JosephH

Because the drills are out in the PNW and already hammering a steady beat so it's a good time to remind folks to use a least a shred of critical thinking, respect, and moderation in the process. No, in fact, it is not totally bullshit. What's 'bullshit' is typical revisionist tripe like this. In a time when 80-85% of climbers only clip bolts and just climbing trad at all is labelled 'adventure climbing', it's no surprise 'boldness' has been shovelled into the shadows as kind of an embarassment. The difference between then and now is back in the day only 10-20% were putting up bold [trad] FA's; today only that percentage of people who actually climb trad will even climb those kind of routes, let alone put them up. As far as why things may be a little different in the PNW, I noticed when I was through in 80's that the high percentage of alpine climbers who did rock made for some interesting goings on. I saw that a lot of mainly alpine climbers were either very laidback or outright reckless on rock. Kind of an interesting phenom. Sure, there are lots of PNW climbers like Wayne who are good or great on both, but throwing a ton of alpine guys into the mix makes for a very different 'feel' and result than a pure rock mecca.

Raindawg, sorry, somehow missed this one. I think you would be fine with that so long as you didn't use too much, the epoxy is already pretty stiff. I'd say give it a try on some random piece of rock from the trail and see how it mixes, adheres, and works with the brush.

Again, it isn't about either party, to me it would have been the grade. I would have been much happier if sport climbing had stayed to its genesis and remained a .12 and up practice and used judiciously at that. Then it would served pushing limits, as opposed to simply providing access. As far as I recall, no lead bolts were used to put El Corazon together only anchor bolts, that is exactly what I mean by appropriate and measured application.

where did i say bolt cracks??? My bad, missed your last line after your hyperbole thinking it was just more of the same - now I can see you turned the corner on it. One note - you can't 'remove a route' on a line with a crack system - you can remove the bolts, but the route never went anywhere.

And a world class sandbagger to boot...

no...my point was hyperbolic...ie, if we take everyone's argument that we are trying to reduce impacts, then its probably best to just not go climbing...understand?? That's your justification for bolting cracks?

Hard to imagine from this interpretation that you read what I wrote at all. I was very explicit my comments and viewpoint have nothing whatsoever to do with anyone climbing at a particular level or that any one climbing at a particular level has carte blanche to do anything and everything. My point and belief is I feel no method, technique or means should escape unexamined from the bleeding edge where evolution is happening AND that it should be two seperate decisions whether a means is acceptable at the bleeding edge and also is viable to be propogated all the way down to every 5.6 in the land. That, as opposed to normal situation where the minute Frank Hardbody does it everybody with is doing it on every grade. In that scenario it is in no way a double standard - it's appropriate and measured means. Your approach is one where anything goes everywhere on everything the minute it is revealed - it's more communist than anything else with no merit test of any kind. That's exactly why we have circumstances which are the subject of this thread. Oh, and I bow down to no one - I just am not quick to judge at the bleeding edge nor do I leap to criticize difficult calls occuring at that edge simply because I wouldn't have made the same one. I give no one a pass regardless of who they are.

...The Gunks (albeit managed by Mohonk Preserve, but thats not the reason there are no bolts) After the bolt wars in the Gunks the Mohonk Preserve is very much the reason there is no bolting. The Daks protect themselves from sport climbing by simply being the Daks. I'd say more like the Mid and SE Atlantic region guards it's own and well, because you'll get your ass whipped if you show up drilling a Seneca and Looking Glass and other areas. In general those areas which are protected by locals in the East and elsewhere it's because of very longstanding traditions that don't exist in most places in the Midwest and even most places in the West outside of the classic meccas. Eldo is a good example of bolt wars even in one of those meccas and tight regulated control is what now keeps bolts in check.

A lot of that perception was because he was simultaneously dogging on them and a big proponent of dogging which flew in the face of most folks ethics in the Valley.

