Rescue after Rockfall on Freestone (Yosemite) - Avoid or Proceed with Caution

I wrote:

BITD, if you could have put in a bolt with 40 seconds of drilling, you would have...

Kevin Worrallwrote:

2) Wrong. You obviously don’t get the mindset of the era in Yosemite when Freestone was first climbed. Have you ever done one of my face routes on MCR where I dicked around “with crappy knife blades behind questionable flakes?”. Or are you presuming? The goal of those routes was to climb the chosen face using as few bolts as possible, simple as that. Even if we had a power drill, that goal would have prevailed. This is a mindset you apparently don’t get, Marc, and basically all climbers 40 years or younger can’t viscerally grasp.

No, I do get the mindset of the era since I lived through it. The point I'm making is that the mindset would never have occurred if bolts were as easy to place as a piton.

Curiously enough a page I follow on Facebook posted this today:

Never thought about belaying in the crack below in your photo.

But!! the flake belay was pure dicey shit. I always believed it needed a bolt there to bolster the crap anchor you get without it lol

I aske Ron why he didn't put bolt on that next pitch because fall there would end up just as described by the original poster on this thread.

Ron said he did think about it since he was just climbing lol.

Ron was a damn good face climber so I knew right away what he was implying

Anyways this route is too beautiful and classic to argue over one bolt to save a potential catastrophe of life 

I picked up too many and know what the results look and feel to the families friends and relatives.

I know KW really well and It's how he is and don't worry he's good people

I know KW really well and It's how he is and don't worry he's good people

Would we have wanted Norman Clyde to soften up with age, get all feeling and shit and never say anything at all that might upset the children?

HELLNO!

KW's views are irreplaceable and its good for kids these days to read such ideas straight from the source.

Who has arguments against adding a single bolted belay in this case besides “it violates the rules”? (as ratified in the rulebook by the Stone Masters, forever un-amendable and currently proxied by KW since no one seems to be able to find a copy)

I thought climbers who were active in the 70s would have an understanding of the effectiveness of the approach “I’m your elder and it should be done how it was in the good ol’ days. What’s that, you object and want progress? You disrespectful child, I must repeat myself”.

Kindly save your slippery slope fallacies for when another climber dies or is maimed on SD. 

So far we have- you can build an anchor off of a reportedly hollow/disintegrating flake below.  Or from the crux of the previous pitch.  

As well as "I know granite well enough to know there's a bomber anchor to be had"

Any others?

Andy Shoemakerwrote:

Who has arguments against adding a single bolted belay in this case besides “it violates the rules”? (as ratified in the rulebook by the Stone Masters, forever un-amendable and currently proxied by KW since no one seems to be able to find a copy)

I thought climbers who were active in the 70s would have an understanding of the effectiveness of the approach “I’m your elder and it should be done how it was in the good ol’ days. What’s that, you object and want progress? You disrespectful child, I must repeat myself”.

Kindly save your slippery slope fallacies for when another climber dies or is maimed on SD. 

Of course, y'all could just skip all this contentious drama and pose the question to Ron Kauk or Dale Bard... why not start there and see what happens?

Seems to me that a bolt at that belay is reasonable given the circumstances, but then again, it also seems like the route is probably safer now that the previous death flake is gone and the alternative gear anchor has proven to hold a factor 2 fall. 

And not to derail any further, but I was just reading about how many "slippery slope fallacy" claims are not actually fallacies at all, so long there's reasonable evidence or mechanisms to connect the "slips". 

Brandon Rwrote:

Of course, y'all could just skip all this contentious drama and pose the question to Ron Kauk or Dale Bard... why not start there and see what happens?

Read what expat exodus posted an hour before you did.

Brandon Rwrote:

Of course, y'all could just skip all this contentious drama and pose the question to Ron Kauk or Dale Bard... why not start there and see what happens?

Seems to me that a bolt at that belay is reasonable given the circumstances, but then again, it also seems like the route is probably safer now that the previous death flake is gone and the alternative gear anchor has proven to hold a factor 2 fall. 

And not to derail any further, but I was just reading about how many "slippery slope fallacy" claims are not actually fallacies at all, so long there's reasonable evidence or mechanisms to connect the "slips". 

All fair points.

Broke out my old copy of How to Rock Climb! by Mr Long (may have been present at ratification of rules, unverified).  When describing a SRENE anchor, he writes "must be bombproof, able to stop a rogue elephant, without question".  

For those familiar with the route in it's current state, is that a fair description of the available options?

OP in the op mentioned the desire to contact Kauk.  I think most will agree this is the best solution.  Albiet, less entertaining than the current discussion. Well that is unless we can get him all on a zoom call, that would be entertaining

POST LIMIT:

abandon moderation wrote: 

I mean, the fundamental idea of trad climbing is to leave no trace. 

Climbers have generally decided they're going to leave a trace and place bolts. 

Is this an argument for adding a bolt or against?  

It's ok to have dangerous climbing routes. Not everything needs to be sanitized to the lowest common denominator. 

Please see my request regarding slippery slopes .  I don't see anyone currently advocating for/against anything besides adding one bolt to one climb. Is there evidence that adding one bolt in response to the FA's anchor falling off the wall  would result in everything being "sanitized to the lowest common denominator"?

