To Ban... or not to Ban Bolts!

Mark Pilatewrote:

I used to be more adamant about things like bolting myself.   But I soon realized the real threat is the more typical use of the term “development”.   Not bolts, but Walmart’s and condos.  The rest is almost trivial in comparison. 

So you gave up your beliefs on bolting to focus your efforts on fighting developers and Wal-Mart, right? What have been your strategies? Any successes?

Tradibanwrote:

I actually do believe in a bolting ban. Bolting has done a few nice things for climbing but overall bolts have perverted climbing into an outdoor millennial "what I want, at any cost" entitlement recreation.

I whole heartedly believe in Bolting when needed.  In fact I feel deeply convicted that bolts are appropriate in certain situations.  Your statement is too general.  Explain in 1 paragraph or less how, specifically, climbing has been perverted?

Mike Robinsonwrote:

I whole heartedly believe in Bolting when needed.  In fact I feel deeply convicted that bolts are appropriate in certain situations.  Your statement is too general.  Explain in 1 paragraph or less how, specifically, climbing has been perverted?

Ha!! You haven't been paying attention??!!

Bolts are vandalism; climbs like Crest Jewel and Stoner's Highway could never be a masterpiece.. even when the less-is-more, stance-hand-drilled, traditional ethics are adhered to. 

Lockstep, now, fool!!!

Josh Fengelwrote:

Ha!! You haven't been paying attention??!!

Bolts are vandalism; climbs like Crest Jewel and Stoner's Highway could never be a masterpiece.. even when the less-is-more, stance-hand-drilled, traditional ethics are adhered to. 

Lockstep, now, fool!Rats! Foiled again!

Mike Robinsonwrote:

I whole heartedly believe in Bolting when needed.  In fact I feel deeply convicted that bolts are appropriate in certain situations.  Your statement is too general.  Explain in 1 paragraph or less how, specifically, climbing has been perverted?

Sure. The proliferation of bolting has opened access to people who do not appreciate the beauty of pure pristine nature, thus perverting climbing from a appreciation and exploration of nature to simple vanity.

Tradibanwrote:

Sure. The proliferation of bolting has opened access to people who do not appreciate the beauty of pure pristine nature, thus perverting climbing from a appreciation and exploration of nature to simple vanity.

I would venture to say the old school climbers that sent at all costs cared even less about nature than people cragging today. Especially given the fact literal bolt ladders were being installed, rock was being modified and leave no trace wasn’t as much a thing.

Trevor Puppy Lovr wrote:
I would venture to say the old school climbers that sent at all costs cared even less about nature than people cragging today. Especially given the fact literal bolt ladders were being installed, rock was being modified and leave no trace wasn’t as much a thing.

Not to mention the Himalayan expeditions to the 8000m peaks which left trails of dead bodies and hundreds of tons of trash in the name of putting one European flag or another on a mountain top first in a post-colonial rush for new forms of nationalistic glory. The real problem is that with ever more people getting into the outdoors, the small percentage of assholes who start fires and litter represents a growing number of people, even if 97% of people at the crag wouldn't think to leave a wad of dirty toilet paper at a belay station.

Tradibanned wrote:
The proliferation of bolting has opened access to people who do not appreciate the beauty of pure pristine nature, thus perverting climbing from a appreciation and exploration of nature to simple vanity.

This is something I actually worry about in myself a bit. I am a slightly unusual case in the modern world in that for me climbing started as an outgrowth of a hiking obsession, and I learned to trad climb at the same time that I learned to sport climb, if not actually earlier in some ways.

If you asked me what my grand climbing goal was 13 years ago, I would have confidently told you that I wanted to climb easy to moderate alpine rock routes like the North Face of Hallett Peak. This seemed like a huge deal as top-roping 40 ft of 5.8 at Devils Lake took every bit of effort I could muster. 

