UKH

Let's say you've found a bit of unclimbed rock, how far would you go to clean it up?

Is there a point where it's worth leaving it untouched or is every crag salvageable? 

Apart from environmental concerns, which definitely should not be ignored, there are many crags which have been cleaned up thoroughly, only to revert to an unclimbable vegetated state once the initial fascination wore off. If the intention is to end up with a crag for climbers to play on for years to come, it could be a huge waste of effort to repeat that mistake.

Good advice. Can you think of any examples?

One big factor is where it is. Some scabby sandstone outcrop would get queues in Cambridgeshire yet not a passing glance in Derbyshire. 

Is it 'worthwhile' climbing, or would people be better off just going to another nearby venue? Is it a style/scale which is not catered for by other nearby crags?

To be worthwhile it has to offer something above it's alternatives. Either in climbing, accessibility or environment.  

Zapple wall at Yarncliffe was kindly cleaned up this year which has some really good 3* routes on it (apparently). Only problem was the rain came for about 4 weeks after and dumped a load of filth down it again and sludged out the base of the crag. Regular traffic might help a section like that but the lay of the land means that heavy rain deposits dirt down the wall and fills the cracks. Such a shame, one day.....

Thanks. Helpful to know what other people think before I waste time on something.

I see what you mean and I've had similar thoughts on what the pros/ cons of developing the crag might be. At the end of the day it needs to stand out in some way. 

the sludge at the base of the routes is mainly from the top outs being dug back properly for the first time ever (lots of large rocks mixed with earth and clay have been removed) until the grass re-establishes in the spring it will be a problem, but doing a proper job should mean the wall comes into and stays in condition in the summer more often so in the long term it will be much better. Some grass seed may be required at the crag base however. The routes are are of a good enough quality to make this time and effort worthwhile. Some other parts of the quarry however are lost to nature and would be best left that way, such as the routes just to the left of Fall Pipe

Great End Crag in the Lakes is probably a good example, though Lakes climbers would know better than I. Some brilliant climbs but it seems to regress into the jungle more quickly than the climbing traffic keeps it clean and it sounds like a mammoth effort to periodically clean it up. I just checked the logbooks on here and even the 3-star classics there don't have any recorded ascents for over 3 years.

Banzai Pipeline (E1 5b) got climbed several times this year, but it is prone to seepage and vegetation. It is much more an effort to clean a route like this on larger crags than it is on an roadside accessible single pitch crag. I guess the number of people who would want to put the effort in to do this in the lakes small and there are a lot of dirty crags to chose from. Then every winter matter gets washed down the route so even with a massive effort these route to a spotless state they still need regular traffic and cleaning by climbers, something the weather can prevent much of on some years!

Craig y Llyn - Unbelievably dirty when i last went there (some time ago).  A sea of moss and lichen, unhelpful given then nature of the routes

Pretty much everything in south Snowdonia / mid Wales. Cwm Cywarch for example has hundreds of routes listed in the guidebook with only a tiny fraction in a climbable state.

Also depends why it's filthy. If it takes a load of drainage from above, it'll be filthy again in no time unless you can address that.

jk

Around here, Squamish and Harrison Hot Springs, the cliffs get very green and mossy in winter.  It's just the climate.  We had bad floods a couple of winters ago, big fires with smoke the last few summers, sometimes we get very heavy snow and winds.

Three years ago I walked through the Canadian Rockies and saw 500 million year old trilobite fossils:

Sorry, elliot, I have no answers for your questions.

The Phoenix Climbing club climbed a lot of rock round us. Honley and a lot of surrounding rock was climbed extensively in the 70s and 80s. A lot has 'gone'. Even the left hand side of Cliff has succumbed to natural wilding. So are you sure it is untouched? 

It's a digression, but events like foot & mouth and covid sanctions also caused a drop in footfall. One year off radar for any reason is often enough for vegetation to rapidly start taking over. 

I'd definitely agree with both your points there but would also add that recent lockdowns and local travel restrictions seemed to generate an increase in the more esoteric and otherwise forgotten crags and 'craglets' being (re-)discovered.

When I was restricted to the 8 mile (?) limit,  I revisited a local crag that I'd not been to for 20+ years, only to discover it had potential as a great bouldering venue. There are now dozens more problems there but already, due to lack of traffic, the rock is becoming as green and mossy as it was when I uncovered the new boulders there. Someone else will hopefully 'discover' them in another 20+ years and be as excited as I was when I went up in 2020.

Good point and shows we too often get drawn to the big honey pots. On a trip to Cornwall once we made a point of not visiting the usual crags bosigram, chairladder, sennen etc and went to many smaller crags, often more than one a day, yeah less big ticks and 3 stars routes, but some great less climbed routes and no crowds. 

If it's dirty, there is often a reason beyond "that's nature innit", e.g. it's a drainage line, it's north facing, it seeps profoundly, it's under tree cover and gets no sun. It is also worth underscoring that any rare or novel plants and cliff habits should be respected, especially if you're talking about somewhere like the Lakes or Wales rather than, say, Honely Quarry.

Saying that, there is rock to be found for the keen and energetic. There are also plenty of documented routes that are now buried... both in the text of no longer in print guides and under layers of moss. When I had a good go at cleaning a "lost" route, I ended up cleaning the holds, leaving the rest of the vegetation and climbing the route, because I realised quite how much toil really cleaning the route would take. Not a bad compromise, in my eyes, cos the majority of the moss keeps living and no one else is going to bother with that crag before it returns to nature anyway. I.e. you don't always need to "do a Fiend" on it!

Not that far, I'm relatively lazy and as there's cubic lightyears of untouched rock near me, I don't need to waste time on bits that turn out to be garbage.

This depends on supply of nearby rock, motivation and any external factors like SSSI, public footpath underneath, etc. etc.

If are motivated enough to develop something that needs a JCB and hazmat suit (I'm assuming SE England or somewhere else that all the good undeveloped crags are still buried 100m or more underground) then I'd suggest asking around to find out if any of external factors you are unaware of exist before turning up with a crowbar and pressure washer.

Bleak How, Langstrath. Cleaned off in a massive effort in the 1980s, pretty much unclimbable now. Trouble is, if you have an eye for new routes and see unclimbed rock, it’s difficult to suppress the urge. 

There's a bunch of small crags in Northern Highlands South near Inverness... I think Strathconnon... they were probably even originally overstarred but by the time I investigated, like 10 years ago or something, they were mostly lichenous garbagio.

I remember reading an article somewhere online about someone trying a 3-star E5 on the Old Man of Hoy where it sounded like a real horror show.

A few years ago I climbed a 3-star E1 at Neist Point, literally a few metres round the corner from the popular finantial sector and it was detachable holds and wobbly giant blocks agogo. I did some vile vdif that was supposed to be quality on the back side of the Cuillin ridge after we rocked up to 2 or 3 star E1 in light rain and found it looked totally reclaimed by nature.

Staffin slip crags has both been reclaimed by nature in a big way until a local lad put in some hard legwork cleaning them up.

I could probably keep rambling on like this for ages but what I'm trying to say is that if you are in the back of beyond and there's no city nearby, loads and loads and loads of stuff just reverts to nature because there are no climbers nearby and/or the routes are tricky and/or the approach is arduous and/or you need to get on a ferry to get there.

Ah, but you're still in the popular realms of Englandshire. Get into the back of beyond in Scotland and there are 2 and 3-star classics from decades ago that don't even have a repeat recorded.

I live in the Fraser Valley of BC.  I've lived here for over 40 years.  There are so many available first ascents here, if you want, but cleaning is always required.  I've done several first ascents here, but it was always a matter of a lot of physical labor.