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Removing bolts to create trad paradise


sticky

4-May-2007
6:13:14 PM

If it's a retro chain, I'd feel slightly different about it.

But that route is the most popular on the cliff, so it seems strange to list the climbs that have fixed pro without mentioning it in your summary.


nmonteith

4-May-2007
6:26:11 PM

The chain was installed as a rap anchor for Debutante Direct Start (which is on my list!)


Garrath

4-May-2007
7:07:51 PM

Neil, you missed Crank Hard, Crank Fast-Cruising (22). Thats one more bolt.

climbingjac

4-May-2007
7:18:43 PM

On 3/05/2007 nmonteith wrote:
>Someone I know is interested in removing all bolts from a certain multipitch trad venue in the Grampians

So who is this person anyway?

kieranl

4-May-2007
9:56:18 PM

On 4/05/2007 nmonteith wrote:
>According to the guide books there is about 45 bolts at Rosea (if you count
Just some corrections to your research :
>* The One Night Stand 105m 23
>BR belay
>FFA Kieran Loughran, Allen Hope Ian Smith 1984
Also bolt and peg runners on second crux. They're poor but necessary.
>* Royal Blues 120m 14 M5
actually 23 M1, Steve Monks abut a decade ago. Several bolt runners including the remaining aid point. Last aid point will go (big dyno).
>BR belay
>Keith Lockwood, Chris Baxter 1969
>* Pall Bearer 133m 18
>BR
>BR belay
>Geoff Gledhill & Chris Baxter 1970
several BRs. Many other BRS in the vicinity
>
>* Shady Aid 120m 17
>BR
>Chris Dewhirst & Michael Stone 1973
>
Tourist Buttress
Multiple manky fixed pins.
>** It’ll End In Tears 80m 24
>BR x 2
>Kim Carrigan 1986
Actually Keith Egerton, Kieran Loughran 1986. Also a peg runner.

Neil, I thought you were trolling when this thread started but now it seems you weren't. I guess over the years I climbed most of the middle-grade routes at Rosea, including many that probably don't get many repeats and I love the place. I never found the occasional bolt or peg offensive, it was just part of Victorian climbing.
Basically a byproduct of this is that you are proposing to erase two of my climbs without discussing it with me "for the greater good". This makes me very angry.
Simey, I am not going to contend that One Night Stand and It'll End In Tears are irreplaceble to Victorian Climbing because I don't have to.
I'm going to cease this part of the discussion because I am so angry. This proposal makes last years vandalism at Arapiles look benign.

simey

5-May-2007
12:22:56 AM

On 4/05/2007 kieranl wrote:
>This proposal makes last years vandalism at Arapiles look benign.

What incident are you referring to here exactly?

Your anger at this issue surprises me Kieran. It seems as though you are more threatened by the loss of your own routes as opposed to giving this idea some serious consideration.

Although Rosea currently has very few bolts, there is certainly potential for lesser-quality bolted routes to be added to Rosea which could then detract from neighbouring classics, as well as the adventure of climbing there. I would hate to see this happen. I would much rather see my own routes erased if I thought it would help protect the vibe of the place in the future.

I think the time is right for Australian climbers to look at preserving the qualities of particular cliffs with such proposals. It has already happened overseas at places like Pembroke, the Gunks and Yosemite.

Dave C

5-May-2007
12:26:30 AM

Neil
It may seem a nice idea but I have a bad feeling about what may follow. There may be somebody out there who disagrees with you strongly enough to start chopping bolts at other cliffs just to have a go back at you, particularly cliffs where you yourself have placed a lot of the bolts.
In the end I can't see how you can get a clear enough consensus to go through with it anyway, certainly not from posting on here.
DC
PS I have no preference either way on this subject.

climbingjac

5-May-2007
12:59:26 AM

Is the person who proposes to do this chopping going to fess up to who they are?

james

5-May-2007
1:05:08 AM

the idea of a no bolt crag is a good ideal, but IMO you're 30 years too late - Rosea is not the place. The unique mixed protection ethic is very well established in the Grampians, you can't just ignore it. BTW, there are Australian crags that are "no-bolt" - Goanna Point & Cania Gorge in Qld come to mind, & surely there are more in Tasmania (maybe you can help Gerry chop some bolts somewhere).


