davetvedt

I was busy shutting up and climbing yesterday. For those of you who wish I’d stay shut up or at least use 20-word-or-less sound bites, you do have the choice to ignore all this. I personally don’t think brief, vague and general discussions/entries usually accomplish much of anything in terms of understanding but instead often just play in the world of emotions. WARNING: The following post has all sorts of boring and tedious details that you may not give a rats ass about but do relate to the issues of Billy’s statements and Dee and my credibility and the “credibility” of our view that there is a place in the broader climbing world for there to be a small proportion of all climbing routes having “closer bolting”. Billy, You still didn’t identify yourself and you make general vague slander that we bolt cracks. You call it fact. WE DO NOT BOLT CRACKS AND DO NOT SUPPORT CRACK LINES BEING BOLTED. At the risk of opening another entire ethical can of worms on this board, we are taking you on with this accusation and what you mean by it. First of all, why not identify yourself? What are you afraid of Billy? We are not afraid of you. We are also not afraid of our history and will openly discuss it. Your “facts” are wrong and if you are going to make accusations be specific: name routes and dates, etc. Yes, we bolted two entirely pro-able lines in our first year of putting in routes 9 years ago. They were at Smith (Northern Point) where the local conflicted ethics are such that a significant part of that climbing community has little or no problem with bolting cracks as long as they aren’t the old classics and many can even be positive towards it. Bill Soule brought up his concerns to us and “chopped” these 2 routes. We looked at the general issues with this and with the wider U.S. climber community views of opposition to bolting cracks and some of the local Smith views and we sided BACK THEN with being opposed to bolting any crack lines in the future and to not re-bolt these two cracks in spite of support to do so from some Smith locals. We view our bolting of these 2 lines as a mistake and we have never repeated it. You use the present tense, Billy, and this was a long time ago. We still have one bolted line at Smith from back then that is entirely pro-able. It starts as an overhung off-width and back then I couldn’t get the protection available at the time to have any real safety of holding a fall. This route is at an obscure basalt cliff with no one else’s climbs around. I was supported by Smith locals to keep it bolted when I asked about making it a trad route when better protection became available. I have been told “no one will climb it” if I don’t keep the bolts. So far they are still there. We have one other climb at that crag that out of ~50, the last 10’ are on a crack. Yes, that is a crack segment we still have bolted. It is not accessible from below by a pro-able line. We also have one other line at Smith on the basalt which was chopped where the last ~10’ out of ~50’ were ~3’ to the right of a thin crack that was harder to climb than line we climbed to the right. We rebolted this route because we disagreed with the chopping of it and we still hold to this. The only other bolted “crack” segment we have ever done is ~15’ of a 100’ route where the pro-able segment is about 2/3rds up(Most of the potential placements are hollow sounding). This route is in the Callahans. Neither the Callahans or Smith basalt have any kind of tradition of going with mixed routes although some trad lines on the basalt have fixed pins that are slowly being replaced with single bolts. It is extremely common around the U.S. on sport routes at sport areas (such as Inner World at the Callahans or Smith), that small segments of pro-able terrain be bolted if the majority of the route has no natural protection. From what I have heard, there are a number of bolted cracks at Smith with some of these having been bolted in the last few years. We have not done any of these. I do have two trad lines I put in at Smith. I put in (cleaned and redpointed) Sidewinder, ~5.11a on Northern Point (just right of Jungle Fever) a number of years back. Other than bolt top anchors, it is entirely trad and the entire top segment is marginally protectable with a tricam or two in pockets. I could easily have justified a bolt there but I did not. I also put in a trad line on the tuft at Smith that I was encouraged by some Smith locals to just bolt. This line starts by veering off a sport line we put in and some of the potential placements on it are not reliable. We have a local crag near Oakridge where some local climbers who commonly put in runout routes bolted an entire crack line. This however was in super soft rock where pro simply wouldn’t hold. There are a lot of complexities to deciding about protection in these kinds of situations and there are a lot of conflicting views about placing fixed protection where natural pro is