs. glue-in bolts. Doing new trad routes with no fixed gear would get a pass in my ideal system, no need to get permission to go do a crack that you're going to leave exactly as you found it.

I imagine such a system being like "hey Mr(s). land manager, I'd like to bolt some routes over on that cliff." "Ok, sign this form that says you understand that if you place any bolts you'll make sure they're minimum 3/8" stainless, that you won't bolt within X feet of an existing route, and that you will refrain from "aggressive cleaning," chipping, or overzealous clearing of vegetation." Violations would result in small fines and/or being banned from further route development for some time. The strictness of the rules would vary from anything goes (local choss quarry in a city park) to no fixed gear whatsoever allowed (really fragile desert areas).

Dylan Pikewrote:

I'm taking your comments personally because I think comfortizing holds (especially on sharp limestone sport routes) is a good thing and I do it on pretty much every new limestone route that I equip. You seem to be arguing that it is bad and is just as bad as creating new holds (chipping). 

You realize there's a lot of grey area here, right? Like, sometimes removing a sharp area would make the hold larger or more incut? If when you remove the sharp edge, there's no hold left, then what?

I'm just genuinely confused about how you equate comfortizing holds with chipping. You used those words interchangeably in earlier posts and seemed to justify your opinion by saying that we should leave the rock as it is to preserve difficulty for future generations. I agree with that sentiment when we are talking about creating holds where there were seemingly none before. What I disagree with is that filing down a razor sharp edge on a hold is the same thing as creating a new hold. 

If there's something you don't want to grab because it's razor sharp, what makes it a hold?

You say that you support different ethics based on the specific local areas. Does that mean that if you came out west and did a tour de limestone, you would be cool with comfortized holds at those crags?

That would depend on the factors you are repeatedly ignoring: what the local community thinks, what existing routes in the area are like, who is likely to climb in the area, prior ascentionists, the nature of the rock, non-climbers who recreate in the area, local authorities and landowners, etc. etc. etc.

To be clear: "the west" isn't a local community. I've been climbing out west and different climbing communities out west are just as diverse as anywhere else. 

In general, if I came across a comfortized hold, I would assume I didn't know what issues are important in that climbing area until I've climbed in that area for a while and gotten to know the area and the community. But you can bet the issues that are important in that climbing area are more complex than "my finger got cut, that rock's gotta go!".

I've said before that I don't know whether the routes you've developed are in line with local ethics because I don't know the local ethics. But given your repeated refusal to consider anything more nuanced than "comfortizing good, chipping bad", I have to wonder whether you know your local ethics either. You should really AT LEAST understand that there's not a clear, binary difference between creating new holds and comfortizing existing ones.

Because you would most probably be using some.

There are lots of classic climbs which were developed with ethic that even you would disagree with. The rock is already damaged, so there's no point avoiding these climbs: that doesn't fix the problem. We can only focus on the future, encouraging people to develop climbing more responsibly.

I expect someone will invent a glove for limestone that protects against cuts to the fingers.

Ackley The Improvedwrote:

I expect someone will invent a glove for limestone that protects against cuts to the fingers.

I love all these key board warriors telling people they need to "toughen up" when every single achievement of note in American climbing is directly due to damaging the rock with pitons or bolts or other permanent anchors (whether placed originally by the party in question or not). As well of course, the removal of vegetation to make the climbing possible was done on every single route too.

Harding, Robbins, Sacherer, Bridwell, Beckey, Kauk, Bachar, Price, Yaniro, Skinner, Watts, Schneider, Cosgrove, Honnold, Sharma, Hill, Rodden and Caldwell...well, they just need to "toughen up" and only use what the rock gives them naturally!

How dare they drive a pin or a bolt! Clean a crack or remove loose rock! Hypocrites that use pin scars for holds! Those pansies won't send 5.14+ on razors or moss! 

Thank god we have real climbers still that would never do that. God bless the Mohonk Preserve for real climbing ethics. Hopefully they'll mandate rope knots for pro next and cut some more stone for trails.

Gonna drive to the crag shitting carbon, arsenic, lead and asbestos into the air.  Crank up the defroster and the heated seats. I've never felt so tough. Save the Lichen.

Merry Christmas MP newbs and vets!

;p

PS.  Let's not forget George Anderson bolting his way up Half Dome in 1875. His legacy let's newbs like me drill as I will in Yosemite to this day.

