Extreme development tension at my crag - War is about to break. Ideas?

I have been through this in our climbing community. This sort of thing is really a bummer for the entire local climbing community. No one ever wins a "bolt war". The retaliation and smack talk doesn't help as well. Bolts get chopped, bolts get replaced, everyone gets pissed off and no forward progress is made. The internet bantering doesn't help the situation. Everyone needs to cool off for a bit then try to get the various interested parties together for a meeting. Find a neutral party to host, come up with an agenda, and host in an agreed upon location.

What you really need to do is build consensus that the routes are worthy routes and should be allowed to stay. If the consensus is otherwise, then maybe they need to go. Or perhaps specific changes need to made. Any comments/criticisms about the route need to be very specific. For example, a specific comment might be - "new bolt #3 is only five feet from ex. bolt #4 and is encroaching on the adjacent route". Bolts can be chopped and patched and adjustments made if ther are specific complaints.

If the comments are more in the neighborhood of "this route should never have been put up" or "this guy has no business developing routes" then maybe you need a process for establishing new routes. Many climbing communities have created a process to establish a new route. You fill out an application, then you top rope the route and put "Xs" on the proposed bolt locations. Everyone gets a say on whether they like the route and the bolt locations and then the route author decides whether he wants to make adjustments or abandon the route entirely.

You can resolve this issue and create a solution for future route development if you can get everyone together for a meeting that is properly facilitated. Stick to diplomacy. No one wins a bolt war.

If you need any more help/advice, please send me a private message.

john

I have to admit, I do like the wrestling match idea. Boxing is good too. Or maybe it should be a death match - "two fighters go in, only one comes out". Add in a few lions and medieval weapons to make it more interesting.

Kaner wrote:Sweet blog. While I greatly, genuinely appreciate the contributions of route setters and equippers, I feel like your situation could be solved with a 10 step program: Step 1, invite Mike to pub. Step 2, buy him beer. Step 3-7, buy him multiple beers, accept when he reciprocates, intersperse wings and sliders as necessary. Step 8, tell Mike you want to step outside to settle this once and for all. Step 9, once outside, bust out some dank green and resolve differences over the peace pipe. Step 10, wake up the next day, call Mike, go climb together. Dude, extreme tension? War? It's not real life, it's only climbing. major conflict! consequences are grave! problem affects the entire community! private property! does not care! refuses to be brought into the situation! no longer lives! impossible! a guy named Mark! old! new! no one has been interested! disagreed! too close! too chossy! dangerous! reduce! against Mark’s advice! no converging! flipped out! left or right at the roof?!? obviously unethical! wrong! precise specifics! run EVERYTHING! I cannot do it. Well I ran! The truth! pissed off! I did not follow! pissed off! he does not like! them strong. pisses me off! not one! submit to the precise advice! threatening! chop them! retaliation, my friends. strip an entire private! he chops. kill us all! trigger! all out war! completely devoid! decommissioned of all! I refuse to submit! dictatorship! I develop! “free for all”! problem! "screw Mark" stance! chop! war! you dont like! But he feels. it gets chopped.

YES!! Beautiful. True wisdom. I hope the young Red-Flag is listening.

What ever you do,

Don't bring a knife.....

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To a bolt gun fight

Show up at Mark's door with the rest of the community, or as many as you can put together, and explain to him in no uncertain terms that chopping your routes is not welcome and that the crag is not his, it is in fact everyones'. Tell him he doesn't run the show or call the shots for the place in general and that route development is first come first serve. Let him know his routes are awesome and much appreciated. Then leave a fucking six-pack of his favorite beer and leave.

That should work.

I have had this sort of thing play out in the caving community a lot differently. The control freak guy we dealt with was a lot harder to manage. In the end we just gave up. Hope you have better luck.

sometimes when people can't come to terms using reasonable methods, you have to settle differences the old fashion way.

DANCEOFF! if you bust the backflip-into-the-splits action and yell 'bring it bitch!', he'll back down. guaranteed.

You admitted that your routes are TR variations. Unless you're talking, like, Smith Rock-esque levels of squeeze-job permisiblity, then I would say, in my uninformed opinion, that it's a squeeze job.

