UKC

Hi

sorry, this is probably my first and last ever question on here, but I have been bugged by a small issue for - ooooh about ten years and am no longer willing to live in ignorance.

Back in the very late 80's I shared a house with a load of rockclimbers.. I got into the habit of flicking idly though their mags and started following a hot controversy, in which a 'bad boy' of British Rockclimbing was doing baaad things. I believe he was bolting a lot, or chipping, or something, and there was a strong letters-page debate between the 'That's the way things are granddad, it's time climbing was dragged Kicking and Screaming into the century of the Fruitbat ' people and the 'He is desecrating the Rock! The Holy Virgin Rock!!! Burrrrn Him' types.

So, I moved out after a year.... but I always wondered - who WAS that guy, and what became of him. It will have been 89 or 90, anyone know who it would have been?

It's starting to bug me like a song you know the tune of but can't whistle, or a long-ago sporting event you watched a bit of but never found out the result.

In reply to SANE MAX:

Charlton Chestwig?

I believe he was bolting a lot, or chipping, or something
Strange that you remembered those quite specific terms...

In reply to FactorXXX:

Charlton Chestwig never chipped. How dare you sir! Neither will it have been Hydraulic Man for whom bolting was anathema (his ability to push his fingers into solid rock helped...).

I can think of chippers (the Polish climber Pietr Liversausage for example) and bolters (Gareth 'Glueless' Gibbon springs to mind) but few who fit both categories.

In reply to Andy Say:

Charlton Chestwig never chipped. How dare you sir!

He was a bit of a cad though when it came to bolting...

In reply to SANE MAX:

This is from a bit earlier in the 80's, but you may have been reading an old magazine.

youtube.com/watch?v=dnGh-hggvxs&

In reply to SANE MAX:

Interesting question. I know Mark Pretty took some flak for retro-bolting a few famous traditional routes somewhere around that time.

In reply to SANE MAX:
In the 80's I believe Raggy Bison held bad boy status due to dubious first ascents/chipping.

However in the late 80s early 90s, the title 'bad-boy' of British Rock climbing would have been held by John Dunne; not that he chipped, nor bolted where he shouldn't. John's crime was that he worked outside of the (Sheffield) clique and was a superior climber to most if not all of those in it.

In reply to SANE MAX:

Thanks all, but none of those ring any bells at all. I am sure it was bolting, and he was British. Ah well, I was prepared to be bitterly diappointed, so I am not Bitterly Disappointed...

In reply to SANE MAX:

Pete Livesey????

In reply to SANE MAX:

I believe one Ken Wilson was heavily associated with the bolting scene back then.

In reply to SANE MAX:

Probably the debate about bolts on Cornish Granite : http://javu.co.uk/Climbing/Articles/CornishBolts/index.shtml

In reply to SANE MAX:

Ben Moon's Statement of Youth? Think this was a bit more like mid-80s though.

In reply to SANE MAX:

All together, one, two, three












Troll.

In reply to Andy Say:

Charlton may have been as pure as the driven snow, but Paul Williams created "the largest man made feature in Llanberis" (Chipadeedoodah) ...

When did Moffatt cut the Redhead bolt on Cloggy?

In reply to TimB:

My first thought as I read this thread was whether it was the right sort of period to have been the Mark & Rowland Edwards controversy. Seems likely to me.

In reply to GrahamD:


Too right. He had a really big interest in bolting. Possibly not positive however....

In reply to FactorXXX:



Aye. But he was a right man. Liked his Tequila Sunrises...

In reply to Dell:



Well more 70s in fact but awesome historical video nonetheless. So interesting to see how climbing was back then: Whillans harness, chalk bag between your legs and much else in there. Fascinating stuff. And so it was Livesey who was accused as being a threat to the adventure aspect of climbing. Now where have I heard that one before?

In reply to stp:
Thank goodness it was the 70's stp, I watched that vid at work with the sound off and thought 'That CAN't be the 80's surely'

Well, thanks for all the suggestions, I suppose it wasn't THAT big a controversy, letter pages in old magazines are always full of that sort of thing.

Last few things - I believe he was quite young, 20's, 30's. Deffo a Brit when I think about it.

And no, The Lemming, I promise, not trolling. Just mildly curious about a dimly remembered event from my youth.

Pat Stoddart

In reply to SANE MAX:

I remember a letter in Climber mag in the 80's comparing bolting to AIDS and saying both must be stamped out before they 'gained a foothold in this country'. Wonder what that chap thinks now?

In reply to Andy Hardy:


Blooming ek , he must have had a big chisel

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_power_station#/media/Fileinorwig...

In reply to SANE MAX:

Sounds a bit like the John Redhead and the curious incident of the flake on Indian face, that Redhead claimed came off in his hands. There was a letter in the one of mags by a (non-famous) climber who claimed to have witnessed Redhead levering it off with some force. Redhead's response was vitriolic and tried to belittle his witness. And then some other famous climber weighed in to attack Redhead for his attitude to average climbers.