considered suspect. We do NOT however, EVER support bolting an entire line where there is a significant amount of natural pro available. We ourselves are interested in putting in more mixed lines in spite of a lot of sport climbers hating them and not being prepared by having pro along. We have climbed at Joshua Tree several times where mixed routes are very common. A lot of climbers hate the way a lot of routes are protected there. Billy, you patronizingly and snidely infer about me and my background and it seems quite clear you want to simply discredit me and my view that there is a place in the broader climbing world for a small segment of climbs to have closer bolting. If you are the person who I think you are, you haven’t even been able to remember from one time to the next that I climb trad. If you can’t even remember something as simple as this (has happened several times), how can your impression of me have much of any accuracy? You like to stereotype me as a narrow provincial climber with little perspective or understanding of how climbing is around the country but you apparently haven’t a clue. If you want to continue in this pigeonholing vein with me, I’d be glad to take you on in a public debate about these issues, on this board or face to face. I have been climbing for 14 years and have also climbed trad for all but the first half year of that. I did 15+ years of 4th and low 5th class mountaineering and wilderness travel before this. I have climbed in Yosemite Valley, Tuolumne, Lovers Leap, Pinnacles, JTree, Owens, Buttermilk Boulders, City of Rocks, Big Cottonwood Canyon, Blodgett Canyon (Montana), Leavenworth area, and numerous Oregon crags and have done “technical” mountaineering in Oregon, Washington and Montana. Certainly not extensive but not provincial either. I have also read extensively about hundreds of different climbing areas and have read guidebooks to many, many areas around the country. My view of things obviously isn’t your view though, Billy, and it doesn’t need to be. If you do have “climber-nazi” attitudes about all this Billy, would you please have the courage to be directly out there with them and not hide behind vague terms and claims and broad generalizations. If you’d like to discuss the issue of “over bolting” further Billy, I’d be glad to talk with you in person about it, or, we could drag it out on this board. Almost all of the routes we put in at Flagstone last year had much wider spaced bolting. Have you been on Endless Sky or the top pitch of Swampland Express? They clearly don’t fit your generalizations. Neither does our new mixed line Northwind or many of our other routes. We have had for a long time the clear intent of putting in a limited number of “closer bolted” routes in the area as an alternative to the greater number of more widely spaced bolted routes in our area. We are close to done with this goal and as I stated earlier, we are interested in now mostly sticking with more wider spaced bolting, mixed routes and trad. I am currently working on developing (cleaning) a number of trad routes in the Callahans and elsewhere and have plans for a lot more. These will include some scary, more poorly protected lines and also off-widths that not many people will be willing to lead. As I stated before, we support there being a wide range of types of climbing here in our area and elsewhere.

Ryland, I’ll take you at your word that your intent wasn’t bashing. I think it’s important to recognize though that if broad vague generalizations are made without specifics, it’s more likely to be, and/or be taken as “bashing” by many people. Thank you for your more specific feedback. I agree with you that Backward Evolution is “overbolted”. It’s the one climb at Inner World that whenever I look at it the thought comes into my mind, “there’s too many bolts on it (the lower part)”. I remember when I bolted it I was wanting to protect against the ledge just after the initial starting bulge. Once this is protected for though, the fall is clean as you point out and I got at least one too many bolts in there before the crux. I’ve thought about redoing the bolting on this route a number of times. Hopefully I can just remove one bolt and call it good rather than remove 2 and add one, etc. This route as is can be Z clipped like you said but it is far from the norm on Mind Planet or at Inner World and I don’t think generalizing from this route to all of the Callahan’s or for that matter Inner World is valid. Yes there is closer bolting overall at Inner World but Z clip possibilities are still quite limited here. I share your opinion that “As for personal definitions of an overbolted line, if I can clip more than one bolt from any given stance, and there are no dangers below me (ie. a buldge or ledge) then the route is overbolted.” and we have I think held to not doing this with virtually all of our bolting. Feel free anyone, to let us know if you think we failed in this