Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Crag & Route Beta

Crag & Route Beta

Area	Location	Sub Location	Crag	Links
VIC Arapiles	The Organ Pipes	(General)	(General)	[ Arapiles Guide \| Arapiles Images ]

Topic Date User

Loose anchors on Conifer Crack 30-May-2017 At 11:05:08 PM Dave_S

Message

And we have photos. Click to enlarge.

The rap station is a pair of M10 stainless stud-type expansion bolts with hangers, quicklinks and chains. The left bolt is the loose one.

It's positioned on the right side of the Conifer Crack pipe, lower than where you'd normally set up a trad belay and around right of the arete.

It's pretty much exactly a 30m rap to the Tannin ledge. The rap goes down the side of the pipe, well away from the route, and even with a 70m rope, it'd be very hard to hit a Tannin belayer when throwing it.

The rap anchors in the gully below Tannin have been there quite a bit longer, I think, and are galvanised sleeve anchors bolted directly through chains. They're on the side of the Horn Piece pipe that faces Dirge.

I didn't get a chance to go back up there with a 17mm spanner, but might be able to over Queen's Birthday if they're not already fixed then. As far as I know, no one has tried to tighten them already, and if that's the case then I'd try tightening it before assuming that the nut has seized. Though if the nut had seized, then I'd say the best approach would be to brute-force the nut off (unless the bolt starts spinning freely in the hole, the nut should come off but destroy the threads in the process). That would allow the hanger to be recovered undamaged. Then chop and patch the failed bolt and replace it with a new bolt to the left of it. (Not to the right, as that would require people approaching it while off-belay to reach further around the arete, over a 30m drop, to clip themselves in to the anchor.)