Why not put bolts vs pitons in Gunks?

Steven Amter wrote:

I think you are actually making my point. I agree that these climbs can easily be done on removable gear - hell, they are all free soloed on a fairly regular basis too - but the pins make these  great climbs safe and more accessible to climbers at their grade, consistent with the original ascent parties. I suspect that you feel solid at these grades.  But put yourself in the shoes of a visiting climber who wants to safely sample these classics.   We are not talking about adding new gear that changes the original character of the climbs.  Son of Easy O has a pin before the roof  for which most leaders are thankful.  High E would probably see an uptick in the number of dangerous, long whippers  from climbers too gassed to throw in a cam if the 3rd pitch pins were gone.  Maybe such climbers would avoid the climb until they were strong enough to place  all their own gear.  Maybe.  But what's wrong with keeping these climbs fun and safe?

No, I am not agreeing with you here. These climbs can be easily done on removable gear by people who don't feel solid at the grades. I've lead some of these climbs when I wasn't entirely comfortable at the grades, and followed leaders up them who weren't completely comfortable at the grades, and the protection never gave anyone pause.

The second pitch pins on High E (because who breaks this into 3 pitches?) are right next to bomber gear placements from reasonable stances. The only really strenuous gear placement in that area is the #3 directly after "the move", which is only strenuous if you don't find the weird beta to jam your legs into the crack to take your weight off your hands. And there's no pin there, probably because nobody wanted to hammer in a pin from a strenuous stance either.

The pin before the roofs on Son of Easy O is right next to pro that can be placed from a no-hands rest.

These climbs ARE fun and safe, WITHOUT PITONS.

I stand by what I said: I don't think you're actually familiar with how well-protected these climbs are.

You can't talk about "consistent with the original ascent parties" and "too gassed to throw in a cam" in the same breath. If you're too gassed to throw in a cam, you're definitely too gassed to hammer in a piton. Making the protection consistent with the original ascent parties would mean making the pro harder, not easier. Pitons aren't placed in places where it's strenuous to place a cam, probably because it's even more strenuous to place a piton in those spots.

the political process im observing in climbing sickens me.

David Kerkeslager wrote:

No, I am not agreeing with you here. These climbs can be easily done on removable gear by people who don't feel solid at the grades. I've lead some of these climbs when I wasn't entirely comfortable at the grades, and followed leaders up them who weren't completely comfortable at the grades, and the protection never gave anyone pause.

The second pitch pins on High E (because who breaks this into 3 pitches?) are right next to bomber gear placements from reasonable stances. The only really strenuous gear placement in that area is the #3 directly after "the move", which is only strenuous if you don't find the weird beta to jam your legs into the crack to take your weight off your hands. And there's no pin there, probably because nobody wanted to hammer in a pin from a strenuous stance either.

The pin before the roofs on Son of Easy O is right next to pro that can be placed from a no-hands rest.

These climbs ARE fun and safe, WITHOUT PITONS.

I stand by what I said: I don't think you're actually familiar with how well-protected these climbs are.

You can't talk about "consistent with the original ascent parties" and "too gassed to throw in a cam" in the same breath. If you're too gassed to throw in a cam, you're definitely too gassed to hammer in a piton. Making the protection consistent with the original ascent parties would mean making the pro harder, not easier. Pitons aren't placed in places where it's strenuous to place a cam, probably because it's even more strenuous to place a piton in those spots.

I assume Steven means the pin on Son of Easy O that is about ten feet off the deck. Some of the other pins he mentions would not not even be noticed if they disappeared, but that early one on Son of Easy O and the pin on Try Again would probably be missed if they disappeared and were not replaced. I would be fine with not replacing them anyway, since my argument is that we should preserve the cliff and not alter it. We should improve upon the style of the original ascent, especially since we have better tools at our disposal. Some rare climbs would become harder to protect in the absence of the fixed gear, I concede. But the number is small, probably much smaller than most of us assume to be the case.

MF is an interesting example-- I don't know if Steven means the pin that still exists, which many people do not back up. But I always place a cam there and it is easy to do. That pin is totally unnecessary. There was, historically, a second pin around the corner after the crux move on MF. Maybe Steven was thinking of this one. This second pin disappeared several years ago, and while I'm sure some people must have worried that the absence of this pin would make the climb more dangerous or more committing, there is actually a good cam placement in a pod. I don't know whether anyone has thought about that second pin in years and the climb has become no less popular.