By sheer chance, it turned out that climbing is the one sport I've ever tried that I seem to have a natural aptitude for. Now dry alpine 5.8 is casual, even easy, and I want to climb Astroman some day. In sport climbing, grades I once considered beyond my reach forever are now warmups for me. I absolutely acknowledge the parallels to a drug addict looking for ever higher doses and more dangerous substances to experience the same high, and I also acknowledge the role that ego plays in my desire to do "hard and rad" climbs instead of rambling up 5.easy all day. I ask myself if no one could ever hear about the hard climbs I've done, would I still do it? The answer is certainly yes, I enjoy a good challenge, but there would also be a lot more easy days of scrambling thrown in if I didn't have my competitive streak. 

I guess at age 30 I'm still learning how to balance the fun of doing something really hard and impressive to other people with the reason I started climbing in the first place, which is to get out into nature. Hell, I'm a professional geologist, I reeeeally like rocks, so I can confidently state that that aspect of it is still strong in me too.

Princess Puppy Lovrwrote:

I would venture to say the old school climbers that sent at all costs cared even less about nature than people cragging today. Especially given the fact literal bolt ladders were being installed, rock was being modified and leave no trace wasn’t as much a thing.

Sure, some of those things happened but overall climbing has been perverted. Just that word, "cragging" indicates this.

Dylan Colonwrote:

Not to mention the Himalayan expeditions to the 8000m peaks which left trails of dead bodies and hundreds of tons of trash in the name of putting one European flag or another on a mountain top first in a post-colonial rush for new forms of nationalistic glory. The real problem is that with ever more people getting into the outdoors, the small percentage of assholes who start fires and litter represents a growing number of people, even if 97% of people at the crag wouldn't think to leave a wad of dirty toilet paper at a belay station.

This is something I actually worry about in myself a bit. I am a slightly unusual case in the modern world in that for me climbing started as an outgrowth of a hiking obsession, and I learned to trad climb at the same time that I learned to sport climb, if not actually earlier in some ways.

If you asked me what my grand climbing goal was 13 years ago, I would have confidently told you that I wanted to climb easy to moderate alpine rock routes like the North Face of Hallett Peak. This seemed like a huge deal as top-roping 40 ft of 5.8 at Devils Lake took every bit of effort I could muster. 

By sheer chance, it turned out that climbing is the one sport I've ever tried that I seem to have a natural aptitude for. Now dry alpine 5.8 is casual, even easy, and I want to climb Astroman some day. In sport climbing, grades I once considered beyond my reach forever are now warmups for me. I absolutely acknowledge the parallels to a drug addict looking for ever higher doses and more dangerous substances to experience the same high, and I also acknowledge the role that ego plays in my desire to do "hard and rad" climbs instead of rambling up 5.easy all day. I ask myself if no one could ever hear about the hard climbs I've done, would I still do it? The answer is certainly yes, I enjoy a good challenge, but there would also be a lot more easy days of scrambling thrown in if I didn't have my competitive streak. 

I guess at age 30 I'm still learning how to balance the fun of doing something really hard and impressive to other people with the reason I started climbing in the first place, which is to get out into nature. Hell, I'm a professional geologist, I reeeeally like rocks, so I can confidently state that that aspect of it is still strong in me too.

You can still climb "hard and rad" without bolts.

Let’s start by removing all the bolts on the top outs at the gunks so everybody tramples the sensitive cliff tops instead of rapping down. Sure it’s worse environmentally but we adhere to the arbitrary idea that all bolts are bad. I’m sure this has already been said, but I haven’t read all replies because I ignored trolliban. 

Gloweringwrote:

Let’s start by removing all the bolts on the top outs at the gunks so everybody tramples the sensitive cliff tops instead of rapping down. Sure it’s worse environmentally but we adhere to the arbitrary idea that all bolts are bad. I’m sure this has already been said, but I haven’t read all replies because I ignored trolliban. 

Give it up. We all know you are unhiding my posts and reading them.

My proposal already allows existing bolts to stay. However, in this case there are solutions without bolts. The AWJ could designate trails, a passive anchor could be used for later removal, or if perhaps the top out is as "sensitive" as advertised the route shouldn't be climbed at all.

Bolts are the lazy way out and all it takes is a little creativity to make your way without them.