I explicitly don't want to see it be regulated, BUT, over the past 25 years the only places I've seen bolting moderated or constrained in any successful way is on private land and under the tight control of land managers. If sport climbers can't control themselves then, yes, I'm going to hope it gets more regulated to protect pristine rock. As an aside, I see some fools shot the last two White Rhinos in Zambia killing one. I'm sure if you asked a hunter or Zambian 40 years ago if there was a problem with the indiscriminant killing of Rhinos I would bet a lot would have said "we'll never kill them all." At least you can chop a route and have half a chance of restoring it. However, I personally find the mentality of consumption precisely the same in both cases.

I think the truth on the transition from sport to trad is somewhere in the middle. I do see some incredibly bad attempts every now and then and I see cross-overs dogging on gear placements like they were bolts which can be dangerous if not checked and possibly reset after each and everytime you weight them. But for someone with reasonable logic and spatial skills it shouldn't be rocket science. You can definitely learn it on your own even if having a mentor is by far the preferrable way to go. I do mentor folks wanting to learn trad and enjoy it. It's part of giving what was given to me. Talking down to people as individuals and giving them no assistance or alternatives when they ask for them is entirely counter-productive.

- Break nut by over-torquing with a breaker bar. - Lightly clean hole and immediate surrounds by blowing and the corner of a dense brass wire brush. - Break off a chunk of plumber's stick epoxy or colored stick epoxy, mix really well, and then smear from the center of the hole to the outside pressing hard. Pressing hard while smearing is important so the epoxy adheres to the rock, both in the hole and immediately at the entrance. - Overfill a tad and let the epoxy extend beyond the hole, sometimes a ways depending on the state of the outside of the hole and the contours of the immediate surrounds. - Use the brass wire brush to embed the epoxy. Do this by putting the brush on the epoxy and pressing hard steadily - by hard I mean like full body weight. Usually I do this several times over the whole patch and if I'm working with an area a bit larger than the hole I'll also use a corner to again work from the middle of the hole to the edges. You're normally just pressing straight in but at the edges you'll also want to be smearing hard, hard, hard towards those edges in a final slide to separate epoxy that's adhering from waste epoxy thereby defining the edge of the patch. - Finish with a couple of straight-in presses of all the wire spines to texture (perfect for andacite and basalt) - then use the heel of you palm to take the wire-dot texture down a notch or two if it's too much. - The objective relative to the amount of epoxy is to have enough epoxy to work with to sculpt to match surrounding countours. If a slight ridge, ripple, or depression goes through the hole or immediately next to it you should replicate the missing piece of it. Really pay attention to details on the millimeter level. You can remove excess epoxy quite easily with the brass wire brush in the course of finishing the patch. Done right you can make basically invisible repairs.

The problem is that if one takes this attitude then these practices essentially never end and by slow creep, sooner or later, you're into the whole retro-bolting nightmare. To those of you that say there should be no limit, no boundaries, and that any bolt that creeps into a rock is then sacrosanct - I personally just can't imagine a more radical, activist, and in many ways clearly self-serving and self-fulfilling viewpoint. At just exactly what point is a bolt war and / or closure preferrable in every way to unrestrained bolting? Never, you say? Then we whole-heartedly disagree - I very much do have limits beyond which I feel any responsible 'Access Fund' should actually support closure before unrestrained bolting every single time. Practices such as described in this thread sound very much like they are approaching that limit.

These cases sound pretty simple - they aren't sport crags are they? If not, and there is a bolt next to a finger / hand / whatever crack that takes pro, then it's bogus. If that straightforward, common sense test for determining where a bolt is legitimate or not then all of you who think I'm an extremist need to stop and look hard the next time you walk by a mirror. It doesn't matter a rip if who did it or if they got there first - it's flat out inappropriate and fair game for pulling.

Quite unfortunately, yes. He was rapping after having just freed Wet Denim Daydream with Jim Hewitt and naming the variation Dry Lycra Nightmare.