Another climb that comes to my mind is City Lights. There is a section after the cruxes on pitch one where the guidebook describes a run-out in easy (5.4 or 5.5) territory. There used to be a piton in this section, and one day it was removed (I forget the exact details) when someone discovered it was crumbling or could be easily dislodged by hand or something like that. On Gunks.com there was a debate about what to do with this section of the climb, which was now suddenly "unsafe." Some argued for replacing the piton. Others argued that nothing was new since the section was no more dangerous now than it was for many years with an apparently useless piton in residence. Ultimately the piton was not replaced, for some reason. And what happened? People now know there is a section of that climb with tricky gear. The climb remains popular. You can run it out, or place a piece in questionable rock, or venture a little bit left and get gear on Pas De Deux, or go to the right side of the pedestal after the second crux (which I think is actually a variation called Patty Duke)... the point is, we've all dealt with it and we haven't "lost" a formerly great climb because we lost a piece of fixed gear. 

Lyle M wrote: the political process im observing in climbing sickens me.

Say more?

SethG wrote: I assume Steven means the pin on Son of Easy O that is about ten feet off the deck.

That's the pin I'd miss on Son of Easy O, but Steven specifically mentioned the pin right before the overhangs, which is why I'm saying I don't think he's that familiar with the climbs in question. The pin he's proposing replacing is at a no-hands rest, with plenty of gear available, and not even near the crux (I think the roofs are 5.6/5.7--the 5.8 crux for me is that slabby sloper move with no feet near the bottom).

Another climb that comes to my mind is City Lights. There is a section after the cruxes on pitch one where the guidebook describes a run-out in easy (5.4 or 5.5) territory. There used to be a piton in this section, and one day it was removed (I forget the exact details) when someone discovered it was crumbling or could be easily dislodged by hand or something like that. On Gunks.com there was a debate about what to do with this section of the climb, which was now suddenly "unsafe." Some argued for replacing the piton. Others argued that nothing was new since the section was no more dangerous now than it was for many years with an apparently useless piton in residence. Ultimately the piton was not replaced, for some reason. And what happened? People now know there is a section of that climb with tricky gear. The climb remains popular. You can run it out, or place a piece in questionable rock, or venture a little bit left and get gear on Pas De Deux, or go to the right side of the pedestal after the second crux (which I think is actually a variation called Patty Duke)... the point is, we've all dealt with it and we haven't "lost" a formerly great climb because we lost a piece of fixed gear. 

City Lights was my first 5.8 lead, and I did it sans-piton! I think if you can get past the (well-protected) crux at the beginning, the run-outs later shouldn't present much difficulty--it's much easier climbing. This is similar to The Brat (5.7): the low 5.7 crux is well protected, but the upper section has about 30 feet of unprotected 5.4 climbing.

David Kerkeslager wrote:

You can't talk about "consistent with the original ascent parties" and "too gassed to throw in a cam" in the same breath. If you're too gassed to throw in a cam, you're definitely too gassed to hammer in a piton. Making the protection consistent with the original ascent parties would mean making the pro harder, not easier. Pitons aren't placed in places where it's strenuous to place a cam, probably because it's even more strenuous to place a piton in those spots.

Not to sidetrack the whole point of the thread but a point of clarification: 

I don't know what the predominant ethic was back in the day in the Gunks, but a lot of ground up ascents aren't really what a lot of us think of as free ascents. My understanding is that sometimes it does come down to someone finding a stance and hammering in a piton or drilling out a bolt then pounding it in but a standard part of the rack was also frequently a hook or some other aid piece to hang on while doing this work. This practice was probably tied to whether the pin was something considered temporary/was cleaned by a follower or left as permanent pro, maybe one of the folks with long experience could clarify?

