Retrobolted anchors on Lotta Balls descent route removed.

rgold wrote:Put some bolts next to the trees and the climbing community is perfectly content to trample away and kill the trees, because it ain't about the trees, folks.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with this. Go look around at the base of almost any climb and you'll see all sorts of trampled and damaged vegetation. I'm willing to bet that the wear from rapping off the base of a thick tree is far less damaging than the stress climbers put on the trees at the base of the climb when they hang up their packs on small branches to keep the critters out of their lunch during their ascent. I don't think a few hundred pounds of weight on a foot-thick tree trunk is going to shorten its life by even a day. Compared to forces the tree sees on a constant basis (wind, rain, etc), a rappel station is nothing. Sure, it might scar the bark a little, but how many trees do you think have been bleeding latex from man-made scars their entire life so that you can have fresh rubber on your climbing shoes every few months?

That being said, I'm in favor of bolted rappel anchors. Not only are they more convenient, the trees WILL die at some point. Whether or not it's accelerated by man, death is inevitable. So if it's inevitable that a bolted anchor will be needed at some point anyways, why not now? Even if the bolted anchors weren't needed, chopping them is just plain silly.

EricSchmidt wrote: Cool story.... Way to long though, no one cares what you have to say so edit it down a little bit next time. I dont have the attention span to read a whole book written by you.

Haha.. I do tend to be a little long-winded. Sorry for the rant. :)

Mark Limage wrote:I'm a big fan of trees. There's way, way more aztec sandstone in the spring mountains than trees. What I find horrific is the butchering of trees in the Red Rock.

That is the crap that drives me up the wall. Can't people just try to deal with nature on nature's own terms? Or do we need to eradicate every branch and twig that's in the way?

Here's my complaint about pruning in RR from back in 2010...Please stop cutting the vegetation in Red Rock

One thing that is worse than excessive pruning is adding bolts where they aren't needed. The trees in the Lotta Balls descent gully were fine anchors and they are not going to die anytime soon. We don't need to bolt everything.

I think something needs to be done about the bolt ban. It obviously doesn't work. Maybe there should be some sort of commitee that decides which bolts should and shouldn't be added, as they do in Boulder with the ACE and FHRC. If someone is so bolt happy, do us all a favor and bolt a separate rappel route down Crimson to help alleviate that traffic jam of a route.

Just because a pampered, cultivated tree can sustain ongoing latex (or maple syrup or whatever else) harvest doesn't mean a hard-scrabble conifer barely making it in the desert can withstand ongoing scars, stresses, ropes, or bolts. The tree you are man-handling may already be at the limit of its ability to withstand external stresses.

Just because a tree can withstand heat, drought, and wind, doesn't mean that it can therefore withstand the stress of being yanked, pulled, climbed, or bolted into. The things you do to a tree may be ADDITIVE to the stresses it is already dealing with.

Just because a tree takes root in a sandstone crack doesn't mean they all withstand root compaction. That tree in the rock has a taproot that has snaked down and found a place to spread and acquire nutrients and water. Trees at the base of the rock may in fact have shallower roots that acquire these things closer to the surface because it can't penetrate further down. Compaction is nearly ALWAYS a huge stress on trees in any high-use recreation sites.

Climbing rocks is fun. It is not necessary, it isn't a survival thing, it's just for fun and for a lot of you, apparently, for a huge ego boost. We do enough damage to the environment, one tree or stream or critter at a time just trying to live, to get food, housing, water, etc. When you live in Las Vegas you are a huge drain on the regional environment, because ecologically speaking, Las Vegas should NOT be a center of human population at all. So can you not spare a few trees some additional stress while in the pursuit of entertainment??