on a specific climb and we’ll check it out and consider changing it. To any climber on this board, Dee and I welcome any constructive and specific feedback about any of our routes from all climbers. We also welcome any discussion of climbing issues, ethics, etc. that any climbers would like to have as long as it isn’t attacking and coming from a “climbernazi” attitude. Beaver Joe, We’ve led Backward Evolution numerous times and have also seen a number of other climbers lead it and have never had or seen or before heard about the rope jamming problem you describe. I’ll check it out further though when I evaluate reducing the number of bolts on the route. This bolt you refer to may be “badly placed” or not. One thing I think can helpful for climbers to keep in mind when they don’t like the placement of a particular bolt is that there are multiple factors why a bolt might have been placed in a less than ideal spot. Avoiding hollow sounding rock and trying to reduce rope drag can sometimes severely limit one’s options on where a bolt is placed. At any rate, I’ll try to recreate the scenario you described to better understand it. As for the ratings at Inner World that are in Greg Orton’s guide, they were based in the misunderstanding that Greg really wanted “onsight” ratings rather than the usual “redpoint” ratings. Greg stated in his book that the ratings are based on “onsight” but it appears we were the only ones to take that more seriously and the result was that many of our ratings there look pretty foolishly overrated. Ryland and Beaver Joe, most climbers we’ve heard from have given Backward Evolution 10d or 11a. I seem to recall one or two people thought it as low as 10c. What would you give it? Your comments in your initial post Ryland made it sound like we have a 5.11 there that could be rated as low as 5.9 anywhere else. Were you suggesting that Backward could be a 5.9? If not, which route were you referring to? As stated before, we have posted at Inner World updated (Smith rock as a baseline) ratings for the routes there. Any constructive feedback on THESE UPDATED RATINGS is appreciated. Beaver Joe, I’d guess the route you’re referring to at Flag is Toy Box. As was stated earlier, this route was retrobolted with the explicit permission of the first ascent team and we met there at Flagstone and talked over options about how to redo the route. Originally the first bolt was about 50’ up and you started by angling in from the side and weaving up and then back to reach the first bolt. This start could have been kept but the interest by the first ascent team and Dee and I was to make this fun route more accessible to more climbers. A joint decision was made to put a new direct start to the route along with going directly over the bulge rather than around and back of it. This added 2 more “hard” sections to the first pitch. Certainly not every one agrees with this decision but a lot of people are fine with it also. Yes, I’ve gone up to what used to be the first bolt in my hiking boots before too. Anyone who’s comfortable on friction slabs can do it, but it’d be very difficult to do the new direct line in hiking boots. Erik, Actually we’ve heard I think from a broad range of climbers ever since we put in the routes a couple years ago. Quite a number of the climbers who support them have been climbers for many years and have led a lot of runout routes in their life. The first ascent team of Toy Box is an example of climbers with this history and they also put in a number of runout routes. As I stated earlier, this board caters more to trad climbers and mountaineering and I wouldn’t view it as necessarily a good cross representation of the entire climbing community. As I’ve stated before, the climbing community is clearly divided over these issues and there is no CONSENSUS. Muffy, You clearly didn’t do your homework of reading all the prior entries before posting. In my first entry, I clarified that while some climbers are blaming us for the “squeeze job” between the Hydrotube and Acne Problem, we did NOT put it in. To repeat: Greg Orton put it in. “Shame on you” Muffy. jkrueger, You sound like perhaps you made the same mistake as Muffy in your last post. Just what routes are you talking about? Billy, Bill S. is that you? You talk some pretty brave strong slander being as you’re choosing to stay anonymous. Where’s your courage? Come out and identify yourself. Or are you too afraid while you talk brave about overbolting? shapp, I imagine you’re impressed with your personal attack and the “humor” of your last quote. It’s one you’ve made before and it’s old, easy and lame. I think there is a good likelihood of a lot of insecurity in such matters on the part of people who resort to this kind of attack. Dave