Not from everything said here. [sport] 'development' maybe, but clearly not trad FA's.

This is a good question. It was at the heart of the quite vocal free vs. aid controversy surrounding Todd Skinner's recent free climbing spate on the Leaning Tower. Many Valley aid climbers were incensed at the addition of free climbing bolts to aid classics. There is, and for some time has been, a real push in the Valley towards free climbing aid routes - witness Tommy and Beth's free climbing two lines just this past week. The folks advocating this push such as Jardine, Shultz, Sandahl, Hill, Skinner, Smith, Potter, Hubers, Ninov, Caldwells, et al have always taken the stance that free climbing has priority and can exercise the same license as aid climbers did before them to accomplish their goals - even on the same lines. In the end, it is another... gasp ...value judgment to be made by everyone, individually and collectively. The bolts placed on the Nose and Prusik represent deliberate tradeoffs and are very much a direct result of this thinking that freeing routes is or should be the main priority of climbing. It's not exactly my sentiment and I likely would not personally make those same tradeoffs myself, but I do have some sympathy for their view on the priority of free climbing. More on that battle at these ST threads: Free climbing on established aid Drilling on the Hot Rod? Vote - Should Skinner's bolts be removed? Todd Skinner's Response to the Wet Denim Controversy [ Note: Please don't feel like you have any right to an opinion on Skinner adding bolts to established aid lines on the Leaning Tower until you have climbed his line... ]

Three blind Vodka tests and one blind Brita/Vodka test. http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Story?id=3201973&page=1&ROS=true http://www.slate.com/id/2106004 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/dining/26wine.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5088&en=5913ec796f54a33c&ex=1264482000 http://www.monzy.com/?p=238

No, actually I did note that. But I've been climbing for long enough to make that type of judgment call. Sort of like not needing to wade through twenty-two thousand lines of assembler to make some basic 'value' statements about programming in it.

Nice - one place I still haven't made it to that's on my 'greatest hits' list. I did put some routes up in Glenwood Canyon back in the day so I did get some good 'hands on' with pegmatite bands. But a 100' feet of it - that is seeing god.

It's basically all about 'illegal employers', not 'illegal immigrants'. The Republicans would much prefer you focus your anger on the latter. 'Illegal employers' shift the true costs of employment on to taxpayers - it's the ultimate free lunch for people who care more about money than their country. A $1000 dollar per day fine per worker employed illegally and criminal charges against HR, plant, and division managers would shutdown the problem in the corporate space. For home, small and medium businesses it more comes down to a matter of patriotism - do you put your wallet or your country first. Given the preponderance of business owners and corporate executives are Republican it's an ironic bit of a contrast between their words and wallets.

For me it's the fact that both are in established climbing areas. IB flirts with a wilderness area and if someone wanted to establish a new Potrero-like sport area there they damn well should have contacted the land managers of record and sat down with them ahead of time. It's just common sense and courtesy. For myself lines like those going up on the Hulk at all grades are much more representative of the spirit of what this kind of climbing can be about. Thanks much for the heads up - given the history up there I'd bail before using pins.

You are equally free here to laud the exceptional qualities and bleeding edge attributes IB lends to climbing. I don't need to climb a 22 pitches of bolts to make 'value statements' about its existence or the trade-offs of establishing such a route where land managers would take exception to it.

Yes you are. Mt. Garfield is the only thing bleeding when it comes to IB. There is nothing exceptional about it except the extent and length of its medocrity and mendacity.

Hawk, trust me - I wish it were that simple. And, yes, the Nose was freed by using rap-placed bolts and El Cap is a wilderness area. Would I personally have done it on either the Nose or Prusik - no. But again, I'm not so quick to judge at that bleeding edge or assume there are never exceptions worth making. My concerns revolve more around efforts to make those exceptions the norm. The easiest way would be to simply avoid all such exceptional situations, but we both know that isn't particularly realistic as Harding, Jardine, and Hill have all shown.