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Topic Date User

Great video about Dani Andrada's life and bolting. 4-Jul-2012 At 11:17:21 AM Olbert

Message

On 4/07/2012 nmonteith wrote:
>On 4/07/2012 Olbert wrote:
>>Good video!
>>
>>Interesting when he was talking about routes and saying stuff about 'pure'
>>lines and then adding the caveat that some lines are 'almost pure'.
>This
>>goes against the strident anti-chipping ethic prevalent amongst climbers
>>- it seems a wonder he says that on an international video and nobody
>>(?) has commented.
>
>There isn't a worldwide strident anti-chipping ethic. Most European crags
>have some history of chipping - some heavily. And in the USA, especially
>in the 1990s chipping was very popular. And in Australia there are quite
>a few famous routes that are chipped. Limestone especially is commonly
>manipulated by comfortizing and drilling pockets deeper. You probably have
>never realized how much work has gone into the routes you climbed! In the
>Bluies we trundle and glue rather than chip.

I'm aware of the various sorts of chipping that goes on and went on in Australia and the world to make routes and I'm not part of the strident anti-chipping league, I just thought there was a somewhat of a consensus among non-route-developing climbers (especially new climbers) that chipping was bad. I figured route-developers chipped a little here and a little there when necessary but mainly kept it under the radar and didn't talk about it.

I know here that if you talk to the right people that you can get a real history of routes but if you were a visiting climber and just read the guidebook you wouldn't really know which routes are chipped/glued unless it was blindingly obvious. Certainly when I talk to experienced climbing friends they tell me that they were once naive and vehemently anti-chipping but now they have come to realise it is somewhat a necessity.

Note: I have included 'trundle and glue' into the broad notion of 'chipping'. I understand the necessity of this at various crags due to rock quality and I seek to make no comment on the ethics on this practice.