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General Climbing Discussion

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Retrobolting at Bungonia 27-Jun-2012 At 11:26:05 AM dmcg

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On 22/06/2012 widewetandslippery wrote:
>Fants is liberal minded to bolting but imagine the newspaper headline of
>him beating the retrobolter of jewlbox to death with the perfect hammer

Jewel box probably wouldn’t have come into existence sans bolts without fants beating IT to death with the perfect Bungonia hammer (hold trimming head on one end, crack cleaning/nut setting pick on the other) in the first place. More than one subsequent ascent by others sans hammer resulted in serious ground falls (and subsequent rescues/carry outs) when weighted gear pulled from glass smooth placements high on the first pitch.

I have a homemade perfect Bungonia hammer if anyone wants to borrow it?! – blow the rust and cobwebs off and it still might work okay (unlike its owner).

PS I’m not bagging fants’ use of the hammer at the time, jewel box was a pretty extraordinary ground up, onsight effort (as were just about all his climbs) but it begged the question – did subsequent ascensionists have to carry a hammer to set crucial nuts on his climbs? My memory is pretty shot but I know john did the odd bit of retrobolting on a few of his own Bungonia routes, can’t remember if he ever added a bolt to any part of JB or not.