Ethics questions...

[gosolo]

DC, not sure what your point is. Here is mine. Superpin had a bolt placed. I have done that route a couple times. IMO it is too bad that there was a bolt added. Now every single climber has to experience it differently than the FA. Would I have done it without the bolt? Probably, but that is not the point. It is still a dangerous climb. Should it be bolted more? It would be such a premier bolt route to such a coool summit. If it were well protected bolt route then it would loose about 99% of the challenge and appeal.

 

My point is that all across the country certain individuals are wanting to retrobolt stuff done many years ago. I think that is BS. It does not matter that it was done before sport climbers or after. The point is the same. Leave it alone. You want some more routes that have been altered pre-sport?

Dorsal Fin III 5.10d FA G. Lowe 1965 - a very proud lead for those times - bolts added in the 70's

Athletes Feat 5.11? FA by Royal Robbins - Damn. Too bad someone bolted the sucker and made it easier.

 

The point is that if you climb for 30 years, it is still a snapshot in time. How can even experienced climbers pretend to know the boldnmess of future climbers? By bolting routes done years ago because a person is too afraid to sack up, you are changing the future. Why? What is wrong with saying, "Damn, Not Today." Why dont we just TR the thing. Nearly 10 pages......

[DCramer]

Gosolo - My point is simple. I stated it several times. "the 70s were not an era of zen masters". In fact I remember them as being even more full of conflict than now. That's all I am saying. I think I was clear about that several times in this thread. A narrow and specific argument not to be seen as being for or against rebolting of old exisitng routes. By the way in 30 years climbing I have never added a bolt to an existing free climb. I guess I am probably flogging a dead horse.

Edited August 31, 2005 by DCramer

[Geek_the_Greek]

But then you have to ask the question - why even do an FA, or at least why report it, if you don't want other people to climb your route?

 

Is there a shortage of people being scared while climbing? I highly doubt it. Is there a shortage of people hurting themselves out there? Any perusal of ANAM will show this to not be the case as well.

 

After pages and pages of this, I find scant evidence that the "preserve dangerous leads" argument is about anything other than ego and elitism - "let's separate the men from the boys" type of BS, all camouflaged under terms like 'style' and 'tradition'. Are George Lowe and Royal Robbins worried that their reputations as hardmen will suffer if some early hard routes of theirs have bolts added to them? They needn't worry. Does anyone really want to be known as the person who put up the routes that sent fellow climbers to the hospital or the morgue? To me this is like designing a car with shitty brakes.

[bwrts]

To me this is like designing a car with shitty brakes.

I bet you are a person who thinks all people in motor vehicles need to wear a seatbelt too!

 

Sorry, that someone beat you to the punch and climbed the route before you and did it in minimal impact style to the rock.

 

Sorry that you are not up to the same crazy head game that the FA, went thru to accomplish his stupid human trick.

 

Sorry that you have to lead the route and add fixed gear for yourself to get up the bitch, safely.

 

If you can not lead the thing, then TR it...sheesh!

 

Geek, people report FA routes for various reasons.

to share with other friends...

to show other people what has been climbed...

to keep the guidebooks growing thicker...

to get their name in the guidebook...

and probably other reasons but who cares why they do it.

Rock Climbing is scary, and do not pretend it isn't.

 

DC, I now realize the confusion. Catapult is an extension of the (geologic) and true Fault line. So, the Squeak is to the right. However, in my mention of climbing all routes to the right of the Fault, I was merely referring to the first pitch of the Fault. The rest of the "real" Fault route does not conitnue up via Catapult but turns to the right and climbs up scrappy ledgy bushy rock to the ledge where Squeak and other routes start. Then the Fualt continues around traversing to the right, following the obvious weekness to Loggers Ledge.

[TrogdortheBurninator]

****POP QUIZ*****

Without going back to the first page, whoe remembers what the original post asks?

[mattp]

The original question was what to do if the first ascensionist is dead and you want to add a bolt. The discussion has wandered, but remained remarkably on track. We've discussed:

 

Question: Whether you love 'em or hate 'em, are bolts the only issue that matters in rock climbing or the most important issue or one of several issues that we should be concerned about?

 

and

 

Question: Is ground-up exploration and establlishment of new routes the only valid means or the best means or one way to do it?