Yes, Quite a number of climbers think we overbolt our routes. Quite a number of climbers also like our closer bolted routes and strongly dislike and even despise some of the more widely spaced routes. Many have told us just this. Our position is that there is a place for a wide range of bolt spacing on sport/bolted routes. Clearly the climbing community is divided over this issue. We support climbers having the wide range choice of climbing on anything from closer bolting to runout routes to death routes. We’ve heard from a number of people that they think climbs that they don’t think are safely bolted to be a “waste” of a good route because hardly anyone climbs them. Others think that a closely bolted route can be a “waste” of an otherwise good climb and that it has been ruined by too many bolts. There is a huge range of opinion in the climbing community about this. A number of you speak of safely bolted routes and overbolting as if your version of these concepts have an objective basis. If even the ones of you that have used the term “overbolted” in this thread were to get together and try to objectively define what you mean, you would run into disagreements with each other. To a purist soloist, they could consider any bolts too many. Whatever spacing of bolts you say is the “correct” spacing and thus not “overbolted” someone else is out there who could laugh at you and your “need” for that many bolts. In my view, the term and concept of “overbolting” is clearly an opinion of the person. You may feel strongly about the subject and feel it is objective but that doesn’t make it so. I challenge any of you who disagree with this to come up with an objective foundation for your using of this term as if it were an absolute. It reminds me of an article I read a while back in Scientific American that interviewed prominent Quantum physicists. The interviewer discovered that these scientists had a wide range of differing/conflicting definitions of a couple of key concepts in their field and they didn’t even realize it themselves. Climber’s views of what constitutes a “safely bolted” route varies a lot also and again is based in opinion in my view. There are objective factors we can refer to regarding the route’s safety (such as “no ledges to hit into”), but these don’t address a whole range of subjective factors that we all can have different views on. For example: What degree of injury is one willing to take on a route and still call it safe? For some it could go as far as taking quite extensive and serious injuries and they could view the protection as “good enough”. On the other end of the spectrum, some climbers may whine about a scraped knee and think that there was something wrong or unsafe about the route or with climbing because they got scraped. Most climbers don’t fit either end of the spectrum but there is a wide variance in our views of what injuries we’re willing to risk and/or take. Another aspect of safety that often isn’t recognized is that beginning climbers are more likely to get injured in falls because they have little or no experience in safely falling. What could be a no big deal few scrapes fall to you or me can be turned into much more serious for a beginning climber. These and other variables I think make it impossible to come up with any agreed upon “safely bolted route” definition. I think it is our personal values and opinions that define this term for each of us and how we view it for other climbers climbing the route. Sphinx, if you look at the top-down map on page 274 of Greg Orton’s guide, a rough guestimate can be made about how much the beginner slab take up of the linear climbing area of Flag. I measured it takes up about 1 inch and the total at Flag is 9 inches: thus 1/9th of Flagstone. And again, 6 out of 65+ routes at Flag. Muffy, I challenge you to tell me where on any of those routes you can clip 3 of them from one stance. This stance doesn’t exist. The top anchors of 3 of them are close together but that is because of the layout of the rock. These routes are as well spaced from each other as many of the routes at Flag. Ryland, You grossly over-generalize about the Callahan’s. Only one area of the Callahan’s has more closely-bolted routes. We intended this. You must not have climbed much of any where else down there. Our routes at other areas there have more widely spaced bolting. Yes, most routes at our main area are overrated in Greg’s guide. It was an unfortunate mistake based on some misunderstandings and rating them also when they were dirty. We have posted updated ratings based on Smith as a baseline but if you’re just wanting to gripe or bash rather than give constructive feedback (which we’ve asked for) then so be it. As far as Z-clipping on routes there, most routes there have a low to no risk of this. The “5.11” which you state could be a 5.10 or 5.9- Which one? Since you’re making the claim, substantiate it. Well I have to get to work. Dave

