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General Climbing Discussion

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Manufacturing 11-Aug-2004 At 12:43:01 PM Damietta

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Mike makes a good point about the 5,000 (retro-edited, thanks Kent) routes in the Grampians. Could I ask then what is the driver for bolting and chipping these new routes that Robbo speaks of?

On 11/08/2004 robbo wrote:

>rodw. Do you know the amount of hard work and money that goes into such
>an expedition.

Well, I would counter this by saying that if the activity is so expensive it would merit proper scoping and prior inspection before you start sinking metal into the rock - ie prepare each line on it's merits - don't grid bolt because you will invariably bolt something you can't climb and have to resort to chipping. Most of chipped routes in France and Germany end up chipped for this very reason

Following from Kent's question. I think that the issues with chipping can only plausibly be interpreted as ethical/moral/esoteric/subjective etc as they pertain to climbing's collective artifical standards (all valid by the way) and not environmental - not given all the other crap going on with bushwalkers, walking tracks, roads, look-outs etc. By comparison, the environmental impacts of bolting and chipping are minor (with the exception of the noise of a petrol drill) and the rock, for the most part, is not even a living environment - aesthetic impacts are also minimal.