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Crag & Route Beta

Area	Location	Sub Location	Crag	Links
All NSW	(General)	(General)	(General)

Topic Date User

Wild Gravity : Barrenjoey 26-Feb-2015 At 9:12:54 AM tnd

Message

On 25/02/2015 martym wrote:
>Come on!!! Anything that can be naturally protected is left that way!
>And half the "sport climbs" are run out...

I'll agree with that. Over a three period 2003-06 I rebolted the entire crag. Pulse of Fools, because it's grade 25, and Cranky (20), because it had hangers home made from angle-iron, got ring bolts. Everything else was pretty well direct replacement stainless carrot for bash-in. In most cases the bashies came out so easily I was able to use the same hole.

I was actually able to slightly reduce the overall number of bolts by reshuffling some routes' bolts to better positions and not replacing some which were close to micro-cam placements (which I guess were not considered useful back in the day). Overall I placed 99 stainless glue-in hex head bolts, including a few new double-bolt top belay stations where vegetation was getting trashed by people setting up top-ropes (not top belays). I also added a couple of new double-ring rappel points.

One previously trad route with marginal protection had been retrobolted (with mild steel dynabolts!) by someone else; I removed those, patched up the holes and left it as it should have been. It's climbable but it's a bit necky. Fair enough in my book.

I must have done something right because I still had people whinging that the first bolts on the thin face routes left of Crack of Dawn still had high first bolts :-) (the new ones are actually a tad lower than the originals, because erosion around the base had effectively raised them). But these routes are test pieces at the grade for an on-sight, and it's easy to climb CoD first to rap down and pre-place draws if desired.

Some of the old carrots were accidents waiting to happen, so I reckon the end result is positive. The crag to me is a good example of mixed climbing.

I discussed (not on the internet!) a lot of what I was doing with others who climbed at BJ a lot and I felt I had good consensus for the approach I took.

Sydney Rockclimbing Club eventually reimbursed me for all material costs. I also received a couple of $20 donations from random people at the crag who saw me at work. That helped with the exorbitant parking fees!