debate fodder: lots of new climbers

[Dru]

I personally know one previously non-anonymous cascadeclimber who had his job threatened

SPILL!

[iain]

thanks for relegating my ringwald post to page 9, forever lost now.

[scott_harpell]

howdy y'all. wonderin what the consensus is on bolting TR'able climbs. seems unnecessary dontchya think?

[arlen]

Al_Pine said:

Painted bolts are more aesthetic visually, but get rusty and create fear in some climbers.

 

I don't think it's how the rock looks, to climbers or hikers or whomever. And I certainly can't recall ever being disappointed to be face-to-face with a bolt hanger while on a route. It's seeing the x on the topo that feels like the climb is a little degraded. Most of the time, having to find and set up anchors the way the FA did isn't pure, doesn't make me more manly, definitely isn't easier on the environment or aesthetics--it's just fun.

 

Clipping bolts is fun too, but to be truthful I don't really like the bolted aretes and faces between crack routes at Tieton or Vantage, as if it's the only climbing area in the world. Gives me more to do in a day, and I like that, but it'd be nice to get the sense from guidebooks, or other climbers, that a climbing community gives a damn as a consensus about bolting or not.

 

[Al_Pine]

arlen said:

I don't think it's how the rock looks, to climbers or hikers or whomever. And I certainly can't recall ever being disappointed to be face-to-face with a bolt hanger while on a route. It's seeing the x on the topo that feels like the climb is a little degraded. Most of the time, having to find and set up anchors the way the FA did isn't pure, doesn't make me more manly, definitely isn't easier on the environment or aesthetics--it's just fun.

 

Well put point! A page or more were spent on this thread arguing whether bolts are an evironmental blight, but to me, a climber, that is not the main point. Sometimes a bolt removes some of the challenge, some of the enjoyment. It doesn't hurt the "environment" in any practical sense, but it can damage the climbing.

 

Climbing is a game, pure and simple. One ascends the rock by whatever means the rules you adhere to allow. The commonly-accepted rules are changing. JKassidy's desires lay more with a mostly bygone system of rules, and he is agitating for the return of those beliefs. I see nothing wrong with that. But there really is unassailable moral high ground in terms of whose rules came first.

 

When you start getting into morality, is when your practices impinge upon others. When you bolt something you are removing an obstacle to ascending a piece of rock. For some people, you are interfering with their ability to enjoy climbing that piece of rock. That is why this argument is mostly fought among climbers. Because, duh, the people that bolts hurt the most are certain climbers.

[AlpineK]

jkassidy said:

RuMR said:

AlpineK said:

Allow me to insinuate

 

jkassidy=pope=eric mohler.

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

Well, I'll be hog-tied and dipped in honey. And I thought you'd have to PM our "esteemed and ethical" moderators in order to ascertain my identity, which I so obviously wished would remain private. Kurt, you suggest that Dwayner is a prick. Well you've just demonstrated your capacity for being lower than a snake's butt in a wagon track.

 

I used no special mod powers to figure this out. Just come clean Eric. Hell I will, most folks already call me Kurt often enough, but my full name is Kurt Fickeisen.

[cracked]

Didn't Pope vow to leave and never come back? Feel free to reestablish your promise.

[Dru]

snakes don't have butts anyway. they have cloacal openings.

[JayB]

This business about permanently modifying the rock being the ethical yardstick by which all climber's actions must be measured is an out and out crock. Ever climb sandstone? I've modified the hell out of a couple of routes just by climbing them. Ever clean a crack? Ever place a pin?

 

The first pin I drove off of the belay this weekend made the flake I was placing it behind expand a bit with every blow, and I suspect that when and if someone comes along and wants to use it for pro it will be gone after a couple of taps. Installing a bolt in decent rock would have had far less impact than the pin I placed, but even if we had bolts along I wouldn't have bothered because it would have just taken too damned long to install and the pin was good enough to do the job. That, and the fact that it was the only pro available, cemented the deal. But driving pins is okay and placing bolts is wrong because one modifies the rock permanently, and the other - also modifies the rock permanently. Makes sense. That's a logically sound argument you've made there.

