Manufactured routes at Ten Sleep being called out

Charlie Kardaleff, Aaron Huey, and JB Haab have an open letter shared on the Ten Sleep Canyon Facebook page calling out extensive chipping, drilling, and gluing occurring at Ten Sleep, to the point of entire crags being essentially fabricated.  

Their summary is as follows:

- Ten Sleep Canyon is getting chipped, drilled, and glued to death
- It’s not a few routes, or a few holds, it is substantial manufacturing
- Reports from locals are of entire crags put up over the past 3 seasons with heavy fabrication
- We want it to stop
- We think that the routes should be removed from the walls and guidebooks

See https://www.facebook.com/tensleepcanyon/photos/rpp.490697651134596/968354203368936/?type=3&theater 

In the comments is also a more pointed letter calling out a specific developer:
Pt1 and Pt2

Figured I'd bring attention to this over here, and also hear input from more locals/regulars (having personally only briefly visited Ten Sleep when I was based in the Black Hills)

so sad to hear. I’d be ok with a public flogging.

Wow. Unbelievable. 

I was wondering what took so long for the discussion to get started here. Ought to be an interesting thread.

Limestone choss - tough call with no pictures to back up the claims. This canyon is HUGE and is pretty darn sharp and vertical. I can see not many people wanting to climb super hard razor blade routes. 

. Mobes wrote: Limestone choss - tough call with no pictures to back up the claims. This canyon is HUGE and is pretty darn sharp and vertical. I can see not many people wanting to climb super hard razor blade routes. 

I believe its dolomite not limestone.  But i tend to agree about the choss comment.  

That canyon ain’t all that big and it certainly not big enough for folks to chip holds.

Well, Huey, Kardaleff et. al. have glued and comfortized themselves, which you kind of have to do with limestone, but I agree that the manufacturing is getting out of hand. For example, the blank section of Slavery Wall, to the left of Crown Prince Abdulah, is now completely manufactured.

I don't know about route removal, as there are several hundred of these across the crags now (& I won't lie, they are fun), but yeah, it does need to stop. Ten Sleep is a very user friendly sport crag, but it is not a gym. 

If the chipper is directly profiting from climbers, seems like a boycott would fix him right up.

So some chipping and manufacturing at higher level grades is OK but it’s not if the routes are 5.11 and lower. Double standards!
Some rock is just not meant to be climbed by anyone and if the original developers didn’t file holds to manufacture accessible routes then maybe none of this would be happening now.

Absolutely unacceptable.  If you can't do it as it is, stash the ego and leave it for the next generation.  They should have a chance, as we have, to look at a piece of stone and wonder if they can do it.  If they can, then they can have that sense of achievement that we have been fortunate enough to have had.  When you hack something out so you can do it, you're ripping off the future, denying those young'ns an essential experience of climbing just so you can get your name in the guidebook and feed your ego.  It's a betrayal of the future generations and they won't thank you for your moronic effort.

This wouldn't happen to have anything to do with Anderson's guidebook threatening sales of Huey's leather-bound $100 guidebook?

hmmm.....

Tim Lutz wrote: This wouldn't happen to have anything to do with Anderson's guidebook threatening sales of Huey's leather-bound $100 guidebook?

hmmm.....

You can buy a $25 version of that same guidebook.  Try again...

"Aaron has donated all his work for this BCC fundraiser guide and has given up any connection to author profits so that the BCC can use the profits to continue its work maintaining the routes, trails and relationships that make Ten Sleep Canyon loved by climbers from around the world. "

GluieLouie?

Dudes, it's sport climbing, it IS gym climbing!

Perpetrators should be permanently banned from Ten Sleep, this is disappointing 

Nick Votto wrote: Perpetrators should be permanently banned from Ten Sleep, this is disappointing 

Under what authority?

Is it this Louie Anderson?
https://www.louieandersonclimbing.com/

I smell a commercial rivalry.

Mark, I have climbed a good number of these routes, and they are almost completely manufactured on clean, but mostly featureless sections of wall. They tend to be mostly drilled. I am also not one to complain about comfortizing and reinforcing existing holds. 

I pulled my comment. I spoke too soon.  After reading the Ten Sleep Facebook page,  I get their concern & how these tactics may evolve.   I'm staying out of this debate.  The letter raises some serious issues. I don't have the intimate knowledge of the routes to properly weigh in.  The only thing I can say is removing the manufactured routes probably won't solve anything, either.  It is likely to stir things up more.  There needs to be an dialogue amongst the different parties. It's best the people manufacturing stop, so they don't create a battle in a peaceful canyon.