Perspectives on Bolting

I miss the Taco. Which raises the question. What type of climbing are you doing if you’re eating crag tacos? 

Alex Fletcherwrote:

I’ve heard that nearer to the beginning of “traditional climbing,” when using (hemp) ropes for mountain climbing it was seen as poor form to place any protection on lead and only place protection (early pitons?) from a stance at which you intended to belay up the follower(s).  

"It was seen as..." implicitly envisions some sort of world-wide community that was all in agreement. The beginning of trad climbing in the US was around the mid-1930's, which was when the first trad routes were climbed at Tahquitz. In that era, there just wasn't that much communication.

So I don't think anyone can make a global statement, but focusing on the Sierra Club people who started climbing at Tahquitz in that decade, there definitely was not any ethic like the one you describe. The old Mugelnoos newsletters are all preserved on the SCMA web site, and they're really fun to read. What they describe is basically that people did whatever the felt like with pitons. Sometimes the follower removed them, sometimes they left them in for convenience. They often aided on them. There was no notion of "freeing" a route. You used aid if that was the most convenient way to get up. On routes that a lot of parties were doing, one after another, they would often leave in pitons to save time. IIRC the route Piton Pooper was originally done by placing pitons on rappel, then coming back and climbing the route.

The standard for a belay was a hip belay (no belay devices). I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that most belays (lead and follow) were either from a stance on a ledge or anchored to a tree.  On Fingertip Traverse, one of the newsletters from the 30's says they left some pins in permanently before the traverse "for safety." I don't know for sure, but this seems to imply to me that the norm was not to use pitons for anchors. I think they probably didn't carry very many pitons, and the ones they had were only suitable for very specific sizes of cracks. Therefore there would be many spots where today we'd build a trad anchor, but in those days they just wouldn't be able to. I get the impression that often they would just place one piton near the crux of a pitch.

Devin Hanes wrote:

The Owen-Spalding route on Grand Teton was climbed 1898 it's a 5.4T.

The fact that it's now considered 5.4 doesn't mean that they used anything like modern techniques.

Some links re the history:

https://www.bigwallgear.com/p/climbing-tools-and-techniquesearly

http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/12193930400/Franklin-Spencer-Spalding-and-the-Ascent-of-the-Grand-Teton-in-1898

Re pitons: "Even well into the 1920s, the only pitons depicted in English language literature were the very heavy eye-bolt round spikes similar to those used for trail building, and impractical for lightweight mountaineering. That  would change dramatically in the early 1930s in the United States and Canada, but in the meantime, the improvisation continued."

Devin Hanes wrote:

Right, before pitons they used chockstones and wood or iron pegs with hemp cord, along with natural rock spikes and belays of course. I relate that to modern trad gear, no altering of the rock like pitons or bolts.

That's a chap not scared of a pork pie!

Worth remembering that's sold 5.10 they're buggering about on.

For anyone unfamiliar with Don Whillans he's well worth a google. Many of his and Joe Brown's routes of the 50s-60s are still considered rites of passage today.

Edit: Rites not rights, I'm a muppet.