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The Eyrie, Mt Boyce retrobolted! Badly... 2-Jan-2017 At 3:58:29 PM Wendy

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Evan, I vote for replacing them with glue in fixed hangers or rings. There are already new routes covered in them on that wall anyway and I am well and truly of the school that thinks carrots have done their time and we can move on now, thanks. Replace old fixed gear with modern fixed gear.

I haven't done the Eyrie since the mid 90s, but I led it a lot back then and whilst I didn't climb as well then as I did now, I was as wussy as I am now so I figure it can't have been too bad. If a route is poorly protected, hasn't been getting any traffic in its existing state and can be cleaned up into a worthwhile route, I'm generally in favour of adding bolts unless the first ascentionist objects or it was a significant ground up first ascent. I don't think bolting The Eyrie can be justified under those conditions. Although it sounds like plenty of similar things have already happened in the Blueys. What's the difference with Hocus Pocus for example?

There is a popular call for easy sport routes these days. I think people need to chill out about this expectation that the rock will miraculousy produce exactly what we want to climb. I really wish geology wouldn't form great climbing separated by horrendous reach problems, but it does. I'm not going around bolting on holds to overcome this problem. I go find another route instead. The Blueys have always been a crap place to be a beginner. They are less so these days with the odd place like the Soft Parade, but the same principle as my overcoming reachy routes applies. People just have to climb something else. The options are either getting better (via lots of t/r and seconding), learning trad (which in all honesty is best done at Araps), or being restricted to the same few areas. The cause of accidents is not a lack of easy bolted climbs. Most of the time it's a poor judgement on behalf of the climber. It might help if as a culture, we didn't diss toproping as much so people didn't feel they weren't real climbers or feel pressured to lead early on. It's fine for people to t/r until they can climb high teens where a few more sport routes exist. And if they never climb high teens, they can learn to place gear, climb the same few routes again and again or keep on toproping. Or go develop easy granite slabs into sport crags ... it's the best source of unprotectable easy rock in the country.