Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Author

New bolt on Blimp - Bundaleer

chalkischeap

12-May-2018
2:44:21 PM

The bolt on Blimp needs to be removed. It's a classic mid grade climb and the bolt changes the character of the climbing too much. The old piton was not to be trusted and good trad gear can be placed instead.

Some people don't believe in the thin end of the wedge/slippery slope argument but if this bolt is left in, someone will later use it's presence as a precedent to replace the old carrot bolt with a shiny ring bolt. Other trad climbs will be in the firing line, using the Blimp test case.

It's never going to be easy with a mixed protection local ethic. We are talking about a renegade, forbidden activity (bolting) so trying to bring climbers into line is impossible.

The no-bolts style works just fine on UK gritstone, mountain crags, Gogarth etc and the climbing scene is better for it. You can have a psyche-up day on committing trad and a gym-style performance day on sport crags. It gives you two contrasting fun things to do.

I think that it's too late to achieve a bolt-free Rosea. When the going gets tough or inconvenient, the bolts go in - even on trad climbs. It's our local ethic and it's been around for decades.

In any case, the rock is often too compact to be fully trad e.g. Taipan. We are stuck with mixed protection climbing, differences of opinion and a few mis-steps.

I'm sure that the Blimp bolt will be short-lived.

Wendy

12-May-2018
3:45:54 PM

On 11-May-2018 dalai wrote:
>On 11-May-2018 Wendy wrote:
>
>>Damo, the culprits for the large scale bolting at dreamtime and black
>>Ian's are not natimuk climbers!
>
>Nicely ignoring his reference to Arapiles... Which is well stuffed up
>with worthless squeeze jobs - developed mostly by Nati locals who are treating
>the cliff as their personal climbing gym!

So go tell the culprits what you think of the routes. I have. Feel free to complain about the anchors 3m away from several other sets of anchors. I have. Why not raise issues with the people putting highline anchors in next to perfectly natural anchors? I have. The thing is, people only tend to get positive feedback about their activities. How many people dribble about Dreamtime? If you don't like it, you have to pipe up too.

I think it is exaggerating to say it has stuffed up arapiles though. i seem to get a lot of good trad climbing one there regardless.

Wendy

13-May-2018
5:23:55 AM

my G and not G list might cover a fair bit of it. and no. but if im the only person saying anything, since when does anyone listen to me?

you might also want to try muki. i forgot him in my list. Did you have a look at the front of the pharos or the arete right of bygone? Maybe mark wood? maybe rob mudie? Check thcrag, people do put their names to new routes. Initiate discussion of your concerns politely (i know, not really your forte) and try and have an adult conversation. offer to go out and look at the proposed area with them. Discuss options. There's usually more than the 2 extremes.


bigchris

13-May-2018
7:30:53 AM

You've nailed it wendy (or Bolted it?) ;)

Keyboard warriors wouldn't have the guts to confront Muki.

AndreasAachen

4-Dec-2018
7:31:36 AM

This has become a non-issue a few weeks ago ;-)

There are 85 messages in this topic.