Matt, it's a little complicated; you are confounding practices from different eras and locales.  There is no question that certain Gunks routes were originally done with aid (but of course ground-up); for example Double Crack, Bonnie's Roof, and the Directissima of High E.  Soft iron being the only iron of the time, there could have been a fair amount of fixed pitons in a route left over from aiding it, and early free ascents (also ground up) certainly clipped that stuff.  The number of fixed pins steadily decreased, and when Chouinard brought out chromemolly and the dominant practice was to remove all pitons, the decline in fixed protection accelerated.  This means that the idea that there was ever some historic level of fixed protection is questionable, as the amount of fixed gear changed over time.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say nobody carried hooks to use for aid while placing other gear BITD.  (There was a climber, who I'm not going to name, who was ridiculed for keeping a fifi hook on his harness to enable resting on gear.)   The use of hooks to hang on while placing protection bolts is a far more modern technique that was used in Yosemite and Tuolomne as part of an extremely adventurous ground-up strategy for protecting cutting-edge crackless slab routes that lacked no-hands drilling stances.

Agree with rgold...in the 60's and '70's if you hung on a piece of gear during a FA, or using a piton-and-biner as a hand hold or foothold,  you'd call the route "A-0" or "French Free" (from the practice of hanging or moving up on gear to speed up a many-pitch mountain ascent, as was sometimes done in Chamonix).  Only when you actually stood in a sling or aider was it called "A-1".  If then at the same time (i.e. next hour, ...same day) you pulled the rope and did the climb totally free (as you'd define it today) you'd drop the  "A-0".  

Gunkiemike wrote:

No, in the end it comes down to realizing that the Preserve will dictate what happens. Reasonable people can deal with it, whether they agree or not.

This is the Gunks. Plenty to do all the time.

Yea, I'm mostly thinking of the latter scenario. I climb in NC where the ground up approach is/was pretty common. I hear stories periodically about folks putting in bolts on the big slabs like Stone Mountain, Laurel Knob, and Whitesides around here and they sometimes include these tactics. I didn't start climbing until the early 2000s and don't go scouting out FAs so these are all secondhand for me. Thanks for the historical perspective on the prevailing ethics at the time in the Gunks.

I follow the distinction between free and aid, but my point still remains, unless the pro was completely removed prior to the free ascent it's not the same as what David was describing, where folks are bashing in all the pins on lead, which is all I really wanted to point out. You are right of course that the situation is complicated by the existence of aid lines and fixed pins from prior efforts that later go clean either an hour, a day, or years later (I'm making a distinction here between something that at the outset was viewed as an aid project versus something that was attempted but then the leader resorted to a point of aid).

The Gunks is a special place, I've only been able to make one visit but the ancient fixed tricams I found a couple routes still make me smile. Granted I wasn't keen on clipping them, but they certainly added to the ambiance and sense of age of the place none-the-less.

Matt Westlake wrote: Yea, I'm mostly thinking of the latter scenario. I climb in NC where the ground up approach is/was pretty common. I hear stories periodically about folks putting in bolts on the big slabs like Stone Mountain, Laurel Knob, and Whitesides around here and they sometimes include these tactics. I didn't start climbing until the early 2000s and don't go scouting out FAs so these are all secondhand for me. Thanks for the historical perspective on the prevailing ethics at the time in the Gunks.

I follow the distinction between free and aid, but my point still remains, unless the pro was completely removed prior to the free ascent it's not the same as what David was describing, where folks are bashing in all the pins on lead, which is all I really wanted to point out. You are right of course that the situation is complicated by the existence of aid lines and fixed pins from prior efforts that later go clean either an hour, a day, or years later (I'm making a distinction here between something that at the outset was viewed as an aid project versus something that was attempted but then the leader resorted to a point of aid).

The Gunks is a special place, I've only been able to make one visit but the ancient fixed tricams I found a couple routes still make me smile. Granted I wasn't keen on clipping them, but they certainly added to the ambiance and sense of age of the place none-the-less.

I bet some of those ancient fixed tricams are not so ancient...

Christopher Woodall wrote:

I bet some of those ancient fixed tricams are not so ancient...

Yea, really. If TRICAMS give a climber a "sense of age", I'd say they really need to bone up on climbing history.

Well it may have been some other ancient fixed piece of metal but that was my first impression. It was hard to tell, being a corroded hunk of metal with no sling that had sort of merged with the rock.

And google tells me tricams were brought to market in 1981, which relative to the age of the Gunks is pretty young I suppose but is still closing on 40 years. I'm in my mid-40s so I'm not exactly a spring chicken myself.

Gunks Apps wrote: A good example of this is Fat City. Everyone who has clipped that pin has that moment indelibly etched in their minds. Gary Brown placed that pin on lead (What?!?!?!) then John Stannard went up and climbed through in 1968 ?!?!? It took me three visits to the Gunks to finally commit to that upper section. Not to be melodramatic but placing a bolt on Fat City would feel like permanently defacing some piece of artwork while at the same time robbing future generations from having the chance to experience the route pretty much the way climbers have for about 50 years.

