UKH

But I did

https://api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/travel/article/r...

In reply to Presley Whippet:  I'm happy more people are climbing than ever.  Perhaps we should enforce a retirement ago of 50 years though to limit numbers?  

On a serious note I'd like to see a bit of effort on the chalk manufacturers to promote good, coloured chalks

In reply to wbo2:

Best to retire from attacking ourselves over minor niggles which only effect the climbing community and look outwards. That is where the danger to climbing lies. 

In reply to wbo2:

Better still, if you can't climb E5 after 5 years you should be forced to retire. You can keep participating after 50 years of age if you can do E5.

In reply to Shani:

No. Anyone who uses the word  'send' should be put down on the spot immediately.

In reply to Presley Whippet:

Sounds pretty fair to me, it describes bouldering accurately as “scrambling up large rocks”.  

In reply to Presley Whippet:

They don't have a problem with climbing per se, just the "essential tool", chalk. Imagine if it was possible to climb without chalk, we'd all be fine.

In reply to Hooo:

In the 80s chalk was just coming in and already there were calls for coloured chalk to avoid the unseemly white dabs on the rock. Impecunious climbers like myself had a bar-towel clipped to the harness to help with sweaty palms. A microfibre towel would be the modern equivalent?

In reply to wbo2:

50 is getting on a bit - shorely anyone ova 40 shud be kept off the cragg

In reply to Lankyman:

Anyone who doesn't is probably in the final stages of decrepitude anyway, so can be left to wither away naturally.

In reply to Presley Whippet:

I never realised you had been making predictions about US participation. We learn something new everyday here. All the stuff about chalk in that article was a live issue when I first started climbing in the US in the 1990s: at one point in Red Rocks NV you could buy chalk that matched  the red rock colour.

In reply to wbo2:

The article linked in the OP is about more than just the visual impact of chalk:

"Beyond the visual pollution, new research suggests chalk may be harming the flora that grows on rocks. The latest study on the effects of climbing chalk, released October 2020, found that it negatively impacted both the germination and survival of four species each of rock-dwelling ferns and mosses in laboratory settings. Wiping it off doesn’t seem to help; chemical trails on cleaned boulders changed the rock surface’s pH balance, which could affect the ability of plants to grow there in the future.

That matters because some climbing spots, such as erratic boulders (the study’s focus), host unique ecosystems. These erratic boulders—rocks scattered across the globe by glaciers at the end of the Ice Age—are islands of vegetation, different from the land they sit on. As such, they may hold information about that era and how these plants travel.

...while colored chalk can help mitigate visual blight, it doesn’t prevent environmental damage. Most colored chalks contain magnesium carbonate along with other ingredients"

In reply to wbo2:

we could just ban the use of ropes, and let the Darwin effect keep numbers down….
 

In reply to Martin W:

I reckon all the hammering, leaf blowering, digging earth out with trowels and wire brushing has a greater affect on flora on rock faces than chalk?

In reply to Hooo:

Its not essential and you can climb without it.

In reply to Martin W:

I was at a cliff in the Frankenjura when the commitee that reviews the environmental impact every year arrived. All was well except for one rare plant in a pocket at ground level which was cause for great interest to the botanists. It was growing in a heap of chalk that had fallen out of a chalk bag when someone sat against the cliff.

In reply to Shani:

Maybe climbing should only be available to those with 50 years of experience. That should keep the crags nice and quiet for the old ones.

In reply to The Pylon King:

Sorry. I know that irony sometimes doesn't come through on forum posts, but I thought I'd made that one pretty obvious!

In reply to Hooo:

You never know… even smileys can be double ironic, and even plus or minus votes can be. (Please downvote to support )