 

IMO modification of the rock is less relevant than the purpose for which it was modified. Modifying the rock to make it physically easier to ascend has never been acceptable and never will be. Modifying the rock with a piton or a bolt in order to reduce the risk of being injured or killed in the event of a fall is. Attempting to conflate these two fundamentally unlike things in an effort to discredit bolts and bolted routes is both false and utterly unconvincing.

[olyclimber]

Brutus wants to modify your rocks.

[mattp]

I agree that cleaning a crack or removing trees/bushes/other flora can be far more invasive than installing a bolt and I think you are onto something as far as trying to make the disctinction between modifying the rock to make it easier and doing so for protection in the event of a fall, JayB, but I'm not sure that your litmus test is going to hold up. Bolts are indeed added to make the route easier to ascend in places where most of us would consider them acceptable: blank bits of rock that are surmounted with a point of aid (for an example that most will find way "inside" the line, consider the original 10 or 12 bolt ladder - the only bolts installed - on the Salathe Wall on the Captain). On the other hand, pro bolts may or may not be acceptable, depending on your idea of whether the pro was necessary in the first place. I think it is probably always going to boil down to some kind of "situation ethics" where the rules - whatever they are - can serve as useful guidelines but they have to be applied with common sense and any specific call is likely to involve a host of factors not accounted for in the general rule. All of us know a bolting atrocity when we see one, but few of us will completely agree on exactly which routes are atrocities.

[chelle]

Holy cow that's a big machine.

 

I don't see any rivers or barges around it. How the heck do they transport it around?

[bunglehead]

Hey since you guys are talking about the ethics of modifying rock, I'm surprised nobody has brought up Ray Jardine's handiwork on the Nose, which he received a boat load of shit for. His reasoning, according to his last interview in Climbing, is that people bitching about him chipping holds is utter bullshit, because if you've cleaned a crack, then you can't bitch about chopped holds. Cuz, you know, they're the same thing, in his mind. I disagree, but whatever.

[olyclimber]

ehmmic said:

Holy cow that's a big machine.

 

I don't see any rivers or barges around it. How the heck do they transport it around?

I have no idea. It's some big strip mining machine in Kansas.

[pope]

JayB said:

This business about permanently modifying the rock being the ethical yardstick by which all climber's actions must be measured is an out and out crock. Ever climb sandstone? I've modified the hell out of a couple of routes just by climbing them. Ever clean a crack? Ever place a pin?

 

The first pin I drove off of the belay this weekend made the flake I was placing it behind expand a bit with every blow, and I suspect that when and if someone comes along and wants to use it for pro it will be gone after a couple of taps. Installing a bolt in decent rock would have had far less impact than the pin I placed, but even if we had bolts along I wouldn't have bothered because it would have just taken too damned long to install and the pin was good enough to do the job. That, and the fact that it was the only pro available, cemented the deal. But driving pins is okay and placing bolts is wrong because one modifies the rock permanently, and the other - also modifies the rock permanently. Makes sense. That's a logically sound argument you've made there.

 

IMO modification of the rock is less relevant than the purpose for which it was modified. Modifying the rock to make it physically easier to ascend has never been acceptable and never will be. Modifying the rock with a piton or a bolt in order to reduce the risk of being injured or killed in the event of a fall is. Attempting to conflate these two fundamentally unlike things in an effort to discredit bolts and bolted routes is both false and utterly unconvincing.

 

Two questions:

 

1. Just who is promoting pin scars? Is this a conversation you actually had with somebody or have you been hearing voices?

 

2. A string of bolts diminishes the challenge, both physically and mentally. How did you decide these two aspects of climbing are so separable? There's no way you're going to hang dog your way up a 2-bolt horror pitch, no way to cheat and work out the moves for that eventual pink point. If you're going to lead it, you'd better be ready, you'd better be fit, you'd better have the skill and experience necessary to keep a cool head. If the Bachar-Yerian had 18 bolts on it, it would be both physically and many times mentally less of a challenge.