I'd prefer it be area specific. There is a stunning area in Oregon with no bolts and those who got there first are enforcing it. Of course, I see it's not listed in the "areas" section on MP - good move. Whereas there are areas where there would be NO climbs if there were no bolts. 99 percent of folks are fine with bolts and that's not a bad thing. A point can be make that there is too many new bolts going in. 

While I've spent a fair bit of time here defending bolts, I do think that strict no bolt areas are valuable as they preserve a particular kind of climbing which is hard to come by normally. These are also the crags most likely to still be climbable in their current state a century from now.

I agree no bolt areas are great. They help support more variety of climbing destinations possible. However I think unless they are hard to find it's good to publicize them and make sure the no bolt stance is known or else people will show up and start bolting simply because they don't know.

The ones I'm aware of have fairly watchful locals that would instantly chop any bolts that appeared. Even at Smith Rock, birthplace of sport climbing in the US, people are pretty protective of the old-school 80s sport routes that are bolted pretty scarily by modern standards. On a few occasions someone has put in a bolt to soften a runout or next to a crack where it was assumed even sport climbers could bring a bit of gear and those have been very swiftly chopped. If you want to do the famous Watts mid-80s 5.12s, you gotta climb with a bolt well below your feet sometimes. Gym climbers take note and harden up.

Edit: A lot of those old Smith routes were originally seriously dangerous routes protected by a mixture of bolts and gear where falling at the wrong point could result in serious injury or worse. Alan Watts somewhat famously took a gigantic 60 ft+ gear-ripping fall trying to do the first ascent of Heinous Cling (5.12c). They've since been mostly retrobolted, but the new versions still have 30' or more fall potential easily when such a fall would be safe to take, and locals take a fair bit of pride in the fact that the local testpieces require mental strength as well as physical. It's still possible to take a 50 footer or more on Heinous if you fall at the top, but the fall ends at a fat bolt rather than at a gear nest that means certain death should it fail.

Dylan Colonwrote:

Not to mention the Himalayan expeditions to the 8000m peaks which left trails of dead bodies and hundreds of tons of trash in the name of putting one European flag or another on a mountain top first in a post-colonial rush for new forms of nationalistic glory. The real problem is that with ever more people getting into the outdoors, the small percentage of assholes who start fires and litter represents a growing number of people, even if 97% of people at the crag wouldn't think to leave a wad of dirty toilet paper at a belay station.

MIKE PREISS.....Yeah its true but the old school climbers had a different view of things as climbing was really a fringe activity that not a lot of people did, but because of gyms and sport climbing it has become very popular now and just because they did some things wrong we should to learn from their mistakes and do things in a better way for the sport and the environment. Everest though has become a sort of circus.

And the bones of the sophists long ago turned a dust and what they said turned to dust with them and the dust was buried under the rubble of declining Athens through its fall and Macedonia through its decline and fall. Though the decline and death of ancient Rome and Byzantium and the Ottoman empire and the modern states, buried so deep it was such ceremonious and such unction and such evil that only a madman centuries later could discover the clues needed to uncover them, and see with horror what had been done...

Blake Morris wrote:

Of all things if this is your concern then its not a big issue. The tires on/gas in your car you use to get to said crag are worse for the environment than all the bolts you'll ever climb on.

Just cause something does more harm to the environment does not make everything that's less harmful to the environment okay to do. Is a flawed argument/example 

Mike Preisswrote:

Just cause something does more harm to the environment does not make everything that's less harmful to the environment okay to do. Is a flawed argument/example 

Except then all climbing is bad for the environment and just because one form of climbing might be worse that doesn’t mean all climbing shouldn’t be banned.

Blake Morris wrote:

He says with 2k usd on his rack.....

"Cost" isn't referring to money. Think bigger.

Mike Preisswrote:

Just cause something does more harm to the environment does not make everything that's less harmful to the environment okay to do. Is a flawed argument/example 

And it's not just climbing. If you believe any "harm" to the environment is wrong, and pretty much anything you do will "harm" the environment, just being part of the overpopulation of humans is causing habitat loss. So you really should off yourself. 

Because that's really the argument being made. Any harm to the environment no matter how insignificant is wrong, regardless of the benefit.