BigMike

5-May-2007
1:05:47 AM

On 3/05/2007 nmonteith wrote:
>
>Guidebooks will be updated accordingly).
>

Oh good, cos climbers might not know they're going to an area that has recently had its routes altered due to some outburst of puritanical zeal.

Esp insterstate and international climbers. People could perhaps get themselves into trouble?

When are these updated guidebooks going to come out anyways? I merely ask because some guidebooks lately seem to have elastic deadlines ...

rod

5-May-2007
3:08:10 AM

Mike you've got us all wrong - we interstate/internationals know the guidebooks are at best approximate on gear descriptions with sandbags galore (vis "sandstone"); the only reason we get in trouble is because we're soft and crap at trad placements.


JamesMc

5-May-2007
8:08:25 AM

Neil,
If your anonymous friend wants to have a bolt-free crag, then wouldn't it be better to start with a crag that doesn't have any bolts?

Deathmarch Wall comes immediately to mind as it's original developers decided it would be bolt free, and none have been placed since.

Then there's Mt Abrupt, which I think has only one peg, though I could be wrong.

Crawfords Crags, Mt McLeod etc.

Erasing Mt Rosea's climbing history is not on.

JamesMc


Garrath

5-May-2007
8:22:39 AM

Does this mean that we can also turn a predominately sport climbing cliff into a complete sport climbing cliff? eg Van Diemans Land


BigMike

5-May-2007
9:43:30 AM

On 5/05/2007 Garrath wrote:
>Does this mean that we can also turn a predominately sport climbing cliff
>into a complete sport climbing cliff? eg Van Diemans Land
>

Suggest you start a separate forum topic, "Adding bolts to create a sport paradise".

ErikaH

5-May-2007
10:37:53 AM

On 4/05/2007 nmonteith wrote:
>What does Ikara and the Blue Moutnains have to do with Mt Rosea?????
>
>Your argument about a prededent that would spread to other crags has been
>made again and again
>when reversed (ie bolts spreading across previously trad only crags).
>You would be hard pressed to
>name a crag in Australia that doesn't have bolts these days. The whole
>point is to create a 'sanctuary'
>of a bolt free area, preferably BEFORE the sport climbers decide to re-evalute
>the area, or even worse
>the re-bolters decide every pitch needs a rap anchor, and every piton
>needs replacing with a ringbolt.
>Its not about ego, its about trying to set aside an area to be a natural
>climbign area only, befoire its too
>late. Rosea is one of Victorias best cliffs, and we have the opportunity
>now to stop the destruction of
>the area into yet 'another' euro style sport crag. As sport climbers always
>say... "if you don't like it you
>can always go climb somehwhere else"
>

Exactly my thoughts. Great idea Neil!

citationx

5-May-2007
11:01:57 AM

On 5/05/2007 choss unlover wrote:
>On 4/05/2007 nmonteith wrote:

[snip]

>>the area into yet 'another' euro style sport crag. As sport climbers
>always
>>say... "if you don't like it you
>>can always go climb somehwhere else"
>>
>
>Exactly my thoughts. Great idea Neil!
>

jeez. i can see this going around in a circle. think daffy duck and bugs bunny.
"duck season"
"wabbit season"
"duck season"
"wabbit season"

now just place this in the climbing community:
[chop bolt] "trad area, go somewhere else if you don't like it"
[re-place bolts] "sport area, go somewhere else if you don't like it"
[chop bolt] "trad area, go somewhere else if you don't etc etc etc

what has been done is done. make people aware that no more bolts are to be placed at rosea. if needed, chop any more bolts that get placed. it's what youre going to do anyway, it's just that at the moment the idea is to remove any that have been placed in the past, too.
go to some virgin cliff somewhere and start with the "absolutely no bolting" ethics there.
plenty of rock around australia. (i'm sure i'm going to cop flak for that one)

chris

5-May-2007
11:42:45 AM

Isn't this all just a little unnecessary? I would have thought Australian climbers are big enough to accept a mixture of trad, mixed and sport climbs at the same crag.


tmarsh

5-May-2007
12:12:25 PM

Trad climbing is traditional climbing right? So what's the Victorian tradition?

