The 1960s marked a resurgence in North American climbing, characterized by a significant increase in vertical activity, closely accompanied by a corresponding improvement in technique and equipment. The result has been significant advancements in climbing. However, this combination is also generating a serious problem: the deterioration of the climbing environment. This deterioration has two sides, involving both the physical state of the mountains and the moral well-being of climbers.

We can no longer assume that the Earth's resources are unlimited, that vast stretches of unclimbed peaks exist beyond the horizon. Mountains are finite and, despite their colossal appearance, they are fragile.

—Tom Frost and Yvon Chouinard, excerpt from the 1972 Chouinard Equioment catalog

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“It was a complete failure.”

In the early 1970s, the Chouinard Equipment catalog proposed a new way of climbing, one that encouraged climbers to control their impact on the rock to protect it. Instead of using brute force to climb routes at any cost, Yvon Chouinard and his friends argued that good style mattered more than sending the route. They called it "clean climbing." Specifically, clean climbing would replace pitons and other rock-boring gear with nuts and cams—new forms of protection that could be easily removed and were less damaging to the rock. But the more ambitious goal of clean climbing was to encourage an ethic where the climber relied on their judgment and skill, rather than equipment, and left no trace of their ascent. Clean climbing emerged around the same time in the United States and Europe and quickly changed the way climbers protected routes. However, when Chouinard is asked today what effects the movement had, his answer is emphatic: "the only appropriate answer is zero."

—Mailee Hung, excerpt from “Let’s Bring Back Clean Climbing,” our 2022 reflection on the state of the movement.

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The Chouinard Equipment Catalogue of 1972

The clean climbing movement arguably began across the Atlantic, on the sandstone of the UK, back in the 1920s, when British climbers started eschewing pitons in favor of what they considered a superior style. But from the 1930s through the 1960s, pitons were the primary form of protection for climbers in the United States. By the late 1950s, Chouinard was making the best pitons, and by 1972, Chouinard Equipment was the leading manufacturer of climbing equipment in the US.

But throughout the 1960s, the golden age of climbing in Yosemite, Chouinard and his cohort realized that the damage pitons inflicted on the rock was undeniable and, far worse, irreversible. So they did what had to be done: they stopped making them. Chouinard and his partner, Tom Frost, opened the 1972 Chouinard Equipment catalog with a note urging their customers to stop using pitons and start using mobile protection, such as eccentrics and other nuts. Alongside their letter was a 14-page article by Doug Robinson that was part clean climbing manifesto and part practical guide to this new equipment. With all of this, they laid the foundation for the company that Patagonia is today.

For much of climbing history, pitons were the primary safety equipment for mountaineers. Initially made of wrought iron, pitons began forging their own from tough chrome-molybdenum steel and selling them from the back of his car in the 1950s. Hammered into the rock by the lead climber and removed by the second, their widespread use in the early days of rock climbing left horrific scars from the Shawangunks to Yosemite Valley. Pitons are still used today, but are mostly relegated to alpine ascents in remote locations.

Eccentrics: “Metal climbing wedges that are the evolution of the use of nuts originally collected along the Snowdon Railways lines as climbers made the approach to Clogwyn du'r Arddu. Now, 11 years later, the irregularly hexagonal Chouinard Eccentric has been created specifically with cracks in mind… The Eccentric has a profile much closer to a wedge-shaped cam (the Chouinard stopper) but is shorter for tight placements. To take advantage of the tight placements resulting from piton holes, a narrow gradation of Eccentrics is offered in the small-angle to standard piton range. Hopefully, piton scars will not have to increase.” —Chouinard Equipment Catalogue, 1972

Stoppers: “To place a cam, you must begin by thinking about the shape of the cracks. From the outset, clean climbing demands greater attention to the rock environment. Consider the conical shape of a crack. Is it convergent, that is, does it widen in reverse, wider on the inside than at the lip? Or can it be parallel-sided, with a constant width? Or at the other end, flared…”. —Chouinard Equipment Catalog, 1972