 

In many, many cases, if it is absoute safety you desire, you could achieve your goals with a top-rope. If you think clipping a bunch of bolts makes it more thrilling or more challenging (but your not prepared to try to get these bolts in on the lead), then I suppose you could top-rope the pitch with about 2.8 feet of slack to simulate a burly Vantage pitch.

[pope]

Dru said:

i am waiting for the strong personalities involved in this thread to visit the rock climbing forum, observe the statements made there about placing bolts on a new climb dick cilley has just established as a top rope, and start trading inventive again

 

I don't post over there any more. Too much editing, deleted posts, familiar avatars just disappearing in the night. No man, that forum is kind of weird.

[JayB]

Matt:

 

I was only thinking of free climbing in my previous post, namely those situations where someone can't physically make the moves necessary to climb a route and chops a hold in to make it possible for them to do so. As far as aid climbing is concerned, I don't think that there is quite the distinction between modifying the rock with pins and modifying the rock with bolts that those pushing rock modification as the ethical litmus test to end all others would like to believe.

[Dru]

chiselled copperhead placements?

bat hook holes?

tracked out sandstone cracks from ppl whipping on cams in soft rock?

[JayB]

Yet you constantly rail against bolts and not pitons. Both damage the rock, so its either rail against both or none at all if rock modification is going to be the litmus test for what's acceptable and what's not. If this is the best argument that you can make against bolting otherwise unprotectable lines it's time to go back to the lab.

 

Other favorites:

 

-Top roping a sport route and leading involve equal amounts of risk. Love that one.

 

-Bolting is okay if it's done on lead but not if they are placed on rappell - because one creates a permanent 3/8" hole in the rock and the other creates a 3/8' hole in the rock - and rock modification determines what is an acceptable practice and what isn't.

 

-Bolts are okay on slabs because no other protection is possible but they are not okay on face climbs because....

 

Good stuff. Keep it coming.

[Off_White]

Dru said:

chiselled copperhead placements?

bat hook holes?

tracked out sandstone cracks from ppl whipping on cams in soft rock?

 

Don't forget enhanced hook placements, not as obvious as a full on bat hook hole, but a few taps with the drill here and there to make a more secure dimple in that edge for your hook to sit in. One of the dirty little secrets of modern aid.

[mattp]

Last I heard, Cassidy, you had a grand total of one post that had been removed from the Rock Climbing forum. Did I miss something? Stick with us here - it is a new forum with a new moderator and maybe there are some "bugs" to work out.

[Dru]

"taps with the drill?" i thought you just put your hook on the tiny edge and hammered the hook until it chipped itself a little bit more edge to sit on

 

"it's just like excavating a bivy ledge on an alpine route"

[pope]

JayB said:

Other favorites:

 

-Top roping a sport route and leading involve equal amounts of risk. Love that one.

 

Not what I said. Top roping with 2.8 feet of slack and sport climbing involve equal risk, adventure and leading ability.

 

-Bolting is okay if it's done on lead but not if they are placed on rappell - because one creates a permanent 3/8" hole in the rock and the other creates a 3/8' hole in the rock - and rock modification determines what is an acceptable practice and what isn't.

 

Bolting on the lead is something I welcome you to try. When you and your back-stepping buddies adopt this manly approach to climbing, you'll not only feel more satisfied with your adventures, but it will also retard the pace at which you can drill. It will be good for you and for your sport.

 

-Bolts are okay on slabs because no other protection is possible but they are not okay on face climbs because....

 

This, I take it, is another one of the conversations you've been having with yourself?

 

Good stuff. Keep it coming.

[cracked]

[RuMR]

jkassidy said:

JayB said:

Other favorites:

 

-Top roping a sport route and leading involve equal amounts of risk. Love that one.

 

Not what I said. Top roping with 2.8 feet of slack and sport climbing involve equal risk, adventure and leading ability.

 

I don't think you and i are climbing on the same sporto routes...