Tick marks

We got an email from Stevie: Hello people at 8a, I have a message to the climbing community visiting Fontainebleau (and probably many other bouldering areas), and feel that your website is a good place to reach as many climbers as possible. Every time I go to Font I see more and more boulders completely painted over with tick marks, and I mean not just the odd little tick to mark a small foot or something, but long lines going to both obvious and less obvious holds, ticks to mark holds that you grab from standing and so on and so forth. As an example, only last week there was a tick mark on the ‘medaille’ of ‘medaille au chocolat’!! I believe these tick marks are unnecessary and feel we should be a little more cautious about our effect on the surrounding. For both climbers and non-climbers these chalked over boulders really do look very ugly. First of all Font is not an indoor climbing wall. If you want your holds to stand out in flashy colours, stay indoors. Secondly, rock is full of texture and ‘natural tick marks’. Climbers should spend some time really looking at a problem and putting these natural marks in their head before resorting to magnesium. Finally, if you really do have a problem seeing holds, at least have the decency to clean up after yourself. A bit of a brush and the boulder looks like new again, great for the next person who may want to on-sight the thing as well as the hiker who just wants to be in a beautiful and unspoilt surrounding. I have seen examples of these ridiculous marks in boulders of every grade, so I think many people should feel responsible and think about their actions and the effect they have on their surroundings. I hope this message will encourage people to reduce this ugly form of pollution to the rock.