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Chockstone Forum - Crag & Route Beta

Crag & Route Beta

Area	Location	Sub Location	Crag	Links
VIC Buffalo	The Horn Environs	(General)	The Horn	[ Horn Guide ]

Topic Date User

Bolting at The Horn, Mount Buffalo 6-Feb-2013 At 2:35:15 PM Superstu

Message

On 6/02/2013 anthonycuskelly wrote:
>- Are the bolted cracks protectable with gear? If so, what is your reasoning
>for bolting them? In a 'traditional' area like Buffalo (ie, it's not Nowra),
>I would consider this unethical.

I don't subscribe to this being an 'ethical' debate; ethics are so maleable to one's situation, and its just side-stepping the real underlying issues.

I think there are two problems with the actions here and the defence of them.

The first is this thinking that beginners need bolts. I've been hearing this a lot recently and its fundamentally flawed thinking. Beginners will go and do dangerous and ignorant things on rock whatever the style of protection. Witness the spate of stupid incidents at crags like York-Mezzaluna recently. I've definitely seen more accidents at so-called "sport crags" than trad crags in my 20 years of climbing. The reason is that beginners are still learning the physics of climbing, the logistics of hanging around on ledges, on lead, falling, belaying and so on. If beginners want a soft entry to the sport, follow other people up climbs, or go top roping. When you've been climbing enough and you're itching to try the sharp end, you'll have the enthusiasm to go figure out placing protection. If that's not for you, then probably lead climbing is not for you, because the reality is you are at risk of accidents whether you climb on someone else's bolts or your own placed protection. The only thing you are doing by climbing on bolts is shifting the responsibility of the position of the protection to some stranger - and that person's decisions may or may not be the best for you.

The second issue is far more fundamental and applies to all climbers and their antics. When you are heading off to go play in a landscape with significant natural values, such as the beautiful and unique Mt. Buffalo National Park, you undertake an obligation to go about your business in a way that has minimal impact on that landscape. This isn't some tree hugging hippy crap, it's a reality, because if you treat the place as merely a resource for commercial exploitation or a canvas for stoking your own ego, then you will inevitably destroy the very values that brings you there in the first place.

Grid bolting every shitty little rock or putting a line of closely-spaced hangers up a low angled slab creates wholly unsatisfying experiences and detracts from the mountain adventure we all came for. If you want to dangle off holds in a sanitised environment, stay at the indoor climbing wall, or at least top-rope. Don't degrade the whole place down to your comfort zone and so delude yourself as to what you're out doing.