Compressor Chopped?

David Sahalie wrote: ok, I'll quote you next time i'm in the Black Hills and want add some bolts

Sounds good. As long as you're climbing by "fair means" on the FA you're good to go. My point is that local consensus can't really be defined so it comes down to the people who are up there doing the routes who get to define the style. They earned it. The rest of us are free to offer our opinions but you gotta walk the walk to justify your personal actions and I think Kennedy and Kurk did just that.

So by your logic Alex hannold could chop all the routes he free solos and claim he has set the new standard? Retarded. A community is larger than two egos that combined are not even 50 years old. What they did was selfish and in my mind a glory stunt. They could have skipped the bolts. Instead they kept the ones THEY needed. Weak.

Another well written opinion by Kelly Cordes:

thecleanestline.com/2012/02…

thomas ellis wrote:So by your logic Alex hannold could chop all the routes he free solos and claim he has set the new standard? Retarded. A community is larger than two egos that combined are not even 50 years old. What they did was selfish and in my mind a glory stunt. They could have skipped the bolts. Instead they kept the ones THEY needed. Weak.

The reason this sort of comparison doesn't work is that when Alex Honnold solos a route where there are bolts, it's usually in a climbing area where the number of bolts on the route in question is reasonably standard/accepted (be it a big wall, or a sport climb, or whatever). Not an alpine climb with an absolutely obscene number of bolts by basically any standard. The Compressor Route on Cerro Torre is an extreme case for which there is really no comparable; that's how far out there it is on the absurd scale.

I think you missed the point. To whom is it acceptable? Maybe hannold opinion would differ from yours. Maybe some people feel all bolts are unnecessary.

thomas ellis wrote:So by your logic Alex hannold could chop all the routes he free solos and claim he has set the new standard? Retarded. A community is larger than two egos that combined are not even 50 years old. What they did was selfish and in my mind a glory stunt. They could have skipped the bolts. Instead they kept the ones THEY needed. Weak.

No, he doesn't have the right to do so because he is not the FA. Say some guy gets most the way up a mountain and places a bolt ladder up most of it, then Alex comes by skips all the bolts and summits. Then yes he has thr right to chop the bolts. Besides, on most of those routes he probably climbed them with a rope first and clipped whatever was there.

The main difference here from the Holnold analogy is that the Compressor Route was a well known abonination and was not by fair means. The routes Honold soloed where probably put up by fair means and thus the bolts should stay.

I agree K and K should have not clipped any of the bolts to claim a 100% pure justification but as they said they weren't planning on chopping until they topped out.

Heres a link to a Lama interview. Note he doesn't think they should have chopped the
bolts but he says they should be replaced either. Also note that he was planning on clipping them before they were chopped

rockandice.com/news/1793-tn…

I am sorry I was not aware you were one of the lucky few given the right to dictate fair mean judge and executioner? Heavy responsibility for most humble folk.

David Sahalie wrote: spot on by ignoring the local consensus?

who are the locals you refer to?

as Kelly Cordes points out in his blog post, Cerro Torre has never been guided so the bolt removal has not impacted a local community of guides.

i'm guessing there are Argentinians who have summited Cerro Torre but I couldn't find any references to those ascents in an (admittedly) quick search. except, of course, for Garibotti.

in fact, it seems that all of the 'significant' ascents have come from the international community of climbers. that is the 'local climbing community' in this context. and, the members of that community who've commented since the bolts were removed seem to support their removal.

edit to add a comment to this point:

David Sahalie wrote: ...-He drilled 300+ bolts to put up a first ascent on El Capitan...

I just watched a special on Yosemite and there were a couple of very interesting comments. First, Royal Robbins stated that, after they'd made it part way up The Nose and removed several bolts, they realized that Harding had actually completed some amazing climbing and hadn't bolted that many things unnecessarily. That's when they decided to stop chopping them.

There was also a comment from someone who pointed out that, if Harding had bolted the way Maestri did, there would be more than 2000 bolts on The Nose.

It seems to me that this action has already opened up some possibilities on this mountain. I favor it.

Some said that Maestri drew a line up the mountain, but he didn't do that - he chiseled a line up the mountain with a compressor. Erasing the bolts will not erase the history, that's written down as far as it goes. There's no point in comparing this route to stuff on El Cap or elsewhere, it's on a case-by-case basis. Some people are ticked because now they can't get up Cerro Torre, well perhaps if one had used the Compressor Route one can't even call that climbing Cerro Torre.

I never feel sorry for climbers if they don't manage to make an ascent, but I always feel sorry for mountains that have been trashed or brought down to their knees - what could be worse than "Murder of the Impossible"?

Murder of the Possible.

David Sahalie wrote:spot on by ignoring the local consensus?

What defines a local to an area? Someone who lives close by, or someone who has spent lots of time and energy on the climbs and in the area. If you have ever climbed in Patagonia you would know that people like Fonrouge and Garibotti are absolutely "local". They have been spending seasons in Patagonia for a long time and have put up numerous routes. Garibotti is from Argentina and wrote the guide book for Frey which he makes available for the cost of photocopying. You don't have to live in a place year round to define yourself as "local" and therefor having ethics that count toward the consensus.

Who is local to the Trango towers? The people living the closest? Or the group of climbers that have been visiting them year after year and who climb them? Perhaps Alf should be the one to decide the ethics of Indian Creek because out of anyone he lives there the most. Of course that is absurd, you don't have to permanently live in a place to have a legitimate say in the ethics. On the other hand you should be a frequent user of the resources for your opinion to matter.

