Trad gear needed on bolted routes

leo qiu wrote: After all, you can do whatever the heck you want when you FA. If you can do it, the expectation is other people can do it the same way.

respect to the person who spent a day or two and a few(50-100$) dollars is always good

Mark Roth wrote: That bolt should be chopped.

Hell f&@king yeah it does.. And no I've never been to the gunks. Heard a lot of interesting things about that place, though.

T Roper wrote: respect to the person who spent a day or two and a few(50-100$) dollars is always good

or a month or two... or a year or two...
I've spent about 1.5 years cleaning a route before it was ready to climb because I only get a chance to spend a whole day just going up there and cleaning it every couple of months

Personally, I'd never place a bolt next to a crack that takes bomber gear. Mainly, I think its dumb to deface the rock when you could avoid putting a hole in. Secondly, bolts are expensive and time consuming to place. Its a personal ethic that you don't necessarily need to agree with, but a lot of people feel that bolts deface the rock, and should be avoided whenever possible. Yes there are places that don't follow this ethic, Rumney you mentioned is a good example, and I have nothing against climbing there, but personally, I wouldn't be the one to put the bolts up.

I feel like you've got the new school attitude towards climbing. Putting up a route is dirty, scary, expensive, and exhausting. You should be thanking the FA team for putting protection bolts in for you so you can pursue our passion, not dissing them because you were too cheap or lazy to bring a few cams or nuts.

Also if its a red camolot size, that's usually a handjam...

You sir, are a whiner. Good day!

Barrett Pauer wrote:Placing a bolt next to a bomber crack is just plain lazy, I can not think of a single instance where this should be acceptable

At a sport crag it's commonplace. Typically the goal at a sport crag is to develop sport routes, as you might have guessed. Thus, adding a runout requiring gear doesent exactly align with the objective of the crag. If it's a 100% gear route, that's a bit different.

As much as I care about clean climbing and for first-ascentionist-oriented ethics, I really don't see why a rap-bolted route should have mostly bolts and a nut/cam placement for only a brief part of it. The rock in that instance is already scarred for the sake of the route. Having one or two trad placements really doesn't change the nature of the climb, so why not just add bolts to make it as safe as the first ascentionist claims it is? The decision to add several rap-bolted bolts already takes away from the route's clean aspect anyway and the addition of trad gear to make the route safe is a barrier to people who can climb it, despite the fact that most of it is bolts anyway.

Michael Spiesbach wrote: In my opinion it's just asking to hurt someone who sees 10 sport climbs and doesn't know that one of them needs a cam to keep him from dying.

Something tells me it would take more than a cam to keep such a person from dying.

Connor F-M wrote:...to make it as safe...

Sigh...

FA prerogative, I guess. While that sounds like an annoying way to establish a route, you have to meet the climb on its terms. Not every climb is for every person. You may not have the skills, courage, strength, conditions, or gear to do a route at one time or ever. Move on to the next route. As far as hurting people, a competent climber should be able to see where there is a gap between protection points and judge for themselves whether to attempt the next run or to bail. Climbing involves judgment, that is part of the game and part of the fun. There is room for multiple approaches to climbing routes and that is what you are pushing up against. Embrace a little variety. Or, hell, contact the FA party or those who know more about the route and find out what the rationale was and if they'd be amenable to adding a bolt.</quote

WELL SAID...

Max Forbes wrote:Personally, I'd never place a bolt next to a crack that takes bomber gear. Mainly, I think its dumb to deface the rock when you could avoid putting a hole in. Secondly, bolts are expensive and time consuming to place. Its a personal ethic that you don't necessarily need to agree with, but a lot of people feel that bolts deface the rock, and should be avoided whenever possible. Yes there are places that don't follow this ethic, Rumney you mentioned is a good example, and I have nothing against climbing there, but personally, I wouldn't be the one to put the bolts up.

More well said

Reading this thread reminds me why I don't post more here.

Some of you people seriously lack the ability to have a discussion.

Less work... Less damage... Less cost (negotiable)...

Boom.

