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Bolting a bridge 27-Jun-2013 At 7:27:05 PM Snacks

Message

On 27/06/2013 Mr.X wrote:
>Hi there,
>
>We live in Victoria (dont want to be to specific here) and am looking
>at the idea of bolting a railway overpass bridge. Its about 15m high with
>bluestone supports.
>Were really just looking for anyone who has had any experience doing something
>like this (guerrilla bolting?) and who might have some pointers of things
>to look out for. Understandably drilling bolts into a railway bridge would
>probably not be looked to happily upon by the authorities but we are thinking
>this project might have some real merit to it if we can pull it off.
>
>Throw us some ideas.

There's a few obvious reasons why this is a bad idea...

1. Permanently "damaging" a long-term 50-100 year piece of infrastructure (though, this could be quite minor depending on the bridge and where you are drilling)
2. Falling object (or potentially a climber that fukcs up) risk to whatever is passing under the bridge (cars / other train line)
3. Stopping / slowing the movement of train vehicles if network control is alerted (either while climbing in the future or during bolting)
4. Create a lot of unnecessary bad publicity for the climbing community and potentially make access to more (in my opinion) worthwhile climbing areas difficult

Seems like the primary risk you have identified is punishment to yourself, which is often genuinely the case with a lot of banned outdoor (natural) climbing areas.

That said...

A significantly less risky alternative is to find a bridge that is not an "overpass" (like in a flood plain) and bolt that.

Less likely to spotted by the absence of traffic below
No falling object risk

But you still cause minor damage to the bridge, which will leave future maintainers scratching their heads in bewilderment.