Chipping and rock quality

Back in the days when I was starting to bolt routes in Sweden some 25 years ago, most of the frequent bolters drilled pockets in the rock. I remember stopping one guy just about to create a pocket "in an impossible route", simply by finding a new sequence. In total, I have put up some 500 routes and I have never chipped, although some purists might define part of my cleaning as chipping. You never know when you start hammering out a loose stone if it could break just by climbing and ice blasting. Cleaning loose rock is a grey zone when it comes to chipping.

In Sweden, we normally have gneiss or granite and I have never come into a situation where I have ever thought about using glue. Instead, I have always hammered down the potential loose rock. Very rarely, I have seen or heard about glue been used in Sweden, but in a few cases where a hold has broken after the FA glue has been used to restore the route to its original shape.

At the beginning of the 8a era, you could mark routes as "Chipped" and we had this feature in order to put pressure on the bolters and FAs not to chip. On the other hand, we came to recognize that for hard limestone routes, many cases fall in the grey zone and it is often very subjective to call a route "chipped".

My take on the chipping controversy is that a totally natural route without glue, artificial pockets or hammer cleaning is of higher quality compared to the opposite. Furthermore, where the grey line for cleaning loose rock goes is something that actually mainly should be discussed by bolters. It takes years of establishing new routes until you fully understand the complexity of loose rock, especially when it comes to safety.

I have bolted many routes which turned out to be too hard for me to ascend. I have actually bolted an 8c+ which Adam Ondra later did the FA of. In a few cases, I have put on handmade hangers with a good crimper so it could be used as a hold in order to get traffic on the route. First, the FAs were done with the hangers and then some super strong climbers got motivated to do it clean and the hangers were removed.

I think it is important that role models like Adam Ondra and Alex Huber discuss this subject so that we do not get back to the situation of the 90's. It takes guts to express such opinions but they are very important in order to not have a new generation of gym climbers starting to create gyms also outdoors.