 

and

 

Question: Is the idea of developing or managing a crag for other climbers inherenly wrong or is crag development like every thing else something that can be done well or poorly?

 

and

 

Question: Are there any circnumstances under which it would be valid to add a bolt to an existing climb or is the creation of the FA sacrosanct and, if so, does this apply in reverse so that bolts installed by the FA should not be removed?

 

 

---

 

 

In the past, an inquiry like that which started this thread would have devolved into name calling and irrelevant graphics within ten posts.

[pope]

But then you have to ask the question - why even do an FA, or at least why report it, if you don't want other people to climb your route?

 

Yes, but do you really care if they succeed? Do you feel it is your job to carefully prepare for subsequent parties a thoroughly-marked trail with all the rough edges and adventure removed? Should we adhere to some policy that says all run-outs over 15 feet must be tamed with a 1/2-inch bolt?

 

Is there a shortage of people being scared while climbing?

 

In the current climate, this is a real possibility.

 

After pages and pages of this, I find scant evidence that the "preserve dangerous leads" argument is about anything other than ego and elitism - "let's separate the men from the boys" type of BS, all camouflaged under terms like 'style' and 'tradition'.

 

There is another possibility. Many see bolts and pins as an aesthetic compromise...especially a bolt, since a bolt can be placed virtually anywhere on the rock. Call it tradition or aesthetics or whatever....climbers have generally accepted the natural limitations and barriers of a cliff as part of the challenge. If the rock is too steep and smooth, we don't chop holds to make it climbable by Joe Average. Similarly, when cracks are sparse and protection is difficult, many climbers see this as an equally important component of the challenge. When elite climbers avoid using bolts, let's respect their willingness/desire to ascend without resorting to perfectly-safe, place-it-anywhere-you-like-on-rappel protection.

[JosephH]

But then you have to ask the question - why even do an FA, or at least why report it, if you don't want other people to climb your route?

 

Geek, I've never "reported" and FA for any purpose in thirty one years. I put up [trad] FA's solely for my own amusement and not for anyone elses'. But I did once learn one reason to "report" one or tell lots of other folks is to prevent a new route from being bolted.

 

In the mid-70's my partner and I put up a stellar, big-roof-to-long-overhanging-offwidth route on a Mississippi river bluff with passive pro and no chalk. I believe we rated it a 10+ and ran out the long offwidth above the roof with one piece at the lip and one in the middle of it as it was way off the deck and you wouldn't hit anything even on a long whipper. We didn't tell much of anyone about it and given our LNT ethics we hoped someone else in the future would be able to have the same FA experience. Fast forward to the late-80s and it turned out someone did have one as when a guidebook to the area was released it attributed the FA, under a new route name, to a mid-80's crew that uprated it to an 11+, and that was after they added six bolts to the offwidth on rappel. This is kind of a damn-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation. Had we publicized the route more that mid-80's crew wouldn't have had the FA experience they did, but on the otherhand the route also likely wouldn't have ended up bolted. And, had the mid-80's crew not butchered the route, it is in just an obscure enough place that some mid-90's crew could have had the same FA experience we and they had.

 

Is there a shortage of people being scared while climbing? I highly doubt it. Is there a shortage of people hurting themselves out there? Any perusal of ANAM will show this to not be the case as well.

 

You seem to be a relentless advocate for risk-free climbing - why...? To again be brutally honest, about 70% of today's climbers are only climbers because they are supported by gyms and bolts. I feel no compunction or obligation to make the world safe for them. In fact, I'd be completely happy to see the popularity of sport utterly collapse and have the majority of these folks go away (as happened in windsurfing), but that isn't likely to happen anytime soon. I'm not elitist, just unapologetically misanthropic and selfish when it comes seeing rock overrun and bolted down to the lowest common denominator.

 

After pages and pages of this, I find scant evidence that the "preserve dangerous leads" argument is about anything other than ego and elitism - "let's separate the men from the boys" type of BS, all camouflaged under terms like 'style' and 'tradition'.

 

This is a fundamental and root difference between our belief systems: there are no "dangerous" leads or climbs, only "dangerous" climbers. Climbers are "dangerous" when they make bad decisions such as getting on a route they aren't up to, or don't belong on. An overbolted 5.7 is "dangerous" by definition if the wrong person gets on it; ditto, for a runout 5.12 with groundfall potential. "Dangerous" is an attribute of climbers, not the climbs.

