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Ben Lomond Bolts Removed 20-Apr-2007 At 4:45:51 PM spicelab

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>On 19/04/2007 kieranl wrote:
Perhaps a bit tough but why ban bolts if you allow
>>other fixed garbage?
>
>I wonder if spicelab would call that a pseudo-pragmatic argument as well?

Actually I agree with Kieran on this one, even though I think we are a bit too eagerly resigned to the fact that climbers WON'T remove old slings and that therefore they are ABSOLUTELY fixed gear. Do climbers have a problem with picking up any of their other garbage?

What bothers me is that climbing is still relatively an infant sport yet we have embraced the bolt like it's the be-all and end-all, as though technology won't bring us another lower impact alternative in the future. And to paraphrase an old Rock editorial - a simple fact which seems to fall on increasingly deaf ears - bolts are PERMANENT.

Two of my favourite such arguments though are: "there's not much point in removing them, now that they're already there" and "you don't have to clip the bolts if you don't want to".

The latter is one of the most pathetic, juvenile arguments I have ever heard in my life.

In fact I feel so strongly about the issue of creeping bolt proliferation and the real agenda behind the individual arguments in each case, that I'm going to write an article and try and get it published in the next Crux.

Of course it will probably be so rambling and boring that the editors will toss it in the round filing cabinet.

Rohan.