Just Some Ugly Hardware

This is a careless ramble with no real point. Not advice, and doesn't need a reply.

I'm not a frequent poster here, but I do partake in a few forums and post in the "Ugly Hardware Only" thread and enjoy all the creative, whacky, and cheap fixes from decades past. A few days ago I posted about one particular anchor. Out of context it just looks like junk, and borderline vandalism. But it's been sitting with me since.

I'm closing in on seventy bolts replaced just this year. For me, usually it's onus business, thankless work done in the shadows so other people can climb safely without ever knowing the difference. A necessary evil, a test of ego, not something I'd call fun. Just work to be done.

This recent experience was different.

As I do with most replacements, I tracked down the FA for some back story.. The wall had the usual shroud of mystery that passes for local ethic in my area. The wall has probably seen fewer ascents than I have fingers on one hand. But the response wasn't what I'm used to. He was almost surprised people replaced bolts at all, and genuinely grateful someone would bother on a wall that remote. Then he told me his story: early 1980s, ground-up, hand-drilled, crazy runouts on 5.10 terrain, never knowing what was coming on an endless slab. He sent a topo and told me to add bolts wherever I saw fit — times have changed, he said. Which I found hilarious.

Since rapping the wall wasn’t really an option or really even a possibility. I decided to replace it the way it went up: ground up, by hand, from stances. Once on the rock, I was impressed the quality was so much better than what I expected or the norm for the area. The climbing was great, but I was so simply gripped out of my mind that I only managed to replace the four sets of anchors on the way up from stances. The third pitch was the standout: 150 ft of 1980s 5.8 with a single reported piton I never found. I got lucky fifty feet up under a shallow flake a BD 0 was the only thing between me and my belayer. On the raps down, I replaced the four lead bolts (the amount for the entire route).

Full disclosure: I also added three bolts on that last pitch. I think they still keep the character and spirit of the climb and serve more as markers for the rare future ascent than anything else, since I got myself lost and stranded up there, downclimbing 60+ feet of 5.10 back to my one piece of gear.

I tend to sit on the new-age side of route development obsessing over bolt type, placement, location, prioritizing safety over adventure. This one knocked that loose a little. Some of that shit hardware has a story behind it, and it deserves to be told, not just replaced or retroed and forgotten. We're all climbing in the shade of the people who came before us.

This may seem routine for a lot of you but was a refreshing experience for me and a good break from my usual hard sport projecting. Feel free to share if you have a similar story. 

Cheers.

John Bald on the FA sporting his swami circa 1980s. (Bald Collection)

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Not everyone is entitled to their level of certainty.

You are now slightly more entitled to your level of certainty.

Recommended rack: John Bald's ball nuts (Bald Collection)

I'm stoked you left the old anchor to tell its story (or an imagined one for anyone that gets to see it).

Also stoked you were fit enough to climb the thing and remain in control (so it seems).

An Era in climbing history is fading around us. Thanks for keeping one route alive for others to quest for the grail while climbing it (cue coconuts lol).   

Great write-up Jake, definitely something that's been on my mind a lot lately as well. This year I've been shifting more and more to ground-up development. That, in addition to the Snake Dike debacle, some rebolting work I've done on forgotten crags, and my first attempts at developing in a wilderness area, have really pushed me towards exploring my ethical systems in climbing. 

I really appreciate your approach to rebolting here, as well as the manner in which you added the extra bolts. There's a quote from the late Keita Kurakami about this that I've ruminated on a lot this year

"I believe that our society is not something that we leave behind when we venture up a mountain or a wall, routes and culture must be tied together. The rock we climb is a mirror, and in it, we see the silent reflections of dialogues that have taken place between climbers across many decades—and also within ourselves.

Out of all this action and conversation, something greater emerges that is transmitted from generation to generation, forming a kind of collective intelligence, an influence that might still flicker across great spans of time and space, mere fragments of dreams of the billions of lives that come into the world—and leave the world."

Enjoying modern, well-protected routes outdoors is certainly a pleasure in and of itself, but there's definitely something added when you feel like you're tapping into that inter-generational conversation when climbing. Kudos for doing the work and joining the dialogue - rebolting ground up sounds like an unmitigated nightmare btw