What I find slightly odd about this debate is that we seem to have adopted some other country's version of what 'trad' means. Victoria has, for a very long time, had a unique climbing ethic, being the use of non-fixed gear wherever possible, with the placement of the odd carrot where protection is otherwise inadequate. That ethic *is* our tradition. There is nothing incongruous about Rosea having the odd bolt or two. There is everything incongruous about it having lines of glue-in rings to lower-offs.

No bolts does not equate to trad climbing in this state at least.

Surely there are bigger and better debates to be had about the future of climbing than flogging this old nag again and again and again.

kieranl

5-May-2007
12:25:31 PM

On 5/05/2007 simey wrote:
>Your anger at this issue surprises me Kieran.
>
Why should my anger surprise you Simey? You have no idea of the significance of those climbs to me. Whether they are significant to others matter not a jot to me. I would be surprised if One Night Stand has had a repeat free ascent - the free ascent was probably the second ascent. I'm quite happy if it stays that way. It'll End In Tears (wrongly credited to Kim Carrigan by Neil) was my last new route with Keith Egerton before his death in 1986. We attempted it ground-up before facing a factor-two fall onto a poor belay at the start of the second pitch. It's also a very good climb that needs the bolts fixed not stripped.

>It seems as though you are
>more threatened by the loss of your own routes as opposed to giving this
>idea some serious consideration.
>
Perhaps if I had been approached directly I might have been disposed to giving it more consideration. But perhaps not. If I'm going to reject it on a personal level I'm probably not be able to come over all high-minded.

The quality of the "research", obviously just a list gleaned from scanning and misreading a guidebook, shows a lack of intimacy with the crag and shows how half-baked this whole idea is. This proposal is just an example of people trying to remake a crag into what they would like it to have been. They want to lock the crag into a climbing past that never was and gain kudos for that because they lack the imagination to see any other potential.

I wonder how many people have repeated the harder climbs at Rosea: Bourgeois Blues, Coronary Country for two. Why hasn't anyone finished the job of freeing Royal Blues, a superb looking climb. Has anyone looked at the big overhangs right of Holocaust or even half-seriously looked at Melanoma as a free prospect.

This idea should just go back in its box. Maybe apply it to Dreamtime Wall or Green Gap Pinnacle, still wild areas.

uwhp510

5-May-2007
2:36:35 PM

I don't see why the pro-bolting lobby are so fired up about this. It is pretty clear that you are in the majority (or are maybe just more vocal) and if the relative propensity of people to place and chop bolts stays the same the number of bolts on both predominately sport and trad cliffs will grow over time. Just look at the relative amount of retro bolting versus bolt chopping at pretty much any major cliff. The logical end point point of this situation is that there will be fewer and fewer bolt free routes, for people who like that sort of thing (this is clearly a long way off, but you see what I'm getting at).

Take Booroomba for example. The number of retro bolts (several of which were placed afterwards by the FA) would be something like 20 or 30, whereas I can think of only a couple of bolts on worthwhile routes that were chopped and stayed chopped.

So in short, I can't see the removal of a few bolts from a few routes at ONE cliff setting some kind of mad bolt chopping precedent. In fact it probably would lead to less bolt chopping elsewhere.

And on a related topic; as for the mexicans whinging about sport routes with one or two bits of gear; suck it up homos, the rock and quality of gear placements is the envy of the rest of the country.

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