Cracked, I very much agree it’s not so simple. We all have our limits and I think the question is at what level do we stop catering to beginning climbers and climbers with hyper fearful attitudes about leading. Some climbers believe there should be no catering and some a lot. Our beginner routes there are as far as I would ever want to go and as I said earlier, we have no intention of putting in any more of them. They are a small number of routes (6 out of about 65+ routes at Flagstone) and I hear no one asking for more of them. I also hear no overweight drunks or toddlers asking for closer bolted routes either. It really isn’t an issue and if it ever became a issue, I’m sure you would hear a huge uproar from most of the climbing community to stop it. With these beginner routes, the climbing community is clearly divided over them. There are a lot of climbers who like them and a lot who dislike them and some who hate and despise them. They do have the support of a significant portion of the climbing community. This board caters more to traditional climbing and mountaineering so it isn’t a true cross-representation of the entire climbing community. If you were to quarry the crag, drill buckets up every route etc., you would get virtually no support from anyone and would get a huge amount of flack and resistance from almost all climbers. There is a big difference here between these routes and your hypothetical situations. wdietch, You’re very right, it’s the protection we GET. I was playing off of eriks use of the word “want”. I’m going to leave the board for the rest of the day but I’ll be back this evening. I have a couple of trad projects I want to get clean and done and it sure beats responding to replys on this board all day. Dave

erik, any time any climber puts in a bolted route they are deciding what other climbers want for protection. Thats one of the reasons I like trad a lot. No other human is deciding for me and it's just me and whats naturally there. No worries about bringing the drill up to your state. I do plan to get back to climb some more of the superb routes in the Stuart Range in your state though! Beautiful granite and wilderness up there. Theres a lot of choss and clearcuts along all of our mountaineering routes down here. Dave

On one additional point- you state: “As for the counterexamples that you mention, those routes exemplefy the ethics of the initial developers of the area. Shouldn't we respect those ethics, too?” I think we are respecting the initial developers of Flagstone in several ways. The main initial developers of Flagstone: Walt Corvington, Larry Modrell, Mark Ashworth and Alan Amos are supportive of there being routes at Flagstone with closer bolting than those runout originals. As mentioned earlier, the first ascent team of Toy Box: Walt, Larry and Diane, all support and like the beginner routes there and gave explicit permission for retrobolting Toy Box. Walt told me that a big reason that they bolted sparsely on some of their routes was due to the expense of bolts and not due to a runout ethic. Mark has told me he thinks there are a few too many bolts on the slab but that he otherwise sees the routes as legit. I don’t recall talking directly with Alan about these routes but he has expressed liking closer bolting than he used to and has OK’d Mark adding a few bolts to certain routes they did together. I don’t see a clearcut ethic here that established Flagstone as having solely a runout ethic. Any area that clearly has this ethic established we would definitely hold to. Carl, The “we” I’m referring to is Dee Tvedt and myself. I’m not including anyone else in this we and there is no high horse. I referred to her at the beginning of my first post and I guess you missed that. I don’t assume much at all about how the rest of the world wants to climb. I’m not at all demanding that other climbers climb like us (quite diverse actually). I think you have it backwards on this issue. There are a number of climbers who don’t respect the diversity of the climbing community and want all other climbers to climb only the type of climbs they respect (commonly runout routes). I think a title of “Climbernazi’s” could be apt for some of these climbers. I’m not telling anyone else what type of routes they should climb. I’m just standing up to these "high horse" climber's demands that only the routes they approve of should exist. Dave Tvedt