I've only climbed like 25 pitches in the valley so my opinion matters little. Just hoping to enable something other than the circular argument that's already filled 3 pages, largely by folks who will never benefit/suffer should the route get a retro bolt.

THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS WHAT RON THINKS

It's ok to have dangerous climbing routes. Not everything needs to be sanitized to the lowest common denominator. People who don't want to take the risk don't need to, no one is forced to do a sketchy climb. There's tens of thousands of safe routes to be climbed, no one is being denied access to climbing.

It is well to remember this is the site that sanitized the route names of others because they couldn't take the original names.

I hope expat exodus is who I think he is!

Another possibility would be to move the 2nd pitch belay up to enable 3 and 4 to be linked. That would obviously depend on circumstances below. Adding “just one bolt” to a Yosemite classic free climb, from that clean climbing era, which only used one bolt for the FA doubles the bolt count. I see this as being a significant alteration, and one that should be avoided if possible, as a matter of principle.

Consulting Ron and Dale would be the obvious thing to do. Even with their ok, since they haven’t seen the site in question after the incident, I think the evaluation of the remaining anchor options should be made by someone who hasn’t just had a traumatic near death experience.

A lot of posters on this thread are indignant that I’m evoking the “rule” that bolts aren’t to be added to an existing route without the approval of the FA, as if I made the rule up myself. That’s absurd, and only displays an ignorance of climbing history. 

I dunno, ryan…

I could see Klaus Kinski as WB. Too bad he’s already dead. 

Kevin Worrallwrote:

From the OP:

Apparently there is an anchor there that held a factor 2 fall. I’m sure the climbers were freaked out after this incident, and their assessment of the new anchor possibilities was likely influenced by that. They also rapped off that anchor. I doubt the flake is actually “paper thin” after all that.

I haven’t done the route, but I have been up there to photograph Jeff Perrin and Ken Yager climbing it. The pitch below uses small gear, and the crux pitch in the corner up high  calls for bigger stuff, meaning the leader of pitch 3 should have big stuff left on his rack when he reaches the belay. Adding an anchor cam a few moves above the belay in the right facing flake would seem to make the belay even more solid.

This is actually a pretty strong argument and by far the most logical statement of this chaos so far surprisingly.

There’s got to be 10+ “classic” 11c trade routes in Yosemite, each of them with very different character. Astroman, rostrum, gogo, butterballs, voyager, short circuit, west face, choinard Herbert, freestone, etc. I really like how they’ve got their own internal progression hierarchy, everyone knows the rostrum is easier than astroman, and freestone is a characterized by being a mental event and likely the most serious of the grade. A party went up there knowing that (in horrid and historically scary and loose spring conditions,) and pulled a loose rock off the wall. Their anchor caught a factor 2 fall. I don’t really understand what part of that scenario results in bolting the entire route? Or any of it? If i go jump on the BY (I’m sorry) and pull a knob off the wall and take a screamer, I of course would not expect to get bolts placed due to the misfortune. I knew it was a serious route and rolled the dice. There are thousands of other routes within a mile, no one is forced to climb this route, but it’s one of the cooler aspects of climbing that it will be there waiting and unchanged whenever parties are strong enough and ready. 

This place is run by a bunch of whinny bitches maybe they are transvestites?

LOL when you realize that a Yosemite "legend" is a huge twat

Kevin Worrallwrote:

Feminism has obviously convinced you that what was once respected as bravery is now to be denounced as toxic masculinity.

Tanner Jameswrote:

This is actually a pretty strong argument and by far the most logical statement of this chaos so far surprisingly.

There’s got to be 10+ “classic” 11c trade routes in Yosemite, each of them with very different character. Astroman, rostrum, gogo, butterballs, voyager, short circuit, west face, choinard Herbert, freestone, etc. I really like how they’ve got their own internal progression hierarchy, everyone knows the rostrum is easier than astroman, and freestone is a characterized by being a mental event and likely the most serious of the grade. A party went up there knowing that (in horrid and historically scary and loose spring conditions,) and pulled a loose rock off the wall. Their anchor caught a factor 2 fall. I don’t really understand what part of that scenario results in bolting the entire route? Or any of it? If i go jump on the BY (I’m sorry) and pull a knob off the wall and take a screamer, I of course would not expect to get bolts placed due to the misfortune. I knew it was a serious route and rolled the dice. There are thousands of other routes within a mile, no one is forced to climb this route, but it’s one of the cooler aspects of climbing that it will be there waiting and unchanged whenever parties are strong enough and ready. 

I never said to bolt the route. 

What used to be a flake belay in crumbly rock fell off the wall. 

Others have mentioned that the crack there is thin and crumbly. 

Seems to warrant taking a different approach for this one belay stance to preserve how the route was climbed. No one is asking to turn it into a sport climb.

 Not sure why you are trying to fight these strawmen. 

"but it’s one of the cooler aspects of climbing that it will be there waiting and unchanged whenever parties are strong enough and ready."

Are we in the same thread?

Kevin Worrallwrote:

Classic WB!

Speak the truth?

Penalty booth!

The Soul and Spirit of supertopo appears on MP, and BAM!

Fixed that for you.