What utter nonsense. I have climbed for 25 years and never used chalk. Most of my partners don’t either. I really dislike this narrative that chalk is somehow necessary climbing gear. It isn’t. Maybe if you’re climbing (high) E routes. Nothing worse than a chalk highway up a classic V Diff. It’s entirely unnecessary and route finding is an important skill. Articles like this are really unhelpful. Let’s be clear that chalk is for high grade routes where you are pushing the limits and should not be encouraged for beginners or on middle grade routes, where it is totally unnecessary and is pretty much vandalism.