Continue with onX Maps
Sign in with Facebook
Chalk Usage In Climbing
Adam R wrote: The “real” John Gill is 86 years old. |
Alex R wrote: Nice! |
|
Anyone else curious how much chalk honnold takes with him on his solos in Yosemite? I always thought I’d need at least a chalk bucket full of chalk to get me up 3 thousand feet. |
Dr Logic wrote: Electric cars. |
Curmudgeon Don wrote: Based off of the amount of tick marks he left on the west face of El cap that I saw when I was punting around on aid on an adjacent route, I'm going to say quite a lot. |
|
We will see in the long run with electric cars, so far it's a negative environmentally. It's a small positive for the air we breathe but much worse in the manufacturing process & we have not seen the end of battery life after 50 million vehicles a year start to lose their batteries. We do produce over 50 million on road vehicles worldwide per year. We desperately need to get away from fossil fuels. It would be nice to do it properly, but that's not the human way! Blaming gym climbers for chalk at the crags, really. |
|
Chalk (from previous climbers) eliminates the pleasure of puzzle solving for an on-sight. There's a shit ton of routes for which we can never get an on-sight anymore and the best we can do is a "white point". |
|
I have a Russian gymnast friend who climbs without chalk, and his hands and arms barely sweats, but I'm so hot that even my forearms drip sweat down onto my hands when I shake out. I've tried a few times to go without chalk for a long, moderate gym session as practice in case I forget / lose my chalk bag on a multipitch or something and it's only feasible during winter when the gym is cold, otherwise I paint the plastic with sweat. It's gross and also feels rude to others who will climb next. I haven't really used liquid chalk, as people I know who do still carry a chalk bag as sometimes they will start sweating again higher on the route. So what's the point? That said, I can't stand loose chalk as it cakes under my fingernails and onto everything I touch, and is really hard to chalk all the way up to my palm while reaching into a chalk bag one-handed. I'm a full convert to the chalk sock and found a chalk bag with a built-in one that can't fall out. A light, even dusting from fingertips to palm combats the sweat but doesn't transfer so much to the wall, plus you can't spill it on the ground and I barely refill it once a month or less. Maybe if you only crimp then loose chalk and fingertips only is enough but for crack climbing sweaty palms is a big problem for me. |
|
Lost a chalk bag years ago. Never replaced it. Never needed to, either. The amount of "lost time" of fucking with a chalk bag, dropped to zero. Its just one less thing. |
Dr Logic wrote: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php |
|
Seriously, some of these people believe they are ready for sainthood because they drive a tesla. |
|
Ohhh nooo you put too much of the white rock dust on the other rock. Whatever will we do The world is burning. Wasting energy on this is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. |
 |
|
I use a large chalk bag. Very little chalk, but the pockets hold a cell phone, a can of long cut, and a beer fits nicely into the main compartment. Conservative use of chalk, liberal use of a chalk purse. |
|
I douse my six Teslas in chalk every morning I took a private jet to the lithium mine just so I could pay the foreman to let me execute a worker in cold blood I charge my electric cars (there are more than the Teslas, that's just one brand) by forcing indigenous day laborers to walk on a circular power-generating treadmill around a roaring bonfire all day. the bonfire serves no purpose except to make the laborers miserably hot and to emit more carbon in the atmosphere. I use california redwoods and hawaiian koa trees. they are particularly carbon-rich when the laborers are so miserably hot that they begin to sweat profusely. guess. guess what it is that I do guess what I shower on them from a giant lithium-battery-powered Tesla branded drone with six Gucci chalk bags hanging off it can can you can you guess |
Pat Light wrote: Oooh, this is more fun than the name this route thread. I'm gonna guess pigs' blood. Is it pigs' blood??? (Also, that's a strong midway contender for post of the year! Well done!) |
Jimmy Strange wrote: That’s Strange, Jimmy. Tell us why… |
Hangdog Steve wrote: White Lung is a thing. Not gonna give ya cancer or anything but does have some symptoms when you've breathed too much in. |
|
Depending on the hold type, chalk can make between a 10-50% difference on the amount of weight I can hang on a tension block |
|
In general… Few really understand chalk. Most overuse chalk. Just don’t use chalk at or below 5.7. Below 5.9+ chalk is likely detrimental to your climbing. Above 5.11, most need some chalk sometimes. Those who use chalk reflexively all the time, no matter what, no matter when or where they climb, are among those who just don’t understand. Chalk in the gym sucks…Skip the chalk, use a rag, train harder. Those that make a big deal about chalk’s impact probably like to make big deals out of things …because they don’t understand. It’s not a big deal one way or another. It’s just one of those minor annoyances that make for something to post about when bored |
