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Isn't it time Frog joined the modern world? 15-Aug-2009 At 10:07:18 AM james

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On 14/08/2009 Eduardo Slabofvic wrote:
>To answer your question - no there's not much difference, a pumteenth difference
>in load when
>lowering.
>
>In the context of Frog, the issue is to top out to get to a tree involves
>(generally) scrambling over a
>zone of loose dirt and rock to get to a tree to use as an anchor, thus
>creating the opportunity for falling
>rock (a long time problem at Frog), as well as opportunity for ring barking
>of trees - hence the save the
>trees campaign of a decade ago. What is suggested (correct me if I'm
>wrong) is that bolted anchors
>will be placed below the zone of choss.
>
>As the routes at Frog are generally straight up, so traversing the tops
>of routes below the zone of
>choss to get to a common rap station would be the crux of a lot of routes,
>so to overcome that, there
>would need to be somewhere in the vicinity of 400 bolts placed - assuming
>2 bolts per anchor (which
>would need to be replaced periodically, no doubt by chopping and drilling
>for new bolt holes) to create
>enough anchors to service the crag.

a lot of the trees with rap cable are on ledges 1/2 or 3/4 the way up the cliff. Everyone has rapped off these treed ledges for years & at some stage cables were added to try to prevent ringbarking. I guess the trees on ledges are now suffering more & Wendy is advocating bolts next to the cabled-trees ie new anchors in the same place. NB: this isn't a new idea (don't blame wendy, she not the 1st to mention it)

there are a few select places where the top of the cliff is cleaner (eg: Liquid laughter layback) & I'm sure people do walk off there mostly. but overall the top is 90% choss - think low angled dry grass & small trees. you clamber over & stand on microwave-to-fridge size boulders that are often dislodged (& fall off) by people standing on them.

>Where the usual practice has been to top out and walk down the descent
>path

the amazing concept of rapping of routes at Frog is hardly new - its been common practice for at least 20 years...