 

Again, where did you, or a generation of you, get the twisted idea and expectation that climbing should be "safe" and that you have a "right" to "safe" climbing - Six Flags? It's climbing for god's sake, not an alternative entertainment medium for bored suburbanites. 'Times they are a-changing...' no doubt. Maybe "extreme sports" play a role here as a learning activity where an imperceptably small percentage of folks take real risks for the consumption of a mass audience / market that then [(pop) culturally] adopts a weak emulation characterized by the appearance, versus the substance, of the risks associated with the real thing. Not entirely unlike middle class, white suburbia sprouting a [weakly] emulated "gangsta" appearance rather than an authentic and possibly brutal "gangsta" life.

 

Are George Lowe and Royal Robbins worried that their reputations as hardmen will suffer if some early hard routes of theirs have bolts added to them? They needn't worry. Does anyone really want to be known as the person who put up the routes that sent fellow climbers to the hospital or the morgue? To me this is like designing a car with shitty brakes.

 

This seems to be another root of the issue and a necessary, lingering residue of gym and sport climbing where one person is making a lot of decisions for everyone else relative to fixed pro on a route. I personally don't "design" [trad] route FA's, I just climb them - and as I said earlier the concepts of "designing", "course/route setting", "development", and "community service" are all utterly repugnant to me in an [trad] FA context. However, sport FA's by definition require a degree of pre-meditation, intelligent route evaluation, and an ability to protect them that is neither posing nor pandering - but those (in a perfect world) would hopefully be baseline, "business as usual" competencies if someone had arrived at the point in their skills and energies led them to be completely obsessed with some new [sport] line.

 

Your questions above simply lead me to conclude you fundamentally and fairly profoundly misunderstand what trad climbing, FA's, personal responsibility, and my admittedly old perspective of what climbing is all about while at the same time exposing the "safe climbing" expectations at the root of your beliefs and comments here. I've said it before here and elsewhere that surfers, inspite of the crowds they suffer these days, are lucky in that you can't bolt waves. Otherwise every rough break in America would have been bolted long ago. As it is, you have to come up with exactly the same level of commitment, skill, and courage your parents and grandparents came up with if you want to ride a big day at Pipeline. And that's why surfers respect and acknowledge their traditions, their past, and the accomplishments of those that came before them.

 

[note: That said, and now that it's been unleashed from Jaws, look for tow-in surfing into ten footers to take off at a break near you soon - "sport surfing" for folks unable or unwilling to risk making it out through even moderate breaks to earn a ride...]

[JosephH]

So that's fine if you don't agree with my blase attitude towards bolts, but don't pretend that your no-bolt development represents clean climbing.

 

Also Geek, "clean climbing" and LNT were never about preserving the environment, but rather about preserving the FA experience and leaving rocks/routes in as close the condition you found them in as humanly possible. All the ancillary, extended discussion around environmental impact, habitat destruction, trails, etc. are "access" issues and strictly a matter of raw numbers that these days can be pretty well summed up as "Bolt it and they will come". Do trad climbers have an impact? You bet. But, by shear numbers alone, it utterly pales compared to the impact of the crowds drawn by bolted routes.

[pope]

The quote of the day:

 

Again, where did you, or a generation of you, get the twisted idea and expectation that climbing should be "safe" and that you have a "right" to "safe" climbing - Six Flags?

 

[mattp]

Joseph, you continue to make vivid arguments for how bold climbing is exciting and probably commands more respect than a more timid approach, but note I used the word "probably" here. To the extent that you convey complete disdain for anyone who doesn't want to climb in your style, I'm afraid you will lose the respect of most other climbers because at that point you are largely going to be seen not as any kind of role model or hero but as a showoff or chestbeater. Respect is a two-way street.

 

As a sidetrack, let me note that I think most American climbers in the '70's, including the high priests of the clean climbing movement, DID view it as related to the ecology movement of the day. We all have varying tolerance for risk and runout and a desire to retain adventure was only part of it; the "leave no trace" and "respect the rock" and "the natural art of protection" slogans were first and foremost about ecology, not the bold traditions of our badass forfathers.

