BoCan route with dangerous block: clean, chop, or do nothing?

The crux block is not likely to dislodge the ones I outlined below (in my estimation).
Taking out the one outlined in red might destabilize yellow, though. Yellow seemed really thick and massive, and vibrates a bit when thumped. It was difficult to see exactly where it was attached to the wall.

I checked out the route yesterday, and my vote is for Option B.

Rational

• Trundling would require a significant effort of many people. In addition to the actual trundling, we'd have to be prepared to remove a large block from the road, and spotters are needed on the road.
• Trundling itself presents some risk - to the trundlers, and the routes/gear below. I measured the blocks, and estimate that two of these babies (top independent block, and upper block in the lower set of blocks) weigh in between 300-600lbs.
• Pulling the bolts and patching the holes returns the route to (close to) its original state, and is not hard to do - and like it or not, there are many locations with loose rock in potentially harmful places, this is but one. It's not reasonable to mitigate this risk for all such instances. For better or worse, climbers need to be responsible for assessing the safety of a route they climb - especially if it's no longer a bolted sport route.
• Without the bolts to "lure" climbers in, I think it is unlikely someone would TR or lead the route.
• I think it's a significant risk to many people to leave it as is. Yarding on these blocks seemed the obvious way to climb the route.

Bottom line is the route does not seem notable enough to warrant the efforts of the people who would do the mitigation work. I believe their efforts would be better utilized elsewhere - and there is plenty of elsewhere work to be done! If we were talking about the Naked Edge or similar, I would vote differently.

Greg D wrote:These rocks are likely to come down "soon" with or without help (ten days or ten years? Hard to say). The forces of nature don't rest. And its not just freeze thaw. High winds, heavy rain and the heat cool cycle. Rock that face the Sun can heat up 80 degrees or more in a very short period of time while the under laying rock remains cool. Removing the rock when its dark out makes it easier to spot headlights of oncoming cars. Can we get some webbing around the block to temporarily secure it so that bolts can be added for lowering? Let me know if I can help.

Gotta agree with Greg here, in that those blocks are coming down whether we like it or not, and probably sooner rather than later (talking years as a time scale here). When these boulders come down, they are going to rake everything in there path, which unfortunately includes the climbs below. Hopefully this will occur without anyone around, but you never know. My only concern with removing the bolts is that we leave a potential time bomb in place, yet everyone will forget about it because without its bolts, the route and its dangerous rock is off of everyone's radar.

I think that if this wasn't in a canyon with a busy road, then trundling would be the obvious choice and I am sure that I would volunteer to help. That said, this IS on a busy road and I am pretty sure that I don't want to be responsible for purposefully dislodging the rocks and damaging the road or hitting a car. That scenario has shit show written all over it if the blocks make it to the road. Sort of seems like there are no good solutions here aside from an actual government agency taking responsibility for the removal. But even that is iffy because we are making work for said agency, which as Tony B mentioned earlier, may tire of cleaning up our "messes".

Really, CDOT removes rocks from that road every other day and would think nothing of this block were they to get a call about removing it from the road. They'd have it removed within an hour. A few outstanding citizens flagging traffic to warn of rockfall? Hardly suspicious and worth investigating the Great Trundling Conspiracy.
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In slope stability litigation, there's a difference between a "cause" and a "trigger" and it's always fun arguing these cases.

A prosecutor (or more so, their technical expert - gray-haired geological engineer/engineering geologist sort) would have to claim you were a cause. If the rock failed while a climber was yarding on it, the technical expert would probably claim the climber was a trigger, but the route-setter may have contributed as a cause. If the rock failed due to deliberate trundling, there's a case for considering the trundlers as a cause. It gets tricky, and typically tricky enough where most lawyers and technical experts wouldn't touch this sort of case unless there was reasonable incentive - i.e. public pressure due to you wiping out an orphan bus or such and a decent pay check.

The technical expert would have to make a case you were a cause, and get overpaid to run simple rockfall simulation programs and write up a report or two stating the block would not have failed in a reasonable time frame due to natural processes without your influence. Most technical experts would not take that case, or could be easily nulled by other technical experts. Except if it were trundled. That makes it easier.

Now, if the route-setter were to remove, or approve of removing, the bolts, it gets a bit trickier. One could argue that the route-setter would, by their mitigative action, be acknowledging they contributed as a cause and would take responsibility. Installing your own mitigation, sans design, would be an even bigger heyday for a lawyer (plus, your technique would likely be inadequate long-term).

The liability-free thing to do would be to leave it as is and let CDOT take care of it when it falls or is deemed to be a major issue ("monitoring" is a slope stability consultant's favorite budget-conscious word, unfortunately).

But, that is morally quite annoying and ineffective IF you think failure is imminent. I'd recommend covert and well thought out volunteer action.

FWIW, it wasn't my sense that these blocks were going to come down any time "soon" due to natural causes. But I'm not an expert on this. It would really help this thread if someone with this expertise could assess the situation. It would change my vote if I thought it was an imminent threat.

I could take a look, but the "when" part of rockfall prediction is kind of a voodoo science - ranges are useful. "If" and "how" are the easy parts.

