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General Climbing Discussion

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Should you put climbs up for others? 3-Apr-2007 At 12:16:05 PM Ronny

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On 3/04/2007 tnd wrote:
>Some national parks allow the bolting of new routes.
>
>And why should all the old hands have had a chance to be first to climb
>something, but not people who come into climbing now? Being first to actually
>lead something (especially ground up onsight, but it still applies to a
>rap-bolted route), is a completely different feeling to climbing someone
>else's route.
>
>Mind you, I do agree that route developers should carefully consider whether
>a potential new line is going to be an eyesore or an irrelevance. It can
>be hard to resist the temptation to bolt something new just for the sake
>of it...

Yep not all national parks don't allow bolting, and not all new routes are in national parks.

The thing about carefully considering bolting lines is that often its pretty young inexperienced climbers doing it. I don't think its necessarily ego, just that having spied an unclimbed line they don't have the maturity to really think through whether its a worthwhile addition or not. This obviously doesn't go for everyone, but I can think of a couple of lines at Moonarie that i bolted 6-7 years ago that if I saw now I probably wouldn't bolt. The lines were fun climbing, and have seen some repeats, but I'm not sure how much they really add to the place, and the bolts are ugly.