Climbing Legend Responds to Yosemite Chipping Allegations
"That claim is exaggerated beyond all measure. It's so far from the truth, it's not even funny." - Ray Jardine
American climbing legend Ray Jardine was recently called out in a YouTube video titled “The Most Hated Rock Climber of all Time” for establishing something called The Jardine Traverse on El Capitan. Jardine is well known for inventing the Friend, the first-ever cams, which ushered in a trad climbing revolution because they made climbs that were previously unprotectable possible. After graduating from Northrop University with a degree in aerospace engineering in 1967, he started to spend more time in Yosemite, where he climbed the world’s first 5.13a trad climb with The Phoenix in 1977.
The YouTube video claims Jardine chipped “a series of holds” to help him free The Nose. To this, Jardine wrote on his website here, “To enable the 5.11 pitch I enlarged four micro holds. Altogether they created less rock dust than the four bolts I placed… My alleged destruction was minimal, and for 40 years people have been led to believe that I trashed The Nose – and in fact the entirety of El Cap. That claim is exaggerated beyond all measure. It’s so far from the truth, it’s not even funny.”
Before Jardine’s invention of the cam, most routes on El Capitan were protected with pitons, which would chip rock from cracks. As Lynn Hill said here after her first free ascent of The Nose, “Certainly this, the numerous piton scars on other sections, and the fact that there are chipped holds on the Jardine Traverse detract from the purity of the route as a ‘free climb.’ But these elements were all part of what marked the history of human passage and our evolving definition of success.”
Jardine concluded his post with, “I think the rampant hatred, implied in the video, is irrational and unfounded. For 40 years it has neither solved any problems in the climbing world, nor made the world at large a better place. And it has not erased my micro holds. Without those holds, free-climbing the Nose would still be impossible. So I hope people will accept what’s there, and move on. But if not, that’s OK too.”
Check out the latest buyer's guide:
