Jump to content

Say it isn't so...


NoahT

Recommended Posts

Where was the overwhelming outrage when Mt. Garfield was rap-bolted in your own backyard??

 

The article isn't about infinite bliss, this might be what you're looking for.

 

 

Mt garfield thread

 

Edit-

 

Failed logic is also rejecting that there are nuances involved in the importance and stature of forests and rocks around the world. There is a difference.

 

 

Edited by Rafe1234
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 111
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Who gives a fuck? Seriously? Good for Lama. NOBODY OWNS THE MOUNTAINS.

 

Actually dumbass, we all do. Kinda like how it's ILLEGAL to litter or set a forest on fire.

 

Littering and setting fire to the forest is very different than putting up a sport climb on Cerro Torre. Apples and oranges.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can send comments to Red Bull at link .

 

...though I think their concern for 'Leave no trace' ethics is exemplified best by their sponsorship of motorsports. Clearly alpine climbers are not a large demographic for consumption of Red Bull products and merchandise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm also a little bit tired of climbing companies and their sponsored athletes rattling on and on about how clean and pure they are. I'm glad there is a push to have less of an impact in the mountains, that's good but most of this is just marketing BS to make us fill better about buying their gear.

 

The endless TRs that get spammed into my inbox read something like this. " We climbed light and fast in pure alpine style leaving no bolts behind." Nice, proud, but if they are going to spray about their environmental impact they ought to do it accurately. It would read. Our team burned 400 gallons of jet fuel to get here, we used gear that was made in China in a factory that doesn't meet Western environmental standards. Our gear is so light that it fell apart after one trip and had to be retired. Our ropes got cut on the descent and we carried them out and then tossed them in the trash."

 

There's a guy you see around Portland who rides his bike to crag, not sure what his story is, maybe he can't afford a car. Anyway, this guy should be on the pages of a Patagonia catalog and in the mags, he is practicing a very low impact form of climbing and is way more "clean" than anyone flying down to Patagonia climbing in alpine style. Anyway.....

 

 

Football game is starting now... brb

 

 

 

 

Edited by eldiente
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Who gives a fuck? Seriously? Good for Lama. NOBODY OWNS THE MOUNTAINS.

lama_bolts_04.JPG

This is a good thing?

 

No that is not a good thing....what does this have to do with the topic at hand?

 

"Photo 4: Another of the Redbull bolts above the Col of Patience"

-The caption for the above picture, from Colin Haley's blog post about the topic at hand.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Where was the overwhelming outrage when Mt. Garfield was rap-bolted in your own backyard??

 

Are we really equating one of the most beautiful and iconic mountains in the world with some PNW backwater?

I actually agree with DwAnus on this one...Infinite Bliss should not have been power bolted as it was mistaknely...Lama's made a bit of a mess...
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lama's made a bit of a mess...

 

I thought is was still in the making? So in other words it has not happened yet.

 

I dont understand why a bunch of climbers in the PNW would care about something thousands a miles a way. Especially since most of the climbers complaining on here sport climb.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

David Lama plans to bring a small bolt-kit with him, so that he has the option to hand-drill some bolts if necessary. If he adds bolts to the Salvaterra variation it would be totally out of line, as Salvaterra climbed the variation in 1999, and already placed all the necessary bolts (and Josh Wharton and Zack Smith climbed a variation to the variation in 2007, without adding any bolts). It is reasonable, however, that Lama is bringing the bolt kit, because on the headwall they will likely attempt a different line than the blank rock Maestri bolted, and the line they attempt will likely be terrain on which any climber would use bolts. What is not reasonable, however, is the way David Lama plans to use his bolt kit. In a conversation with me, Lama explained that they plan to reach the summit via the normal Compressor Route bolt ladders, and then rappel a separate line of weakness on the headwall, placing protection bolts on rappel. Yes, that's right - rap-bolting the Cerro Torre headwall! I tried to convince Lama that he might place the bolts on lead, hanging from hooks, but he insisted that rap-bolting was his intention. Zack Smith chimed in with, "You know that people will be very upset if you place your bolts on rappel, right?" Lama's response was "I can take it."