Full Disclosure: My native emotional stance, as a earth-hugging hippie, is "first do no bolt", or at least, as few bolts as possible. They wound the rock. Not too much. It is rock, after all. But still. If you can get to it on TR, why would you bolt it?

Lyrical poet man is very funny. His advice is best.

MegaGaper2000 wrote:But still. If you can get to it on TR, why would you bolt it?

This is what I don't understand. Why would you TR something you could lead? Devil's Lake climbers?

By that reasoning, every non-overhung sport route with a walkoff shouldn't exist. Am I carrying your point to an absurd extreme or is that what you're advocating?

Austin Baird wrote: This is what I don't understand. Why would you TR something you could lead? Devil's Lake climbers? By that reasoning, every non-overhung sport route with a walkoff shouldn't exist. Am I carrying your point to an absurd extreme or is that what you're advocating?

I guess that is what I'm advocating, sort of, except not as a dogma. I'm not saying 'no bolts.'

If a line is just so awesome that it has to be put up, go for it. If a great trad line would be opened to the masses by a bolt or two - or even a bolt ladder - in the middle of an unprotectable slab, drill away. But it seems like a lot of choss-fests get slapped up just so that somebody can get in a guidebook ("Rodney's chocolate frosted love donut", anyone?).

To be reasonable, it is rock, after all. There's plenty of it, and if I were a rock, a bolt probably wouldn't be that big a deal. But bolts are also forever. Sometimes they make awesome things possible for generations of climbers. But sometimes they are just more human garbage spread over one more square inch of the planet.

All I'm advocating is taking a long hard look at your drill each time and asking ourselves if it's really necessary/going to make the world a better place/going to be something anyone ever climbs/etc.

If not, why not just not?

MegaGaper2000 wrote: If a line is just so awesome that it has to be put up, go for it. If a great trad line would be opened to the masses by a bolt or two - or even a bolt ladder - in the middle of an unprotectable slab, drill away. But it seems like a lot of choss-fests get slapped up just so that somebody can get in a guidebook ("Rodney's chocolate frosted love donut", anyone?). To be reasonable, it is rock, after all. There's plenty of it, and if I were a rock, a bolt probably wouldn't be that big a deal. But bolts are also forever. Sometimes they make awesome things possible for generations of climbers. But sometimes they are just more human garbage spread over one more square inch of the planet. All I'm advocating is taking a long hard look at your drill each time and asking yourself if it's really necessary/going to make the world a better place/going to be something anyone ever climbs/etc. If not, why not just not?

Well-articulated. This sums it up for me too.

Austin Baird wrote: Why would you TR something you could lead?

Because grid bolted cliff lines probably do as much or more to endanger our collective access as any other single factor.

Because "leading" a sport bolted route with no consequences for falling isn't really any different than TRing it...it's all about the moves and staying safe. The idea that "leading" a true sport-bolted route is some improvement of style over TRing ..well, it just doesn't hold water for me.

Of course it's much faster to just walk up and start climbing without having to rig a TR first, and that's probably the only reason I can think of to sport bolt something with easy access to the top.

Will S wrote: Because grid bolted cliff lines probably do as much or more to endanger our collective access as any other single factor. Because "leading" a sport bolted route with no consequences for falling isn't really any different than TRing it...it's all about the moves and staying safe. The idea that "leading" a true sport-bolted route is some improvement of style over TRing ..well, it just doesn't hold water for me. Of course it's much faster to just walk up and start climbing without having to rig a TR first, and that's probably the only reason I can think of to sport bolt something with easy access to the top.

Meh. To each their own, Will. This debate has been had so many times it's not worth having. What it comes down to (to me anyways) is that there are different styles of climbing and different people enjoy them for different reasons. The best we can do is respect their reasons for enjoying their particular style of climbing. You seem to have been around enough that I thought you would have picked that attitude up by now. Instead you disregard sport climbing altogether and then insinuate that sport climbers exist because they're lazy. I disagree; but like I said, it's a fight not worth having.