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General Climbing Discussion

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Retrobolting at Nowra 22-Jun-2012 At 3:00:02 PM Olbert

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I would be in favour of retro-bolting a small amount of routes but not most of the routes.

Take for example the two routes Vague Flake and Spank the Donkey. I have done both routes and thought both routes were good and both had fewer bolts (possibly wrongly placed as well) than the average Nowra route. Vague Flake had enough bolts to keep it sane and safe enough and I didn't think the bolts were too badly placed (though I could be argued out of that position.)

Spank the Donkey on the other hand was a route which had not enough bolts to make it sane or safe and the extra spice added was in the form of serious injury potential. I remember there being a super dodgy few moves to clip the bolt above the ledge which involved heal hooking on an insecure slick sloper whilst in a horizontal position; in this position if either of the hands or the heel blew you were looking at falling a good few metres straight onto the ledge in a horizontal position. To put this in perspective I seem to remember that a fall from 1~2 metres on a building site was considered lethal.

I feel that Vague Flake is a route that shouldn't have any bolts added, and that Spank the Donkey needs a full retrobolt. I feel there shouldn't be a blanket "No retrobolting" nor should there be a "lets retro-bolt the f--- out of everything". I feel that the people doing the (retro)bolting should bare this in mind.

Post edit:
It seems Spank the Donkey was already discussed and some of my points are repetitive.