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golsen
Social climber
kennewick, wa
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Aug 19, 2006 - 07:55pm PT
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Off White posted this in a different thread
It is a wonderful climbing area near the drier part of the North Cascades.
See the slanting white line through the black lichen? It is a 11a ish finger crack.
Thats kind of what you are talking about when it comes to rainy environments (and really, the summers are pretty dry).
Not all environments produce nice clean rock that does not need cleaning. In fact, many of the most famous sport areas in the West (AF, Smith) required extensive choss cleaning. I guess the alternative is to not climb.
One time many many years ago I was on a beautiful new route at around 11000 feet. There was a beautiful crack with cool little flowers growing in it. I was able to climb around them without any gardening. It just seemed like the thing to do. But I have also pulled some moss here and there. Been too lazy to do full on gardening.
The fact is, we are increasing green house gases by breathing. We erode trails by hiking, foul the air by driving, foul the water by shitting. And waste bandwidth by posting...
EDIT
Location is Washington Pass, WA, near Liberty Bell. The specific rock is North Early Winter Spire, or NEWS for short. Thanks to Off White for photo cred...
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Jennie
Trad climber
Salt Lake
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Aug 19, 2006 - 08:54pm PT
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Not to mention wearying the Gods by praying.....
Good post...I'm in the throes of Cascade nostalgia.
(Speaking of gardening. have you been on Snow Creek Wall (near Leavenworth)?
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Aug 19, 2006 - 09:16pm PT
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LOL, andanother--
Yet one more faceles nameless gutless wanker making false accusations, most likely at the behest of the disturbed and total nutjob.
IN ohter worda, a lackry if he is not actually the nutjob himself.
You fools can keep repeating it til somone acts on your BS. Once that happens, your a$$ is mine. When and if real damages occur based on your nonsense, I just hope you have real assets.
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nutjob
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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Aug 20, 2006 - 03:05pm PT
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dirtineye:
Yet one more faceles nameless gutless wanker making false accusations, most likely at the behest of the disturbed and total nutjob.
IN ohter worda, a lackry if he is not actually the nutjob himself.
Are you referring to a different nutjob? I'm not faceless, or gutless. check out my 2nd ascent picture in this thread:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=241060&f=0&b=0
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john hansen
climber
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Aug 20, 2006 - 09:29pm PT
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I remember reading about Robbins on the Arches Direct where he described sailing tons of weeds and dirt down the wall in his quest for a dirty 5.8 A4 route. It was done again by Kor and quickly faded into obscurity.
You can see the wear of thousands of passages up Serinity cracks from 1/2 a mile away. Many routes are like that.
Becky said of alot of his routes in the cascades that the hardes't part was just getting to the climb.
At many popular cliffs you can see where the ground has eroded away from the face leaving 2 or 3 feet of newly exposed rock.
Im not making judgements.
Does any one have a picture of Jardines traverse?
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cintune
climber
Penn's Woods
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Aug 20, 2006 - 09:57pm PT
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Wow, this really is about ethics.
Cleaning rocks is not a crime. Cutting footpaths through forests isn't either. Hounding some dude for his private life dramas should be, unless he brings it up.
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Aug 20, 2006 - 10:01pm PT
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NO nutjob, not you, oops sorry bout that.
There's another, andanother, bigger, better nutjob out there.
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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Aug 20, 2006 - 10:16pm PT
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Actually cintune, I've cut a lot of paths and cleaned a LOT of rock.
Ain't no ethical problem with cleaning a route or getting to it either.
This is a fvcked up thread by a fvcked up individual, who has no credibility whatsoever.
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andanother
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 20, 2006 - 10:31pm PT
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huh?
how is this a "fvucked up thread"? It's a legitimate question, in my opinion. And many people have responded with legitimate answers. What's fvucked up about that?
As for my credibility, how does that matter? I asked some questions, stated a few opinions, and people responded. I never claimed to have any "credibility". I just said I saw the movie, and had a few opinions about it.
People responded.
It has been a learning experience for me, as I was unaware of much of this.
Because I have no "credibility" I can't ask questions?
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 20, 2006 - 10:33pm PT
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Don't listen to Dirtineye, he's nuts himself.
hahaha ........
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golsen
Social climber
kennewick, wa
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Aug 20, 2006 - 10:45pm PT
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When I saw the thread title I thought that Bush may be calling homeless people unethical, whoa geez another political thread...
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Relic
Social climber
Vancouver, BC
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Feb 23, 2013 - 06:57pm PT
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lulz.
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Big Mike
Trad climber
BC
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Feb 23, 2013 - 07:15pm PT
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HAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!! TOO FUNNY!!!!!!
A bit of the movie documents some of the effort that goes into the FA of this wall. The narrator says something like “the first time we hiked to the base it took over three hours, but once we cut a trail we could hike in in 45 minutes” and the film shows them with machetes, thrashing through a forest and cutting a highway to base of the climb.
They also talk a bit about the extensive cleaning that went into the climb. They talk about the hours of hard work they spent scraping moss and lichen from the rock in order to make it climbable. And the film documents this, as they hang on ropes and attack the rock with wire brushes.
Since the climax of the movie is the completion of this wall, it seems as if the film is sort of glorifying this behavior.
In order for this wall to go free, the hero had to spend a ton of time climbing, and a ton of time gardening. And the gardening is done in a very “matter of fact” way. That’s just how things are done in the rock climbing game, apparently.
Now I understand that not everyone lives by the “Leave no trace” ethic. And I’m OK with that. I also understand that BC is very green, with lots of trees, underbrush, moss, lichen, etc... From their perspective, gardening is a necessary evil.