I certainly don’t support ignoring bolting issues, I just think that it’s important to put them in some perspective relative to the other impacts and damage we do to the environment as climbers. I agree that normally it makes sense to space bolts to vary with the difficulty of the climbing (and also tie that in with other risk factors such as ledges to hit, etc.). We do this with most of our routes. On these beginner routes we standardized the spacing much more as a way of giving a psychological sense of safety that can be an issue for beginning climbers. Wider bolt spacings can be very intimidating to beginner climbers even in easier terrain. Again, we agree it is “unnecessary” in most instances and are aware that quite a number of climbers think it is unnessary on this slab also. As far as I know, there is no climbing gym that can simulate good friction slab climbing. Some people take to this type of climbing very easily and quite a few take a while to build up their confidence and sense of safety climbing runout slabs. Considering how important this ability is (to confidently climb friction slab runouts) at many climbing areas, I don’t think gyms cut it for training for them. We’ve seen numerous “gym” climbers who can climb well at the gym flounder on Flagstone friction. hey erik, yes we did rap bolt them. It was a way more efficient way of doing it. Only a few of the routes at Flag were put up on lead. I’ve soloed all around this slab and I don’t think bolting on lead in this case would have been a superior method. Yes, the Forest Service knows about Flagstone and has seen the bolts and the trails and are fine with them. They seem pleased that we haven't "trashed" the place with garbage, etc. like a lot of other unauthorized recreation areas that they have to deal with. One Forest Service employee even suggested an outhouse might be in order at some point. Considering that several times we’ve come across wads of toilet paper and human waste on the trails there, it’s an idea to consider. In my opinion, discussing bolting issues, etc. does require words. We can’t read your mind or each others and we obviously can have different views on the subject. Dave Tvedt

Cracked, As far as the threat issue goes, you forget that I in no way started it. The initial threat came from texplorer talking about chopping bolts. Since you expressed that you think the slab is overbolted it’s understandable you would ignore his threat and focus our “apparent” one. I hear you that you think the bolts on that slab are excessive. As far as scarring on the rock. We certainly favor a less visually obtrusive look for the slab and would not like to see more visible glue-ins there. We will stand up to bolt chopper’s though and follow through with such unpleasantries if pushed. You speak of “Scarred” and also of Smith Rock. The worst scarring at Smith is the climber scarring of the landscape at the base of the climbs. We have an old photo of Smith before the sport craze and it is a different landscape. A much more pristine landscape without the trashing at the bases. Many climbers accept the trashing at the bases of routes as the baseline “norm” that may as well have been the way things always were. We have been helping with the Spring Thing for a number of years and it’s an endless struggle to contain the harm climbers do to the bases of routes there. A lot of climbers get all bent out of shape about bolts but barely give a second thought to the much greater damage we do to the bases of climbs and trails and landscape on the way to the climbs. I think it’s a very hypocritical stance to take. I certainly don’t want lots of bolts everywhere and favor limitations in bolting. The thing is, my opinion about limitations in bolting isn’t totally the same as yours and in actuality, no ones is completly the same. As far as the issue of the northern slab beginner routes being overbolted, a number of climbers think so too and a number also don’t. One of the problems with bolts on slab climbs is that they visually appear closer together than they really are. You state that bolts are 3-4 feet apart on a 5.6. There have been other postings elsewhere that have made similar statements about the bolt spacing on these routes. Most are farther apart than this but only appear this close from the ground. I did some some general measuring on these routes a while back and most of the bolts were 5-7 feet apart. Certainly very close for routes of this level but not that unheard of for harder routes. The number of closer bolted beginner routes on this slab counting Toy Box is 6 (7 if you count the 3rd pitch “Out of the Box”) Five of these are multi-pitch and 4 are harder on their top pitch and are less beginner routes. The second pitch of Toy Box is also more “sportily” bolted and less a beginner route. A number of climbers including myself consider some of the beginner routes at Smith a “joke” in that they are not very well suited to beginning lead climbers. Bunny Face and Five Gallon Buckets have bolts quite well spaced and well over 6’ apart. If you fall on Bunny Face or Jete or Dancer for example, the bolt spacing can easily yield hamburger flesh and perhaps worse injuries. I know of one beginning climber who had a very ugly fall on one of the bogus beginner routes at Smith. If I recall correctly it was “Easy Reader” where the hardest move is before the first bolt. For at least a few years after this they haven’t lead climbed again. That may be their problem but it also an issue of some climbers gaining the confidence in themselves with “safe” climbs before they move on to the “real world”. The “5.3” you refer to I would guess is “Out of the Box”, an alternative 