Yeah, I totally get get that.  Clipping that pin is definitely on my "most memorable Gunks moments" lists.  So you would be in favor of replacing the pin with another pin until the rock becomes too scarred for that to be viable at which point climbing could well have evolved to the point that the concerns are sufficiently different for this to all be irrelevant?  I just wanted to make the point that unlike all these other climbs, doing nothing and letting the piton rust away will also prevent future climbers from experiencing the route in the same way.

rgold wrote: The arguments about replacing pitons with bolts are arguments of entitlement.  A 5.6 climber with only modest protections skills is entitled to good protection on Moonlight because at some point in the past other climbers (or a more competent version of a current climber) had that protection.  A climber on a formerly well-pitoned climb is entitled to the level of protection available to ascenders in the past.  

I wouldn't go so far as to say I am "entitled" to a PG-rated Fat City just because people in the past had it (and I now live thousands of miles away, so you can replace the pin with a hornet nest for all I care), but given how often I hear about the importance of preserving climbs in the style of the FA when people are opposing adding gear, I find it a little odd to hear the argument so thoroughly dismissed when it is brought up in the context of maintaining fixed gear.  

That said, I certainly agree that if I had to pick between sticky rubber and a solid pin there I'd definitely go with the sticky rubber...

Maybe the pin should be replaced with a 1/4 bolt with a Leeper hanger - protect the rock while keeping that stimulating level of uncertainty for future generations ;)

NO MORE GUNKS BOLTS! If i can't bolt my project, neither can you!! If someone is too scared to lead a climb without bolts, they should find another climb! LEAVE NO TRACE DAMNIT!!!

Kedron Silsbee wrote:

Yeah, I totally get get that.  Clipping that pin is definitely on my "most memorable Gunks moments" lists.  So you would be in favor of replacing the pin with another pin until the rock becomes too scarred for that to be viable at which point climbing could well have evolved to the point that the concerns are sufficiently different for this to all be irrelevant?  I just wanted to make the point that unlike all these other climbs, doing nothing and letting the piton rust away will also prevent future climbers from experiencing the route in the same way.

I'm pretty sure the pin that's in there now is the same one that was placed on the FA 50 years ago. It is a Lost Arrow under a section that stays quite dry unless it's pouring. If it gets replaced once, the scarring will be minimal and the next generation can decide what to do in the year 2068.

rgold wrote: ...a persistent asymmetry in the demands for fixed protection.

Very well said.  Though I disagree that the argument necessarily stems from a sense of entitlement. 

SethG:  I reread your fantastic account of your mini-epic on Moonlight  on your Climb and Punishment blog site when your were a beginning leader, as well as a follow up ascent when you were a much stronger and more experienced leader.  I think it touches on a lot of the topics being discussed here, including how you were unprepared and in over your head, how you were unable to adequately protect it the first time, and how the climb left you both "both humbled and emboldened."  A  formative experience indeed..  

Gunks Apps wrote:

I'm pretty sure the pin that's in there now is the same one that was placed on the FA 50 years ago. It is a Lost Arrow under a section that stays quite dry unless it's pouring. If it gets replaced once, the scarring will be minimal and the next generation can decide what to do in the year 2068.

Sounds pretty reasonable.  I'll be thrilled if I still have a reason to care about that pin in 2068.

Gunks Apps wrote:

I'm pretty sure the pin that's in there now is the same one that was placed on the FA 50 years ago. It is a Lost Arrow under a section that stays quite dry unless it's pouring. If it gets replaced once, the scarring will be minimal and the next generation can decide what to do in the year 2068.

I'm pretty sure the original pin has been replaced, although the current one could be pretty old.  The original pin was an angle piton placed incorrectly (with the crack walls compressing the angle).  Gary was understandably in an extremely precarious position, and this was the best he could manage.  The way the pin was placed made it impossible to clip the eye, so you had to thread a sling though the eye and clip that.  Reaching out and fiddling a sling through the eye was memorable, even if it was not as desperate as placing the pin.

If the current pin is a lost arrow, then it isn't Gary's pin.  

My guess is the replacer did not duplicate Gary's feat.