 

(By the way, take the swipe at an entire generation out of it and I kind of like the Six Flags quote too.)

[lancegranite]

Funny how things change.

Some of the most hardcore Red Rock Canyon climbers of their day, guys like Richard Harrison, Paul Van Betten, Wendell Broussard, Bob Conz and Danny Meyers all have reversed their thinking and are now improving their bold climbs of yore with new safe anchors and replacing crusty bullshit protection bolts with new hardware.

Talking with Paul, he said that they just did not have a lot of money back then, so the ethic was to leave as little retreat gear as possible.

These guys were known as "The Rock Nazis" and were famous for calling sport climbers fags to their faces and dumping buckets of sheep shit of unsuspecting climbers at the Gallery.

Richard is a original Yosemite Stonemaster and everybody still cranks 5.11-12 with no problem.

so different because these guys put up hundreds of scary difficult routes. Now their kids are repeating their father's testpieces.

Nobody is calling anybody a fag these days. You can find all of these guys at sport climbing areas keeping fit and wicked strong.

Yes, the old climbs are still runout and many are even harder now due to erosion and broken holds.

Attitudes change and it seems fucking stupid to adhere to 25 year old ideas "just because it's tradition".

 

 

These guys set the pace and were smart enough to realize when their past ideals were just that...past ideals.

[Geek_the_Greek]

Several scattered comments:

 

I may be many things, but certainly not a bolt-everything advocate. I've been trad climbing for about 10 years, and intend to continue doing so, with no need for bolts near good cracks. To me the rules of cragging are pretty clear - if there's decent pro, there's no need for bolts; if there's a blank section that's unprotectable, one or more bolts are warranted. Some stuff is overbolted for me (I would have been happy with about 1/2 to 2/3 of the existing bolts on Condomorphine Addiction), but in the long run, I find it a pretty good system. I mean, it is just a game. We could all invent rules like "no gear with moving parts" to make things more challenging if we wanted to. It tickles me that some ice climbers have upped the ante to consider leashes aid, because their gear had gotten so good that the game was too easy for them!

 

The most popular crags are ones with easy access, with a large urban center nearby, bolts or no bolts. If you make people walk 2 hours or more, you can gridbolt every cliff and you'll still mostly have the place to yourself. If you're out in the sticks, pretty decent crags right near the road are still largely undeveloped. But places like Index and Squamish, with few bolts but easy access, get plenty of crowds. I'm not denying that sport areas are probably more popular than trad areas, all else being equal, and yep, I reckon that has something to do with the gym crowd. But mostly we're not talking about sport climbing, we're talking about adding a bolt here or there to dangerous trad climbs.

 

The fact is, guidebooks, reliable gear, and masses of people participating has made cragging very different today than it was for the pioneer-types. There is still plenty of adventure to be had in the mountains (although even there, the most popular routes are clean and polished, well documented, covered in rap slings, and often crowded - hardly the same sort of dirty adventuring it used to be).

 

I just find it hypocritical to 1)accept fancy CNC-made gear, built by large companies with R&D departments; 2)accept guidebooks, describing the approach, length, descent, and protection options of every route, as well as nearby camping options, rainy-day activities, local places to check email, etc.; and 3)accept that enough people do this shit that we have access organizations involved in land-use planning, paid parking lots and road signs, Hollywood movies centered on the activity, advertisements for corporate services routinely using rock climbing photos as an irrelevant metaphor for risk - accept that all this is the case, and we as climbers benefit in many way from this type of evolution to the mainstream, and then turn around and decide that we can't possibly accept another bolt or two on certain routes that were put up in another era, because it would ruin the soul of climbing. . By these definitions, cragging lost its soul long ago.

Good thing it’s still fun to do.

[Geek_the_Greek]

Oh and Joseph, your comments about doing FAs, not reporting them, and then coming back later to find lines of bolts and inflated grades are really interesting. I recall rading about the Banff summit a few years back (a book came out about it - "Voices from the Summit") with questions for Todd Skinner, in the context of the ego question and first ascents: something along the lines of 'Wouldn't you be upset if you did a first ascent, didn't report it, and then someone else later claimed the line as their own?' I think his answer was "I aspire to be the type of person who wouldn't be bothered by that!"

