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General Climbing Discussion

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Carrot failure @ Muline 24-Nov-2013 At 5:13:52 PM Jim Titt

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On 24/11/2013 nmonteith wrote:
>A lot of this discussion seems to be centered around placing bolts that
>are easy to replace. Can I counter that argument with...
>
>a) Why preference one persons few hours of work in 50 years time (the
>rebolter) over the thousands of climbers who will be using the bolts day
>in day out in the meantime? A ringbolt doesn't spin, allows direct threading
>without leaving bail biners (these are left all over hard routes with FHs
>and make clipping a new quickdraw a pain in the butt - especially if the
>hanger also spins!). If it's well recessed and glue is carefully managed
>it will be less visible than a FH.
>
>All bolts can be replaced with the right tools, technique and time. If
>you place something that last 50+ years this replacement may never need
>to be done again. Those painful few hours of work by one person in 50 years
>really is a very small price to pay for the enjoyment of climbers on the
>route during that time.

That´s what I was alluding to, the expectation that it should be "easy" to replace bolts (as well as cheap naturally enough!). Easy is relative and compared with the total amount of time and effort climbers will spend on a popular route before the bolt requires replacement then replacing bolts is extremely easy but the work normally falls on the few to be enjoyed by the many. I know of two bolt funds who have money waiting to be spent (and didn´t apply for grant aid this year) because they still haven´t installed last years bolts due to lack of man power and another where the cliff-top stakes have been lying there for three years waiting for some keen young climber to actually pick them up because the pensioner who organises them and has installed them for the last 30yrs can´t be assed any more.
Other sports call on more community action from the participants and sport climbing probably needs to find a way to do this in the future, both man-power and financially.