Garibotti is not some foreigner who came by for his first climb on Fitzroy and is now telling everyone what to do. He has been climbing there for years, he cut his teeth climbing in the area and put up lots of new routes, he spends time building trails in Patagonia, and to say he is not "local" shows just how set you are in your armchair opinion.

David Sahalie wrote: ...what i said was that the concensus of the 'physical' locals (the non-white, non-trustfund brown people that live there) should not be ignored, despite not being climbers...

but, why? how are they impacted by this?

the base of the mountain is a 9 hour trek from the closest town, which has a population of something like 500 people. i could be wrong here but it's pretty hard to imagine that the removal of the bolts will have any impact on their lives whatsoever.

if someone can demonstrate a real and significant impact, i would agree with you. but, if they're not impacted, i really don't see why we should ask for the opinions of people who do not understand the issues.

Armchair climbers calling other armchair climbers out for not being local. Classic.

Where is Dean with the free base suit to set this shit straight????

youtube.com/watch?v=Mswqi91…

Johny Q wrote: Armchair climbers calling other armchair climbers out for not being local. Classic. Where is Dean with the free base suit to set this shit straight????

I'll have you know I'm using a chair with no arms.

David Sahalie wrote: so why did they form a mob and run them out of town? why did they put a sign on K&K's place that told them to go home? are they crazy? are they just stupid uneducated locals? why were the police involved? everyone that supports the chopping, including Patagucci seem to gloss over this.

Perhaps they were told that someone had just torn down a historic monument. Having no understanding of climbing whatsoever, they might take that literally. It's not hard to imagine getting a group of people angry about an issue they don't understand. Our politicians do it to us all the time.

Remember the local girl that sheepishly asked Simon Yates if she could have Joe Simpson's stuff since, well, he was dead?

Local consensus indeed.

David Sahalie wrote: yeah, or just maybe, there wont be all the people coming to do the compressor, so they will have a loss of income. but who cares? just the brown, stupid locals, not THE locals.

you're the one trying to turn this into denigration of the locals and bring race into it. that doesn't have anything to do with this.

based on one of the area's tourism sites, i suspect that the people coming to climb the compressor represent a very small percent of the overall tourism:

"There are more than 300 permanent inhabitants, and the number of tourists grew from 14,000 in 2000 to 40,000 in the last season. The majority are foreigners who come to practice trekking and mountain climbing in various levels of difficulty, or to simply visit an impressive part of the Glaciers National Park."

- patagonia-argentina.com/i/a…

how many of those 40,000 do you think come only to climb the compressor? maybe 100? if 30 of them attempt another route and 70 decide not to go to Patagonia, they're down to 39,030 tourists. that's not a significant impact. tourism in Patagonia will be just fine w/o the bolts.

The thing everyone, on both sides of the argument, seems to be missing is the most important thing of all: the future.
Those locals some of you have such disdain for are the very ones writing the inevitable climbing management plan we're sure to see in El Chalten in the next couple of years.

Kruk and Kennedy made the same mistake as Maestri - they forgot about unintended consequences. Maestri made Cerro Torre easier, and K&K brought climbing regulation to Cerro Torre. At this very moment the rangers in El Chalten, with input from the locals, are trying to decide what regulation to put in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening in Glaciares National Park.

Perhaps they'll name the inevitable new regulation after the people who inspired it and their sponsors:
The Kruk/Kennedy Climbing Permit Fee
The Patagonia Inc New Route Permit
The Team America Fixed Anchor policy

So they climbed a couple hundred feet of new terrain at 5.11 and hanging on some gear. So what. The big news is that Kruk and Kennedy brought climbing regulation to El Chalten.

People have been climbing there long before El Chalten existed. Hell, the Compressor Route and the controversy surrounding it predates the town's founding by 15 years! Someone should drop onto the Hielo Continentale by helicopter, climb the West Face, chop all the bolts on descent, and tell the "locals" to stuff it via the internet, all without ever setting foot in, as Jim Donini calls it, "the southern hemisphere Chamonix".

Also, as far as the "mob", is there any definitive evidence of who exactly it was comprised of? I bet a bunch of the people in it consisted of "white non-locals".

topher donahue wrote:The thing everyone, on both sides of the argument, seems to be missing is the most important thing of all: the future. Those locals some of you have such disdain for are the very ones writing the inevitable climbing management plan we're sure to see in El Chalten in the next couple of years. Kruk and Kennedy made the same mistake as Maestri - they forgot about unintended consequences. Maestri made Cerro Torre easier, and K&K brought climbing regulation to Cerro Torre. At this very moment the rangers in El Chalten, with input from the locals, are trying to decide what regulation to put in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening in Glaciares National Park. Perhaps they'll name the inevitable new regulation after the people who inspired it and their sponsors: The Kruk/Kennedy Climbing Permit Fee The Patagonia Inc New Route Permit The Team America Fixed Anchor policy So they climbed a couple hundred feet of new terrain at 5.11 and hanging on some gear. So what. The big news is that Kruk and Kennedy brought climbing regulation to El Chalten.

Sounds like the park could have used some climbing regulation before Maestri drilled a super-highway.

I'm convinced that K and K gained the moral authority to chop but I'm definitely softening on if they should have. If it's a well-known atrocity then it serves the purpose of showing what dirty climbing is. In other words, what did K and K accomplish here? We already knew The Compressor Route was a junk show. Have they strengthened the resolve for clean climbing? I certainly think a statement has been made in that direction. Have they brought regulation to the park? Time will tell, but is that necessarily a bad thing?

Overall I hope everyone from sport climbers to high elevation mountaineers strive to maintain a high ethical standard of no needless bolts and not bowing to the lowest common denominator.

Again, at this point that wall deserves a do over, chop the rest of the bolts and send it proper.