Going back a long long ways, way before sport climbing was ever imagined, bolts were primarily an aid device on big walls for connecting "climbable" sections (meaning sections with cracks that could be aided with pitons). That was the justification: bolts made beautiful big-wall routes doable because they allowed climbers to connect blank sections to aidable features.

From this evolved the idea that bolts were only to be used minimally, and many bolts placed to avoid difficult aid were in fact chopped. When Harding used "too many" bolts on the Dawn Wall, Robbins went up to "fix" it, but discovered so much bold and difficult nailing that he relented. Robbins is also known to have refused to place a single bolt to reach a crack on the Direct NW Face of Half Dome, instead insisting on a long and difficult aid traverse in from the side.

So there is a long and perhaps now only subliminally-ingrained tradition in American climbing not to use bolts near cracks that will take removeable gear. I think the sixties and seventies, when people fervently believed in abstract ideals in a way that is simply not part of modern culture, meant that the traditions restricting bolting were upheld because it was "right" not to overpower the rock with mechanical solutions, and it was entirely "proper" for climbers to be "inconvenienced" and even "endangered" if that's what the natural scene dictated.

Now the dictates of nature with respect to protection are not and cannot be considered, and so what used to be a consequence of the natural scene is now the "responsibility" of a route developer. The presence or absence of a bolt isn't decided by nature, but rather by a person who is equipping the climb, and this means that the presence or absence is not a self-evident consequence of the rock configuration but rather the expression of someone's perhaps wrong-headed decision process.

I think it is safe to say that the classical perspectives have become quaint and outmoded, to the point that folks can't even manage to understand them. And yet some areas and some climbers have clung, in varying degrees, to the idea that you don't bolt protectable features, producing "mixed" climbs that are annoying to people who just want to carry (or install) a rack of draws. The Adirondacks seem to have quite a few of these mixed routes, some of which are pretty spicy where the bolts aren't.

So this forms the context for the current complaint about a single piece needed in an otherwise bolted climb in a generally bolted area. As someone from those nearly-forgotten days, someone who has continued to climb as the sport evolved, my opinions---still influenced by if not steeped in the idealism of yore---are no longer worth the effort of sharing with anyone beyond the other old codgers in rocking chairs on the porch of the Olde Climbers Home. My only point here is to expose some of the background that might logically have lead to the offensive absence of a bolt beside a protectable crack.

Bringing some gear was once considered sport climbing - at least in some places!

(note at the bottom that Golfer's Route - a route that had a gear belay and only 5 or 6 bolts in 2 pitches - made the Sport Climbs list...)

Allen Sanderson wrote:The rational is that bolts should be used as the gear of last resort. That has been the norm for 75 plus years in the USA. If one can place other less permanent gear they should.

Allen - you got it. I'm with you. (I don't skip clips either!)
Steve

I understand your concern but if it bothers you so much why don't you just avoid the route and climb something that resembles what you consider proper bolting ethics? You didn't establish the route, therefore what you think doesn't matter.

Five15Factor2 wrote:Reading this thread reminds me why I don't post more here. Some of you people seriously lack the ability to have a discussion.

I do not think folk will miss your contributions
. so don't worry.

Tim Lutz wrote:Mixed routes: the 90s called and want their ethics back As RGold said, mixed routes were a bi-curious stage in climbing's history A number of otherwise good routes suffer from lack of traffic because of weird mixed ethics. example: mountainproject.com/v/archa… but it really is up the FA. Unless the ethic of that FA is to alter the rock even the most minor way, then it is up to the community, and the FA will flogged online.

I think your a bit out of touch .. Areas that have climbs (and FA'S)that are more than ONE pitch still use mixed bolt and trad gear ...However I do agree it seems the minority of today's climbers are very reluctant to leave the ground for more than one pitch.I suspect you maybe in that category ?

Tim Lutz wrote: A number of otherwise good routes suffer from lack of traffic because of weird mixed ethics.

Its been said before but I'll repeat it - it's not logical to conclude that popularity implies quality. Many mediocre routes are popular because they are simple to do, but not memorable. Routes that require you to challenge yourself - could be in any number of ways - are the memorable ones, but they might not get done a lot. Dumbing them down so they get done more will diminish the memorable aspect.

Batman/Superman is popular. Trump apparently is popular....