[Dru]

he may be the type of person who aspires not to be bothered by it, but when he pulled all the bolt hangers off the project he had failed on for 7 years so that jason campbell couldn't climb it, and then the store he is associated with refused to sell Campbell replacement hangers, he showed that he acts a lot different than the person he aspires to be....

[DCramer]

mmmm maybe Ben but. We were discussing two routes climbing thru the overhangs on Lower Castle Rock. You then claim that you have climbed all the routes right of the Fault. The upper pitches of the Fault form the right most route I know of on that part of the crag. Thus in that sense every route on the crag is left of most of the Fault – this includes those routes you say you have climbed. (all about ½ rope length slab routes) Squeak is to the left of the majority of the Fault. You call it route above the Fault not to the left, so it seems that you are being inconsistent with your use of the location describing terms. I would note that at any time on Squeak if you were to head directly right you would intersect the Fault. The same thing would happen if you chose to descend. The reverse is true for the route you mention.. Apesville and Monkey Lip, it should be noted, ascend through a layer of roofs that cuts across Lower Castle Rock. They share a approach up and to the left of p1 of the Fault. Brass Balls breaches the roofs by continuing basically straight up from the bottom of the Fault. The routes climbing through the right side roofs (including Squeak) share an approach climbing up and right from the start of the Fault. You said that you climbed every route to the right of the Fault. The entire Fault route has probably gone years without being climbed. I ask several questions with which you reply with inconsistent use of locational terms. I conclude that you are just being an obscurantist. In fact that night I pm’d a mutual friend asking if you were drunk!

Edited September 1, 2005 by DCramer

[Geek_the_Greek]

he may be the type of person who aspires not to be bothered by it, but when he pulled all the bolt hangers off the project he had failed on for 7 years so that jason campbell couldn't climb it, and then the store he is associated with refused to sell Campbell replacement hangers, he showed that he acts a lot different than the person he aspires to be....

Oh yeah, all that was way lame.

[slaphappy]

JosepH

 

For a guy who claims to only climb for himself you sure have spent an awful lot of time this week telling us what you have and have not done.

[JosephH]

Slaphappy,

 

As I said, I do [trad] FA's for no other reason than some line gets under my skin, period. I don't do them for the community, the crag, my partner, or even for myself with respect to caring much about the "finished product" - I only really care about the actual [creative] experience of interacting with some completely unknown terrain while I'm doing it. Everything that occurs relative to a climb post FA is pretty much a result of the context of the place, time, people, and politics involved, if any.

 

And why and how I interact with rock is an entirely different topic from why and how I interact with others on this or any other forum. If you have some issue with my using examples from past experiences to illustrate some point or another during the course of this conversation please just spit it out. DCramer and others have been kind enough to share similar experiences and I for one am glad to hear them, especially ones from areas I never managed to get to.

 

In the past year I've stepped up to some plates to help out in a more public fashion at Beacon Rock after a couple of decades of just entertaining myself and not contributing much to help insure we'll all get to keep climbing there. Along with that has come using these forums more to learn, share, and communicate other folks at Beacon and elsewhere. After three decades of climbing I do have some strong opinions about the sport in general and its evolution over that time that I am unapologetic about. Again, if you don't like or agree with what I have to say just spit it out - you won't be the first or no doubt the last either...

 

[edit]P.S. I'm also working nights and recovering from a construction accident for a couple of weeks so you folks have to suffer my more idle pursuits...

[JosephH]

Oh and Joseph, your comments about doing FAs, not reporting them, and then coming back later to find lines of bolts and inflated grades are really interesting. I recall rading about the Banff summit a few years back (a book came out about it - "Voices from the Summit") with questions for Todd Skinner, in the context of the ego question and first ascents: something along the lines of 'Wouldn't you be upset if you did a first ascent, didn't report it, and then someone else later claimed the line as their own?' I think his answer was "I aspire to be the type of person who wouldn't be bothered by that!"

 

My partner and I actually LOVE the fact that the mid-80's crew got to have an FA experience on the route, that was exactly what we hoped the next folks to find it would have. But we were disappointed by the fact that they bolted it in the process, essentially robbing anyone in the future from having the same unmarred experience. At the time it left us feeling like LNT and clean ethics had come under seige and that we needed to start doing more to keep it going. Little did we know what was coming down the pike at the time.