3rd pitch to Toy Box. I refered to it as a combination of 4th and 5th class climbing. It is around 5.6 near the top and is sparsely bolted. The thought with this route is encouraging confidence on wider spaced bolting on terrain that is even less difficult. Certainly an unusual route that doesn’t need replicas. This brings up the issue of gaining psychological confidence while leading. I think these closer bolted beginner routes at Flag can give some climbers the confidence to move on to harder routes and routes with wider bolt spacing… out there in the real climbing world. There are very few spots on these routes where back clipping is much of a risk. I think the progression to climbing Acne Problem after getting comfortable with ones abilities on these closer bolted routes is very likely for a number of climbers. Other beginning climbers may decide that they don’t want to lead climb anymore and don’t move on. So what? As far as the number of climbers who complained about there not being any routes for them, I didn’t keep records (would you?) but it was quite a number over a number of years. We’ve heard it at the Columns, at Flagstone itself and at the gym. Another aspect of this to consider is the number of climbers who climb them and clip all the bolts. At Flagstone there are several easier runout routes that belie your statement that the harder routes at Flag are less protected than the easier routes. Have you climbing Apache Acid? A superb 160’ runout route with questionable bolts that rates at 5.8. Acne Problem and the other routes in that area along with Pygmy Twylyte are other examples of routes that don’t fit this. Dave Tvedt

texplorer, Just in case you or anyone else is actually serious about chopping some bolts at Flagstone you might want to consider a few things first: Envision big, shiny glue-in bolts where you have chopped the less visually ugly hanger and bolt. Any bolt you remove from any of our routes will be replaced with Fixe glue-ins. If you dislike the looks of the north side beginner’s slab now, think about what it’ll look like with lots of big shiny glue-ins for replacements. It seems apparent that a number of you on this posting have us (Dee and Dave Tvedt) pigeonholed in your minds with such labels as “rabid overbolter”. It’s obvious you don’t like our closely bolted easy routes on the north side at Flag. First of all, we didn’t bolt them that way for ourselves. We bolted them that way with the clear intent of making a relatively small section of Flagstone more accessible to beginning climbers. This is clearly a beginner area. We listened for years to a lot of climber’s complaints that there was nothing for them to climb at Flagstone. We strongly believe that there is a place for climbs like these. We think they should be a small portion of the overall number of climbs in a geographical area and not be at an area where access is threatened due to non-climbers seeing bolts. We support there being a wide variety of levels of protection on bolted routes so climbers have a choice between closely bolted beginner routes like these to Tuolumne style runouts and even death routes. For any of you who think there should never be any beginner routes like these, you do not have the consensus of the climbing community. A lot of climbers have told us they very much support having a limited number of climbs like this and that they like these climbs. You will have the wrath of a considerable number of climbers if you chop on these routes. As for all our other routes, we have put them in at a number of places and they include closer bolted harder routes to routes with much wider bolt spacing, some runouts and some trad routes. We ourselves climb on a variety of routes and have climbed numerous runout routes. I climb both trad and sport and also do mountaineering. I have also bolted several routes on lead. We never add or chop bolts to other people’s routes just because we don’t like the bolting. The only retro-bolting or bolt adding we’ve ever done was on Toy Box and that was with permission and direct feedback from the first ascent team. I led all 3 pitches in their original condition before retro-bolting it. The first 2 100’ pitches each had 4 bolts on them and had numerous spots where falls meant some ugly ledge smacking, etc. The first ascent team has told us they are very happy with the retro-bolt and that Toy Box is actually being climbed now. Mark Ashworth estimated that the original Toy Box saw a maximum of 10 ascents in 10 years. Toy Box and the other routes in the area are getting a lot of use. Many people who climb them choose to not clip all the bolts, but many also do. We can see that perhaps 2-3 of the bolts in that area aren’t “necessary” even for beginners and could be removed. It isn’t up to you to remove them however. If you chop them without talking with us and getting an agreement on them, we will replace them with very permanent glue-ins. You are welcome