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Poll: Retrobolting Trad lines? 26-Jul-2014 At 5:39:37 PM hughsut

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It would depend a bit on the individual case.

I would endeavour to find out who did the bolting and what their reasoning was.

You could do nothing and accept that there are less trad climbs/projects to be done on gear, but I don't like this option.

Chopping the bolts is one option but I wouldn't do that in the heat of the moment or without free climbing the route on gear first (hence eliminating the bolts).

The rock would be scarred and look unnatural, that is always a shame.

Sometimes (often) a great natural line gets freed and nothing is documented. There would be dozens of lines around the blue mountains in this category. Someone could be forgiven for putting a bolt at the lip of a roof crack if its purpose was to keep the rope from pushing gear deep into the crack and they believed they were the first to try the route. This would be less of a problem than if a known trad climb/project got completely bolted, in this case there would be more grounds to chop.

Again, I wouldn't chop without discussing it with other climbers from a wide range of backgrounds first.