But here’s my problem:
Should a professionally filmed, big-name climbing movie be glorifying this? Should they be condoning this type of behavior?
Have you ever been to BC????? If you don't clean it, you can't climb it, or it's not very fun at least.. Wanna climb dirt and moss? Go right ahead. If it doesn't get climbed around here it will grow over in a couple of years!!
My buddy Relic had a major part in the production and filming of this flick. He finally sent me a link to the full meal deal last night.
Here is the trailer;
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Full Video
http://www.ulozto.net/xMQ7LeC/no-permanent-address-climbing-video-avi
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RyanD
climber
Squamish
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Feb 23, 2013 - 10:18pm PT
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Yeah the OP don't know sh#t here, good movie.
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Guangzhou
Trad climber
Asia, Indonesia, East Java
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Feb 23, 2013 - 11:28pm PT
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I've cleaned my fair share of routes and carved enough trail through the jungle that if I never tough a machete again, it will be to soon.
While climbing in Okinawa, I was climbing at a cliff I had carved the trail established about 40 routes. Tropical jungle meant a lot of cleaning mosses and getting dirt of of cracks. With few climbers originally, it also meant I had to climb all the routes regularly.
One day, I was running laps with my soloist when two American climbers from California, stationed there with the marine corp, came up. I was showing them around and they were syked. Both spent a lot of time climbing in Tahoe and Yosemite.
We climb together on the wall a few time over the next couple of weeks, when I recruited them for a new wall I had found.
Both showed up in the morning, I handed out machetes so we could carve a trail good enough for climbers to hike in, and we headed out. Once we reached the wall, I took a lunch break and started cleaning the base.
One of them quit, walked out and waited a few hours at the car. He was upset that we were cleaning the wall so extensively. He even said walls should be clean like "Manure Pile" in Yosemite. When I explain the the pile was so clean because of the traffic it saw, he got irate and never climb with us again. Another 60 routes routes went up, he didn't climb the entire two years he had left on Okinawa.
The people who seem to complain the most about the cleaning are the one who have never seen a new cliff before it was developed. Even if cracks in Yosemite were not cleaned on purpose, decades of climbing them has removed ever bit of dust, dirt, and vegetation from them.
Cleaning is part of climbing. Carving trails is part of accessing cliffs. Check out the death slabs and see if they look like the other rock at the same again around Yosemite. Especially where climbers go up and down. You can spot Royal Arches from across the valley, the base of El-cap is three people with haul-bags wide.
From a first ascent point of view, my dream would be to find a cliff that needs no approach trail cut, not moss vegetation clean, not gardening inside the cracks, no loose rock to remove, and good places to put the gear.
It's easy to criticize what others do.
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sempervirens
climber
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Feb 24, 2013 - 12:00am PT
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Most of the posts here avoid the question of ethics of cleaning. Without cleaning many climbs would be nearly impossible, or even absolutely impossible. But does that in itself answer the question, should we do it? If so then we'd be able to answer any environmental ethical dilemma the same way. For example, without this new road we can't harvest the timber, without harvesting old growth redwood my new siding would have too many knots- it would bow and crack. Without imported oil I couldn't drive to Yosemite. We could justify anything with that kind of logic.
I don't propose to quit climbing to conserve all lichen and moss. Or to quit driving my truck to reduce wars in the middle east. There are problems with that logic too. I'll propose a realistic approach: find out more about your impact before you act. Are those rare plants you're pulling out? How long did it take for them to grow there? A wheelbarrow sized clump of grasses and sedges on El Cap might be hundreds of years old, should we toss it off just so we can climb? Will it ever grow back? Wouldn't it be better to learn about it first? What species? How does it reproduce? How fast does it grow? Is it native or non-native? How does it disperse its seeds or spores?
Then you can make an informed decision and you (or the land manager) might decide to conserve an important resource. A route could be closed until after a plant sets seeds similar to the perigrine falcon closures.
Comments..... anyone.
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skywalker
climber
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Feb 24, 2013 - 12:12am PT
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I don't think you'll ever solve this problem. In my area there is the "sport crag" locals understand the controversy of this place. North Table Mountain wierdness to name a few. I don't understand the draw of these places but I'm glad they are available for ALOT of people.
But getting back to your post. I think it is B.S. Again I don't think the problem will ever be solved either. One time I lived in a place back East that has incredible boulder problems and hundreds of thousands of them! Never heard of it??? Good! But in my ambitions to put up this spectacular V4- I went with a wire brush and removed about 500 yrs worth of lichen and moss to climb my "master piece". Stepping back ready to smile and show it to the "world" I looked at it...wanted to put the moss back on and dart away. It was like a reverse skid mark! I never did that again. I'm sure its covered in moss and erased but in my heart I knew I'd done wrong.
I don't think we can expect everyone to see things through the same lens but I don't think you causing a stink about this is in the least bit a rant, its telling the truth and expressing your opinion and I agree and support and love the lichen, moss, and any human that wants to climb pass them gently without injuring them.
My $0.02
S...
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Big Mike
Trad climber
BC
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Feb 24, 2013 - 03:59am PT
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Will it ever grow back?
If you are in BC yes, it will. There are climbs here less than 10 years old that have not been repeated often enough which have all but disappeared. Maybe in Cali it's different, but here as Kevin Mclane says in his Squamish guide book, "The Trees are Winning!!".
There are lots of more important issues in this world to focus this kind of energy on.
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weezy
climber
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Feb 24, 2013 - 04:21am PT
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aka white people problems
next up: chipping
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