however, to meet with us there and tell us which ones you find particularly offensive and maybe we can reach an agreement. If you want to chop bolts to get us to stop from putting in more “beginner routes”, there is no point. We think there are plenty of beginner routes in this geographical area now and we won’t be putting in any more of them. Our current interest is in putting in trad, mixed and wider spaced relatively safe bolted routes. Our current Flag project you might actually even like. Just right of Toy Box we put in a 2 pitch route. The first pitch is really an access pitch and is around 5.6 with 5 bolts in 100’. The second pitch is around 11a and has 6 bolts in 100’ with additional gear placements. We wouldn’t tolerate anyone adding bolts to this line just as we wouldn’t add bolts to other people’s lines without permission. We actually don’t have any interest in adding bolts to other lines even when we think they are unsafe and would like it if a bolt or two were added. The first ascent people can do that if get enough feedback and decide to do it. As far as chopping other climber’s bolts or routes for whatever reason, we think it’s a bad idea. Almost for sure it will bring on retaliation and hostility. Many routes of all types can end up chopped, crack lines greased, glue-ins added to classic runout routes and all sorts of stupid and negative things can happen that just hurt everyone. Where do you draw the line? If it’s OK for you to chop bolts on a route because you think it’s too closely bolted, another person can just as easily justify chopping or adding bolts because they think a route’s unsafe, squeezed, glued, chipped etc. We strongly disagree with the chipping and pocket drilling that has gone on at Flagstone but we’re not going to chop those routes. Some of the newer routes at Flagstone that we didn’t put in are also way squeezed in our opinion. There are 2 new routes between Raptor and Rapture of the Steep that seem way too close to each other. The new route between the Hydrotube and Acne Problem is also way squeezed and I don’t think it should have been put in. I’ve heard from Mark Ashworth that we are being blamed for putting in this route but we did not. Greg Orton put it in. I’ve talked with him about how squeezed it is and that it shares holds with Acne Problem about 2/3rds up. He brought up that that the bolts on the top part of the route could perhaps be removed and the route just join in with Acne Problem to finish. If you want to do something about this route (which could be part of the Hydrotube retro-bolt “confusion”) just contact Greg about it. Again, I think it’s essential to talk with the person who put in the route and try to get an agreement. Ultimately though, it is their route. If enough climbers don’t like what they’ve done, they’ll hear a lot about it and possibly reconsider. With only a few more unsqueezed potential routes possible at Flagstone now, to me there is a risk that more and more squeezed lines could get added that detract from the other routes there. In my opinion, with all the route potential (trad and sport) still available at other areas in western Oregon, there’s all the more no excuse for squeezed routes at Flag. Mark Ashworth has proposed we work on getting a consensus going for establishing a moratorium on new routes being put in at Flag that would help stop more squeeze jobs from being put in. We support this and would be glad to work with you in establishing this if you also support it. A final note: the Hydrotube was not retro-bolted (as you already know if you’ve checked it out). The first pitch was rebolted several years ago by Mark Ashworth (part of the first ascent team) and he did add one extra bolt at the start with the permission of the others in the first ascent team). Mark told me that these original bolts snapped off with a claw hammer with almost no effort when he was replacing them. These bolts weren’t made for climbing and in most people’s view needed replacing. Last summer, the second pitch of the Hydrotube was rebolted by Alan Kelly with no bolts added to the line. The only thing I did with the Hydrotube was replace the second pitch’s top anchors. Alan Kelly also replaced bad bolts, hangers and anchors on several routes: Paradicy, Harp of Stone, Beguiled and Walt’s Wall. He added no new bolts on any of these. I replaced the badly rusted bolts of Afternoon Desire last summer and also did not add any new bolts. All of these bolt replacements were done with stainless steel bolts good for climbing. This summer I plan on replacing the bolts on The Off Ramp and Morning Desire with stainless steel bolts and again I will not add any new bolts. There are natural gear placements on The Off Ramp that will remain that way. If you really care that much about all the bolts on the beginners’ area at Flag, there is the option of meeting with us there to talk it over. Our phone # is 541-689-7189. My email is david@dtvedt.com Dave Tvedt