caigoose9

A few months before I arrived in China I received news of a new route that had just been established at White Mountain. At 14b (8c), American Gangster was the hardest route in China and I was really psyched to check it out. It was put up by visiting French Climber Michael Fuselier whilst on a trip with BigUp Productions and was filmed for north face denali. Information and a picture of the line appeared on the BigUp blog and I decided to check out the line at my first opportunity.

To cut a long story short, After making my way up the route, I was disgusted to find that the crux section of the route was completely manufactured. A rightwards rock-over found my fingers reaching into a narrow oval slot that felt strangely out of place, I pulled up on the rope for a closer look and found an ugly, drilled, 3 finger slot. The three drill-bit marks were clearly visible in the back of the slot, their uncompromising industriousness, offensive next to the beautiful golden rock north face cheap. All motivation for the route was lost and I only climbed to the anchors to allow me to strip my draws.

Arriving back on earth I told my friends what I had found. Disappointment was obvious all around, it felt like a little of the magic of the area had been stolen from us. I had my suspicions over who had drilled the route but I hoped I was wrong as they seemed too dire. Tyson, a local, confirmed the worst. He told us how he had been watching from the ground, whilst Michael was trying the route, filmed by Cooper Roberts. Michael asked Cooper to pass him the drill and proceeded to create the three north face denali jackets finger pocket!

This chain of events, and what happens about it, raises lots of issues. Maybe no one else is bothered, maybe now is not the time to explore them and maybe it doesn’t even matter. However, this is something I feel strongly about and I think the following points are worth thinking over:

Ifind it hard to think of many (if any) routes of 5.14b (8c) and above that are not manufactured in some way or another. Does this mean that hard sport climbing is exempt from traditional climbing ethics? If this is the case, at what point does climbing become “hard” and are we happy about this in general?