Mark E Dixonwrote:

ftfy

Scfifty five

pkedswrote:

Schfifty five

tfpu

(ftfy :-)

HUGE Tradifan wrote:

Dylan Pike, I saw your confession that you take hammer to stone before you deleted it ("Sharks teeth"). Smart move.

No matter how you slice it you're chipping but if you can look in the mirror and convince yourself otherwise my hat is off to the power of your ego.

 Maybe he should create another account here to pretend to be someone else supporting him. That’s a real ego trip. 

Ackley The Improvedwrote:

I expect someone will invent a glove for limestone that protects against cuts to the fingers.

We already have tape.

You don't hear people trying to justify comfortizing cracks because it's way more common for crack climbers to tape up. Which isn't to say that nobody comfortizes cracks...

John Tuttlewrote:

I love all these key board warriors telling people they need to "toughen up" when every single achievement of note in American climbing is directly due to damaging the rock with pitons or bolts or other permanent anchors (whether placed originally by the party in question or not). As well of course, the removal of vegetation to make the climbing possible was done on every single route too.

Harding, Robbins, Sacherer, Bridwell, Beckey, Kauk, Bachar, Price, Yaniro, Skinner, Watts, Schneider, Cosgrove, Honnold, Sharma, Hill, Rodden and Caldwell...well, they just need to "toughen up" and only use what the rock gives them naturally!

How dare they drive a pin or a bolt! Clean a crack or remove loose rock! Hypocrites that use pin scars for holds! Those pansies won't send 5.14+ on razors or moss! 

Thank god we have real climbers still that would never do that. God bless the Mohonk Preserve for real climbing ethics. Hopefully they'll mandate rope knots for pro next and cut some more stone for trails.

Gonna drive to the crag shitting carbon, arsenic, lead and asbestos into the air.  Crank up the defroster and the heated seats. I've never felt so tough. Save the Lichen.

Merry Christmas MP newbs and vets!

;p

PS.  Let's not forget George Anderson bolting his way up Half Dome in 1875. His legacy let's newbs like me drill as I will in Yosemite to this day.

I call this the "breakdown post", spewing as many reasons as possible to justify altering lines. Personally I just own it and try my hardest to not make it a regular or normal action.

John Tuttlewrote:

I love all these key board warriors telling people they need to "toughen up" when every single achievement of note in American climbing is directly due to damaging the rock with pitons or bolts or other permanent anchors (whether placed originally by the party in question or not). As well of course, the removal of vegetation to make the climbing possible was done on every single route too.

Harding, Robbins, Sacherer, Bridwell, Beckey, Kauk, Bachar, Price, Yaniro, Skinner, Watts, Schneider, Cosgrove, Honnold, Sharma, Hill, Rodden and Caldwell...well, they just need to "toughen up" and only use what the rock gives them naturally!

How dare they drive a pin or a bolt! Clean a crack or remove loose rock! Hypocrites that use pin scars for holds! Those pansies won't send 5.14+ on razors or moss! 

I'm not telling anyone to toughen up, so I'm not gonna treat this as a response to me. But I think what you're saying is worth qualifying with a few nuances:

1. I think we can agree that ethics have changed over time, in part due to better technology. Nuts and SLCDs have allowed us to protect cracks with a lot less damage than pitons. Bolts have allowed us to create a single hole that lasts a long time, rather than ever-widening a hole with repeated replacement of pitons. Stick clips let us put in fewer bolts, and avoid putting in bolts near the ground where they're most visible. We can achieve the same objectives we could achieve in 1950 with a lot less damage to the rock in 2020, and there really isn't any reason I can see to NOT do that.
2. Just because people are strong climbers grade-wise doesn't mean they're great at every aspect of climbing. I once saw a guy tie his figure 8 wrong, and after learning how to tie it properly, he flashed a 5.13a. His experience was mostly bouldering. Just because someone is a strong climber doesn't make them the arbiter of what's good ethics. Climbing 5.13 doesn't magically confer knowledge of how to tie a figure 8. Climbing 5.13 doesn't magically confer knowledge of how to ethically develop rock climbs.
   
   In fact, some arbiters of climber ethics, such as the National Park Service, aren't climbers at all. Would you tell a park ranger they have to climb 5.14 before they can have an opinion on bolts? Inversely, some of the climbers you've listed did some things which were never ethical at any time. Ron Kauk's vandalism of Midnight Lightning doesn't give us all license to paint logos on our boulder ascents. It's not a toughness thing--obviously Kauk was plenty tough--it's a "don't graffiti the rock" thing.
3. Climbing on holds which were created with an ethic you don't agree with doesn't make you a hypocrite. The rock is already permanently altered, and refusing to climb it doesn't change the past. We can only change the future by encouraging modern developers to develop in a more responsible way than developers of the past.
   
