Wear and Tear

The contrast was stark. The day before, we’d been climbing on cracks that had seen relatively little traffic. The edges were crisp, the face holds had incut to them and hadn’t been worn into sandy slopers by thousands of eager hands and feet. We weren’t at one of the “classic” walls, but the routes were certainly fun and worth doing.

The next day, we hit up one of the roadside crags, as we only had a couple hours before needing to head back to Colorado. Wow, what a difference. The cracks were almost polished, if such a thing is possible for Wingate, the dark varnish gone from countless climbers dragging their asses (quite literally) up the wall. Chocolate Corner? Not any more, maybe White Chocolate Corner, or at best Milk Chocolate Corner…

The wear and tear our use is dishing out on desert sandstone is not something new to me, but to see the opposite ends of the spectrum so clearly was a bit disturbing. It saddened me to think of the routes we had done the previous day, and how they could possibly suffer a similar fate. I thought about how their character might change, and what a shame it would be if at some point the experience became drastically different than it is right now.

I don’t know what the solution is to this “wear and tear,” or even if there is one. Thankfully, most of the walls in Indian Creek don’t sit right on the road, and don’t get worked over like Super Crack/Donnelly/Battle of the Bulge. I do know I don’t want everything to become another Incredible Hand Crack, which, after all this use, really isn’t that incredible. (I can only imagine what it was like to jam tight 2.5 Friends (good #1 Camalots) out that bulge). In fact, IHC is a route I’ll never climb again. I’ve done it a couple times, and personally I think everyone should get three lifetime ascents of it and then be done. Plus, there really are much better hand cracks out there, trust me.

Maybe some personal restraint is in order, to preserve the things we love. That and some strong legs, so you can walk to those walls that not many people go to, but that offer climbing that’s just as good, or maybe even better, than what you’ll find right next to the road.