Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

34? 13-Mar-2004 At 5:45:16 PM RD-Sticky

Message

Ok, it has taken a lot to get me to write on Chockstone, as from what I have read it is full of half-
truths and people stirring shit. Ben is a very nice guy and bar one or two of you, you don’t know
him, so stop talking about his ego, or reach, or what he did. For you don’t really know his
motivation for it. Simon doesn’t even know as he has not spoken to Ben about it. Unless you
want to tell him yourself, keep him out of it, as it is really a discussion on chipping or enforcing a
sequence not about Ben.

I don’t believe that chancing a route after it has been done is the right thing but Ben is definitely
not the first person to do it. There are many good, and not so good climbers in Australia and
around the world that chip. Many of the first really hard routes in every country have been
chipped. People have repeated them and gone on to put up there own natural lines. He is a great
young climber, if you look at the era in which he started climbing and people he climbs with, you
will see that he is a product of his environment; just as people in Victoria are product of their
environment. NSW vs. VIC, to bolt or not, we are the way we are from our upbringing.

I don’t believe that if you top rope a climb you can say you have done the climb, if you pre place
natural gear then it’s a sport climb, if you aren’t pushing yourself to your limit it’s boring, using
Poff(resin) is cheating, ground fall bolting is stupid, one piece of natural gear on a sport route is
f#@ked. But why would I expect everyone to follow my line of thinking?

I believe that everything goes around in circles- fashion, trends, and chipping will come, go and
come again, as people see things in a different light at different times. We can only really have
our own opinions and do want we think is right at the time. As in any sports there are different
aspect to it eg jogging, running, sprinting, marathons, no one aspect is more valid than the next,
unless you have a emotional attachment to it. There is a lot of rock in the world- if you don’t like
the way a certain route is done then don’t climb it!

Richard Dale "Sticky"