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General Climbing Discussion

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Dear Simey 15-Jul-2007 At 9:26:46 AM M10iswhereitsat.

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'...When Steve Monks invited me on the trip (along with Jane Wilkinson and Simon Carter), I jumped at the chance, although I only expected to tag along and second Steve to glory. What’s interesting is that we almost never did the free route. After reaching the summit via the aid route and doing the tyrolean back to the mainland we almost went home. In fact Steve and Jane did leave because Steve wasn’t very confident about the free-climbing possibilities. I thought I had better swing back to the summit and abseil down the other sides of the Totem Pole just to make sure we weren’t leaving behind a potential mega-classic. Simon Carter waited for me on the mainland and I’m sure he remembers my whoops of delight when I saw just how climbable it was.

Bolting the line and then climbing it was pretty much a formality as we had the moves sussed after checking it in on abseil. Steve had the honours on the first pitch, while I nabbed the second pitch. I spent a fair bit of time bolting the second pitch and making sure the clips were okay for shorter folk. I remember Steve complaining that I was taking too long and faffing around, but I really wanted to get it right. I could have easily climbed the thing with half the number of bolts (I ended up placing ten), but I always bolt things for the ground-up climber. One of my pet-hates is people creating ridiculously run-out climbs after rap-inspection...'

Dear Simey , or Onsight , I'm gunna have a lash at the Tote this Spring, but would appreciate some beta first ...

... its been some 12 years since the bolts went in , in an obviously highly-metalic-corrosive environment ( even for stainless steel perhaps )

Can you please try to beta-ise the following :

1) What does 12 years of salt water/air do to stainless steel bolts ? ; especially ones that might have micro tears from falls or ' pitting ' from the salt ...

2) What sort of drill did you use ? ; hand , cadmium-nickel ?

3) What diameter are the bolts ? ; in mms.

4) What length are the bolts ? ; hopefully quite long to deal with ' scalloping ' in hard rock .

5) Any brackets required to be taken along for the 2nd pitch ?

6) Did you glue-in the bolts ? ; if so what sort of glue & what does 12 years do to such glue in a salt enviro ...

7) Cheers in advance:-)