Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Why isnt 29-Nov-2005 At 1:09:32 PM Ronny

Message

To my mind there's little justification for allowing the first ascentionist's opinion alone to continue to rule over all after the climb is completed. Its relevant, but not determinative. But there is a different justification for maintaining routes in the state they were in on the first ascent.

If you start with the proposition that bolts are generally not removable (at least not without damage, and this is enough to stop most people removing them, as those who don't like bolts generally try to avoid further damage), and assumed a situation in which anyone can place a bolt whenever they like on any route, then eventually every route will be fully bolted. Some will even be over bolted. This is because as time goes on and many different people climb a route there will eventually always be someone who comes along and would like a new bolt in a place where there wasn't one before. In practice this won't occur entirely, but the number of bolts would increase steadily - especially on bold routes.

Now there are a wide variety of climbers around, some who like bold routes, some who don't, some who don't trust trad gear, some who do, some who are stronger, some who are weaker. This means that allowing such a situation (ever increasing bolts) to occur will not cater for everyone's taste. Such a situation would eventually lead to there being no bold routes, or even trad routes.

So if we accept that it is desirable that there should be some variety of routes maintained to suit all tastes (which I don't think anyone can deny) then there must be some limit placed on when bolts are used. Further, any such limit will be artificial - and as there is no central enforcement agency must be easily enforced by the community alone.

One method would be to create some sort of body to make the decisions (like an expanded SCV or something). The problem is that any such body will be enforcing its choices on the rest of the community.

But surely it is best to have bold/trad/sport/mixed routes in a ratio that sort of approximates the ratio of the community's desires to climb those routes. Assuming that the ratio of those desires among people climbing new routes is representative of the desires of the wider climbing community, then it emerges as entirely logical to use the style of the first ascent as generally determinative of the way a route be maintained.

But this reasoning recognises that it is only an arbitrary restriction, and there can be appropriate reasons for departing from it. The summit near 'delaide is a good example. As pretty much the only steep climbing close to town, most people agree that retrobolting some of the routes there is a good idea as there is little utility in maintaining them as they are. But the same could not be said of bold routes at Araps.

Of course the first ascentionist's opinion can be relevant to such an arbitrary limitation - but it is enough to dispose of the argument that it is the only relevant factor, to identify that there must still be some restriction on the placing of bolts once the first ascentionist is deceased.

This reasoning explains the primacy that is given to the style of the fist ascent, and why there can be justifications for departing from that style in particular cases.

Of course there can be much discussion about how such a standard is implemented specifically (witness other threads on chockstone), but they are arguments about the application of the principle - not whether the principle can be justified or not.

I know there is much discussion elsewhere (and I apologise if I've repeated other stuff - but then hey, you chose to read this), but I think this is a logical way to justify what otherwise appears to be a strange form of ancestor worship that is easily dismissed as irrelevant to climbing today. I also know that this doesn't provide any answers to specific routes - but its a framework for argument.

J