 

You go boy......

 

If he climbs on new rock, what is the problem? That he is not following some unwritten rule on how to put a route up? As long as he is not bolting on someone else's route, he should be allowed to continue. A ground up bolt job would be alot of extra bolts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Seems to me that if your ethical standard is dependant on some sort of aesthetic quality of the mountain you're standard has become highly subjective, i.e. meaningless.

 

What David Lama did last year, convenience bolting an existing route, can no doubt be considered wrong based North American climbing ethics.

 

What he plans on doing this year, presuming he was straight up with Haley and company, is considerable different and I'd argue long accepted by the climbing community in general. That is rap-bolting free variations to an existing aid route. That horse is long out of the barn with hardly a whimper.

 

If you look at modern bigwall freeclimbing a majority of standard setting rock climbers have choosen to minimize uncertainty in exchange for maximum technical difficulty. The ground up ethic as applied to high end free climbs is dead if it ever existed in the first place.

 

Look at El Capitan. Almost all (if not all) the free-routes have required bolted variations to go free; The Muir Wall, Dihedral Wall, Zodiac, Lurking Fear, The Nose, and now Mescalito. My understanding is that very little of this has been done on lead. The accepted style for freeing these routes is to rap in and work them on TR.

 

Closer to home consider Thin Red Line on Liberty Bell. Certainly Liberty Bell is a mountain. A big, beautiful, well known maybe even famous mountain. Freeing this route required the addition of a well bolted variation to P4. Maybe someone with more intimate knowledge than I can chime in, but based on its appearance it certainly looked rap-bolted to me and furthermore rap bolting it with a power-drill would have been well within the accepted norms of route development at Washington Pass, at least over the last 15-20 years.

 

The Bugaboos, another beautiful and iconic set of mountains, has seen the significant convienience bolting of rap anchors at the very least. The peaks around Banff have had their share of rap-bolted routes established.

 

No one seems to mind that (at least any longer), yet it's exactly what Lama is proposing to do on Cerro Torre. Sure CT is one of the most iconic peaks in the world, but when we gladly accept rap-bolting on our own mountains I don't see how we can apply a different set of ethics to peaks elsewhere in the world.

 

IMO: A plan that involves climbing a 30 pitch route on Cerro Torre without fixed lines and then have an adequate weather window to suss out, hand drill and then free what sounds like a 4+ pitch variation sounds ridiculousy optimistic or not the plan at all.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What David Lama did last year, convenience bolting an existing route, can no doubt be considered wrong based North American climbing ethics.

What the Red Bull team did last year pissed off the locals due to what they perceive as local ethics being violated. I can't speak to what abortion they might be or might not be planning this year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What he plans on doing this year, presuming he was straight up with Haley and company, is considerable different and I'd argue long accepted by the climbing community in general.

 

If you look at modern bigwall freeclimbing a majority of standard setting rock climbers have choosen to minimize uncertainty in exchange for maximum technical difficulty. The ground up ethic as applied to high end free climbs is dead if it ever existed in the first place.

 

No one seems to mind that (at least any longer), yet it's exactly what Lama is proposing to do on Cerro Torre. Sure CT is one of the most iconic peaks in the world, but when we gladly accept rap-bolting on our own mountains I don't see how we can apply a different set of ethics to peaks elsewhere in the world.

 

 

Except that what is acceptable in one part of the world may not be acceptable in other parts of the world. It is all about local ethics. If the local ethic (which may be the ethics not of actual locals only but locals and the foreign climbers who visit there) states that there is a certain way of doing things, then as a community, others should respect those ethics. I would assume that Rolando is a good representative of the local ethics.

 

If your thinking were true, then I could go to that eastern bloc climbing area that doesn't allow chalk or metal protection, (I forget the name) and do as I want and claim a moral superiority due to the ethics of yosemite and the rest of the climbing world.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.




×
×
  • Create New...