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General Climbing Discussion

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Crap Vic bolting policies 4-Sep-2006 At 9:43:07 PM WM

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You can't say the route is badly protected if you don't take enough of a rack. It's a 35m pitch and we had something like 16 or 17 placements, none of which ever popped despite multiple plummets throughout the day (and we could have had several more if we'd liked). The alien in the pod goes right to the back and then expands to fill the pod - there is absolutely no way it is coming out. If you chose to use a smaller cam with the pod right there next to it, well, what do you expect? And I have no idea what you're talking about with dodgy sideways wires either....you must have been seriously under-racked.

Yes the crux bolt is too high - we had a ~1m draw on it. The logic behind that might be to allow 'softies' to pull past the move to check out where the best jug is. And yes the hanger has bent by at least 5mm under all that luvin' from happy slappers, and needs to be replaced - like most other original bolts on the wall. Done any Taipan rebolting yourself lately?

Armchair critics could even argue that *both* existing bolts are less than 100% necessary... but in the real world where people just try to do their best, it's really quite a well equipped mixed route.

I think your point applies to some other routes up there though... eg the gear on Seventh Pillar LHV is baffling - it's trad for 25m, then there's a bolt (<1m from trad gear!), which lets you almost toprope the crux, then there's an 8m runout. Huh? Or there's the 8m runout on high fall factor on quasi-choss at the start of Mr Joshua, when the rest of the route is totally consumer friendly with bomber pro every 3m. Or the similarly icky fall potential clipping the first bolt of the (sport route!) Invisible Fist. Or the ...