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Bolting at Piddo 12-May-2011 At 4:34:00 PM Wendy

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Woe is me, feeling terribly misunderstood ...

I'm not saying that everyone should climb grade 18 trad Simey! I'm saying if they can't climb grade 18 sport, which is about the bottom end of what is available, it's better that they learn to climb trad, do some classic grade 8 - 12s, which do exist, even in the Blue Mtns then we create a bunch of scrappy really easy sport routes.

This desire that there should be easy sport routes, as if somehow the world has a right to bolted routes at whatever grade they are climbing is what I am questioning. This may end up sounding like an elistist argument, but I am saying this is also because the nature of rock and climbing is such that easy routes tend to be possible to protect with gear. If someone found an amazing vertical juggy face that had no gear options in it at all and wanted to turn it into a wall of grade 12 sport routes, fine. But I don't think such a thing exists and that we shouldn't go trying to create it just because a cohort of climbers aren't willing to extend themselves to the highly demanding passtime of leading really easy trad or training indoors to get to the point where they can climb those routes which lend themselves to bolting. As i said, a lowangled granite slab could be a natural candidate for easy sport routes, but as such a thing doesn't exist in the blueys, no one is asking for it.

I may be failing abysmally to be empathic, but i do think it is in the nature of the sport to have to push one's boundaries a bit and we have gotten to a point where people really are trying to make something inherently adventurous and demanding risk management into something totally comfortable. I'm not comfortable with that move. It doesn't prevent people participating. It means they have to adjust their perceptions in order to participate.

In order to be not totally elitist here, i also don't think routes that can be safely naturally protected should be bolted just because the person who eyes off the line is a sport climber either and this applies at all grades.