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The Eyrie, Mt Boyce retrobolted! Badly... 2-Jan-2017 At 5:13:43 PM Rawpowa!

Message

On 2/01/2017 Wendy wrote:

>
>There is a popular call for easy sport routes these days. I think people
>need to chill out about this expectation that the rock will miraculousy
>produce exactly what we want to climb. I really wish geology wouldn't form
>great climbing separated by horrendous reach problems, but it does. I'm
>not going around bolting on holds to overcome this problem. I go find another
>route instead. The Blueys have always been a crap place to be a beginner.
>They are less so these days with the odd place like the Soft Parade, but
>the same principle as my overcoming reachy routes applies. People just
>have to climb something else. The options are either getting better (via
>lots of t/r and seconding), learning trad (which in all honesty is best
>done at Araps), or being restricted to the same few areas. The cause of
>accidents is not a lack of easy bolted climbs. Most of the time it's a
>poor judgement on behalf of the climber. It might help if as a culture,
>we didn't diss toproping as much so people didn't feel they weren't real
>climbers or feel pressured to lead early on. It's fine for people to t/r
>until they can climb high teens where a few more sport routes exist. And
>if they never climb high teens, they can learn to place gear, climb the
>same few routes again and again or keep on toproping. Or go develop easy
>granite slabs into sport crags ... it's the best source of unprotectable
>easy rock in the country.

I totally agree that it's hard to find good easy climbs in the Bluies not because they haven't been bolted but because they don't really exist. Climbs under around 18 lack climbing moves and tend to be ledgy, which is why they are much more suited to trad where part of the appeal is the 'adventurous' style of climbing. I've only been climbing for a few years only leading trad for about 18 months but I was thinking about leading some of the lower grade classics this year (Cave Climb, Toll etc) and part of the appeal is the adventure style which is totally ruined if it is retrobolted. I mainly lead sport in the Bluies and there are so many bolted routes out there that I really don't see the need for more lower grade climbs, it just takes a bit of time and training and you really should be able to lead fun sport routes and the reality is the window for people enjoying a grade 12 sport route is limited to just the start of your climbing 'career'.