 

I really view bolting (and the use of chalk in some areas) as a marring consumptive act where what is being "consumed" is the possibility of anyone in the future having that same FA experience. I know there are a lot of rather[peculiar] semantics involved with that statement for both East and West coast audiences, but things were a bit different in the isolated sandstone hollows where I climbed in the 70's; being able to see each other's routes was half our game, we didn't use fixed pro or chalk, and pretty much the only evidence that route after route was going up was an oral history passed from climber to climber in a small circle of locals. We didn't realize how different and unique it was compared to the the rock, games, and experience in all the bigger, more established, and populous areas around the country at that time until we started getting out and taking road trips.

 

[edit] Oh, and I don't like guidebooks either except for the page that tells you how to get to a crag. When I go to a new climbing area I explicitly don't want to know anything about the routes or even that things are routes at all if possible. I particularly don't want to know ratings. The ability to walk up to a rock and eyeball lines and be able to map probable lines against your competencies, abilities, and how you feel about things at that moment is half of what I like about climbing and have always hated chalk for the reason that it destroys much of that fostering a climb-by-the-numbers and follow-the-dots mentality in new climbers as well. Ditching and avoiding guides like the plague and risk the occasional desperate or farsical epic would definitely be near the top of my advice list for new leaders - right next to getting in a lot of downclimbing and some downleading (quite eye opening...).

[bwrts]

FYI DARRYL (a previous post by "bwrts" clarifying the fault/squeak relationship):

Squeak of Humiliated (skinner's freeclimb of the aidroof) is not right of the Fault, Darryl. It is above the Fault and to the left a bit. The Fault, specifically, is the 5.6 chimney...

however, the route does continue thru the dirty ledgey bushy rock to the big roofed ledge where squeak, croft and yoder's way to do squek, idiots delight, bird nest overhang, and other? routes start... The Fualt does continue to Logger's Ledge via cool traversing crack never really harder than 5.6.

Perhaps you are drunk mr cramer.

I was merely implying there are good routes that start from the dirt on LC that are dirty as hell and have old fixed protection....sheesh man!

 

[Dru]

Making a "first ascent" on rock that has been previously climbed is reinventing the wheel, pure and simple. Your simulacrum of exploration and discovery is a fraud.

[JosephH]

Making a "first ascent" on rock that has been previously climbed is reinventing the wheel, pure and simple. Your simulacrum of exploration and discovery is a fraud.

 

I would have to disagree. Knowledge of an [clean, LNT] FA is an after-the-fact shared reality that, if you weren't party to would allow you to have exactly the same experience as the FA party. Now you may find out afterwards that someone else had climbed it at some point in the past, but you didn't know it at the time you did it and the experience of climbing it was a totally authentic FA experience whether someone had passed that way before or not. Now was it "the" FA? I think we can agree that obviously it was not. Was the experience of climbing the route essentially identical for both parties, in terms of a voyage into the unknown? My experiences on both sides of such occurancess tells me it is.

[Dru]

if someone fed you a delicious "pork dinner", and you later found out it was human flesh, you'd probably agree that that devalues the meal even though you didn't know it at the time and had the authentic experience of eating yummy pig.

[JosephH]

Well, that might be the difference between you an me.

 

I personally thanked the FA party for leaving the route the way they found it and we had a great old time over too many beers comparing notes on each other's experience. We didn't feel the least bit sad about not being the "true" FA team given pretty much everything we all touched was an FA it just wasn't all that big a deal. Had those guys not been around we would never have known. The experience on the climb was exactly the same regardless of what we may later have decided to do with the fact that we weren't the first to touch it.

 

For me it's more like the excitement of being with a new lover. You have a fabulous time (or not), but find out that lover wasn't wasn't a virgin - that may be a complete bummer to some folks, but not me as I'm a simple whore for the moment [something is happening]. If it was good, it was good; and if while I'm climbing it it feels like, and has all the appearances of, an FA then that is as good as it gets regardless of whether it really was one or not. But again, that's me and I have pretty damn simple needs - the actual FA "fact" thing is more icing on the cake of the unknown. Unknown stretches of rock are what I tend to end up being drawn too not because I care about ticking FA's, but because I just like being surprised and [hoopefully] surprising myself in return...