   I also think there's a tendency to get defensive about the ethics with which they've developed, because there's a feeling that once you get labeled as having bad ethics, you can never change. But I don't think that's true. We need to leave room for people to grow and change their minds. Ron Kauk is still alive--I like to think that he's grown wiser and wouldn't support graffiti-ing rock now. That wouldn't make him a hypocrite, that makes him a person who learns as they live.
4. I think we can all agree that it's impossible to leave absolutely no trace, and an absolutist LNT ethic wouldn't allow for LIVING let alone climbing. But I think we can agree that an absolute "anything goes" ethic is equally absurd. Obviously we need to draw a line somewhere between those extremes. And where exactly we draw that line is going to be dependent on a lot of issues, many of which are specific to certain areas. I get that Wild Iris isn't the Gunks, but you should equally understand that Wild Iris or ethics don't apply at every sport crag with sharp holds, either. Instead of trying to come up with a universal ethic for all of climbing, we should embrace the complexity of the issues at each crag, and try to make responsible development decisions in each situation. A strict "no bolts, no comfortizing" stance obviously isn't right for some places, but equally, a "bolt whatever, comfortize all the things" stance doesn't work at some places. If your entire thought process is a binary "comfortizing good, chipping bad", you're ignoring just as much nuance as the "no modifying the rock ever" crowd.
5. In general, I think most of us have good intentions here. We want what's best for the future of our sport. Let's keep that in mind and take a deep breath before taking things so personally and reacting with personal attacks.

Better name for this thread: Unimaginative versus boring.

Gloweringwrote:

 Maybe he should create another account here to pretend to be someone else supporting him. That’s a real ego trip. 

No need. I've already told the world that I have no problem with comfortizing holds. And I'm not hiding behind a forum screen name. 

@David K- you seem a lot like a high school kid who just read Atlas Shrugged. Lots of idealism, but totally  out of touch with reality. 

Why don’t you drive out to Utah and let Dylan show you some sharp, fresh limestone? Make an informed decision about the value of comfortizing. 

Mark E Dixonwrote:

@David K- you seem a lot like a high school kid who just read Atlas Shrugged. Lots of idealism, but totally  out of touch with reality. 

Why don’t you drive out to Utah and let Dylan show you some sharp, fresh limestone? Make an informed decision about the value of comfortizing. 

Good idea Mark. David, if you want to come out to Utah, I'll happily take you to some out of the way desert crags to try climbing some virgin limestone. I'll provide the drill, bolts, hardware, ropes, etc for a new route. PM me if that sounds interesting to you.

One of the great joys of climbing is telling the naïve traditionalist that the route they loved is chipped or glued.

Ron used chalk to make the lightening bolt.  Not vandalism.

Mark E Dixonwrote:

@David K- you seem a lot like a high school kid who just read Atlas Shrugged. Lots of idealism, but totally  out of touch with reality. 

Well, that's quite condescending.

What ideals do you think I'm espousing exactly? I'm asking because it's quite apparent that most of the people responding to me think I'm completely against comfortizing in all situations, which I've repeatedly explained, I'm not.

Why don’t you drive out to Utah and let Dylan show you some sharp, fresh limestone? Make an informed decision about the value of comfortizing. 

I had a trip to Utah planned for January, but had to cancel it due to Covid. C'est la vie.

While your suggestion and Dylan's offer are kind, I'm not exactly keen to climb with folks who talk down to me and make weird assumptions about what my experience is. I'm sure you have valuable skills which I would like to learn, but I have friends I can learn those skills from. Maybe you're nicer folks in real life--the internet seems to bring out the worst in people, myself included--but I'm not traveling to Utah to find out.

FWIW, I'm pretty sure bleeding on sharp limestone isn't going to persuade me of anything that bleeding on sharp schist or hasn't. I'm not sure where the bizarre assumption that I've never wished a rock was more comfortable comes from. Limestone doesn't have the monopoly on sharp.

The value of comfortizing seems obvious. I don't like having to get stitches--not having to get stitches is the value. Does that about sum it up, or is there something else you think traveling to Utah would teach me?