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General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Ethics: Placing sport rings to destroy aid climbs 8-Mar-2013 At 6:28:19 PM davidn

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Doug for president.

I suspect the reason people use the word 'ethics' is because there are some occasions where the choice to add or remove bolts from a climb can influence the likelihood of injury or death - but does *NOT* make such a person responsible. It's not an inconsequential concern - in the (recent) case where someone accessed publicly available information on a climb but found the climb differently equipped to what was expected, that person could be understandably aggrieved.

**BUT** the decision to attempt a climb is entirely your own, you have every option to check out the line you are climbing in enough detail to be safe (or not climb it) and all public information is known to be potentially flawed.

So at the end of the day, the vast majority of these discussions are about style, and how climbing trad is better than sport is better than bouldering is better than climbing stairs - even if you're an arthritic 87 year old with no interest in style.

That said, when bouldering you never have to worry about whether some twit removed a bolt from (or added one to) something you want to climb ;)