Odd to think how slowly this affair panned out in the pre-internet days - essentially one installment per month rather than 100 posts per day.

In reply to Chris the Tall:


I thought Redhead's main gripe was with pre-practicising of routes (style of ascent), rather than 'average climbers'?

In reply to Shani:

In this instance his main gripe seemed to be that he got caught !

Wasn't there a punch-up in the padarn when he showed Dawes the flake ?

In reply to Chris the Tall:
I thought he knocked on Dawes' door, carrying the flake.

In reply to John2:

O/T

Do you just love these old stories? Is it just me or does climbing nowadays lack characters and events like the ones described above which seem to add so much to the social fabric and history of climbing?

Perhaps I am unaware as I am just not immersed sufficiently in the sport as I once was.

In reply to Dell:

Brilliant video - the beeb certainly knew how to do rock climbing vids in those days.

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:


It ran 3 decades and hasn't finished yet!

In reply to Shani:

In particular pre-practicing that route since he had tried it himself ground up on several occasions and wrote about his efforts which sounded absolutely gripping, lowering from skyhooks etc.. A ground up ascent was THE challenge of the route and everyone at the time knew that. So for someone to come along and top rope practice the line before leading it was massively disrespectful to other climbers who could doubtless have done it like that and particularly to Redhead. Whatever his attitude to 'average' climbers was I think he had every justification to be very p!ssed off about how this route was done.

In reply to SANE MAX:

I think it may well be John D. He was certainly the pantomime villain of climbing for a while. I think the chipping was not for a serious route but I seem to remember him getting a a shedload of grief for chipping a competition route up a scabby blank wall at Hodge Close in the very early days of comp climbing, possibly even doing it for a TV comp? IIRC the TV people ran away and hid when the brown stuff hit the fan leaving JD holding the chisel.

In reply to SANE MAX:
I remember reading about an aid route at Water-Cum-Jolly by Chris Craggs which was called 'Free That You Bastards' being contentious, and there are mixed accounts, to do with whether Chris Craggs stopped it being freed (for a time) by chipping holds off when somebody got close to freeing it (the version told by some people who weren't Chris Craggs), or whether somebody else chipped it and Chris Craggs returned the route to it's pre chipped condition (the version told by Chris Craggs).

I'd have thought (in climbing terms at least) resin and various bonding and sculpting products might be the most effective way of returning a route to it's pre-chipped state, rather than taking tools to it again, but perhaps I've got the wrong end of the stick & don't appreciate what happened to the holds. It could be interesting if Chris Craggs himself commented.

Whatever the truth, the free version of the route is called 'The Bastard', which seems like a neat conclusion.

In reply to stp:


30 years on and still no one has done it ground up. As for the notion that others could have "doubtless" have done it in the same style as Dawes - it was a good 10 years before Gresham and Dixon did it (and I believe with far more practice than Dawes).

Redhead of course will believe he could have done it and that justified his anger and actions, but really ?

In reply to stp:
Yep.

I do recall the ethics of climbing were way sharper and slower moving back in the 70s and 80s. Practicing/TRing were definitely frowned upon by significant sections of the climbing scene - despite the emergence of sport climbing in the UK. Funny to reflect on the views once held about bouldering, competitions and indoor climbing.....and chalk.

In reply to Wiley Coyote:

The route that JD chipped was at Cathedral Quarry not Hodge Close. Al Phizacklea, Rob Knight and myself filled in the holes and wrote a letter to On The Edge magazine about the events. The route was later climbed by Rick Graham as The Cruel Sea (7a)

In reply to Wiley Coyote:

The competition was originally 'scheduled' for Malham. Then shifted to the Lakes. There was a sports TV production company behind the event - Brendan Foster was heavily involved - and it was even billed in the Radio Times for transmission. On a saturday I seem to recall.

As far as I know some of the political heavyweights in the BMC leaned on some of the heavyweights at the BBC with days to go and it got shelved.

In reply to Bob:


Someone else must have cleaned the filler off.

I just placed some bolts and climbed the route.

Was it not at Hodge ( left of Malice in Wonderland ) that you had to do some repair work on chipped holds ?

In reply to Bob:


All credit to JD though... A nice set of moves with clever use of a 16mm drill bit, I would have used an 18mm to suit my fat fingers

In reply to Rick Graham:

That was Jim Bird's Curtain Call (7a+) though they were much subtler - basically a couple of tiny improved dinks in a break that make the flake on Nagasaki Grooves (E4 6b) look like a line of jugs. Can't remember repairing them.

In reply to SANE MAX:
Sounds like it could be the Frankie Comes to Kilnsey (7b+) saga to me. Right time, bolting etc.