Ryan Marsters wrote:Really, CDOT removes ... Great Trundling Conspiracy. -- In slope stability litigation, ...

Your lecture on the riveting details of rockfall litigation theory notwithstanding, there is actually a real risk for any "covert" trundling, i.e. its not just a "Great Trundling Conspiracy". Best case scenario if you trundle it and the rock hits the road is that you are able to slink away before a cop comes. Why? Think about it carefully. You have to climb the route in the dark and trundle the rock. No problem there. But then once the rock is gone, you need to descend and clean your gear, and then pack your gear and hike out. During that time, any John Q Law that happens to role through and notice the rock debris is now going to be in the process of closing the road down. In the mean time there you will be hiking out -- and presuming that you did this at night so that its "covert" and are minimizing the possibility of hitting a passing car -- and your car will be the only one parked at the pull off. How much you wanna bet that the cop is gonna ask you if you know anything about the rockfall? Sure, you could lie about and it might be fine...or...the cop could be suspicious and an arsehole and you could be on the line for the deed or at least on the line to go to court to try and argue that you are not liable. Great if someone wants to do that, but I can't afford to pay into some damn lawyer's Audi fund so that he/she can defend my dumb @ss.

J. Albers wrote: ... Great if someone wants to do that, but I can't afford to pay into some damn lawyer's Audi fund so that he/she can defend my dumb @ss.

Nailed it.

Cops? John Q laywers connecting a nearby climber to a rock on a canyon road in a courtroom? Ninja scaling in the dark? Good god no. "Rockfall on Colorado Road" doesn't exactly bring out the cops, lawyers, and reporters.

There's a reason the CDOT guy dismissed it. It's a non-issue. You're worried about spending money to defend yourself? What prosecutor is going to spend their time and money on a very loose case? None, unless the trundler goes bowling for the nearest schoolbus.

Either CDOT or a County Roads guy will show up in a truck, perhaps haul a flatbed and loader, set up traffic control and maybe some jersey barriers, and be done with it in an hour. IF the rock reaches the road. In a big failure event, they might haul out an on-call engineer to give it a look. I've been out to plenty of those and it generally involves Bubba in a front end loader saying "well, let me poke the cliff a little more and see if I can knock some more down." Sometimes, you can convince somebody into a round of shotcreting/barriers/rockbolting, but mostly scaling and monitoring.

Note, I am not advocating going out and doing this oneself. I'm saying IF somebody thinks something should be done about it despite CDOT's dismissal, it wouldn't raise any eyebrows if done carefully (and no, it wouldn't require rock scaling in the dark).

Ryan Marsters wrote:Cops? John Q laywers connecting a nearby climber to a rock on a canyon road in a courtroom? Ninja scaling in the dark? Good god no. "Rockfall on Colorado Road" doesn't exactly bring out the cops, lawyers, and reporters. There's a reason the CDOT guy dismissed it. It's a non-issue. You're worried about spending money to defend yourself? What prosecutor is going to spend their time and money on a very loose case? None, unless the trundler goes bowling for the nearest schoolbus. Either CDOT or a County Roads guy will show up in a truck, perhaps haul a flatbed and loader, set up traffic control and maybe some jersey barriers, and be done with it in an hour. IF the rock reaches the road. In a big failure event, they might haul out an on-call engineer to give it a look. I've been out to plenty of those and it generally involves Bubba in a front end loader saying "well, let me poke the cliff a little more and see if I can knock some more down." Sometimes, you can convince somebody into a round of shotcreting/barriers/rockbolting, but mostly scaling and monitoring. Note, I am not advocating going out and doing this oneself. I'm saying IF somebody thinks something should be done about it despite CDOT's dismissal, it wouldn't raise any eyebrows if done carefully (and no, it wouldn't require rock scaling in the dark).

Well then, I guess we have our first volunteer to help out. Anyone else?

J. Albers wrote: any John Q Law that happens to role through and notice the rock debris is now going to be in the process of closing the road down.

For the record, I will not be happening by and I haven't played a role since college. Other officers might roll by but they won't understand rock debriz till hit hitz themz in the headz. Additionally, I don't understand why you need to drag me into this. Peace be to gravity.

Option A worked.
youtu.be/hn9ZcOWgk34

I took a closer look at the three flakes below and decided that they are wedged in tighter than I had thought earlier. In addition, they really could be holding up the near car-sized boulder behind them. I did not attempt pry them off.

Greg and Mark Roth did an excellent job of getting everything setup on the rock and ready for the trundle in the wee morning hours. Eliot Agusto and I were down on the road to stop traffic. Eliot actually stopped a Boulder County Sheriff, but he was cool mainly because Greg got the job done so quickly we only had to stop traffic for a couple of minutes. The block did not make it to the road.

Way to go team!

Nice! Thanks for keeping everyone safe.

Thank you!

Way to go! glad some saw it was time to take action. Thanx, In the name of the tribe, well done & great video!

the approach taken on planning out this trundle would qualify it to be the Great Trundling of 2016 I do believe. thanks for the thought and effort put into this Gregger et al!!!

Gregger Man,

A big THANK YOU to you and all those involved in getting this done. I love that route and am glad to see it's safe to climb again.

Cheers.