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When does abandoned gear become booty? 18-Jun-2002 At 5:28:41 PM The Blond Gecko

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The only piece of booty I've picked up was a #10 WC Rock that was dropped down the back of a narrow offwidth at the back of Satan's Smokestack at Frog Buttress. I have no problems in taking gear when it is obvious that the owner has "lost" it - that is, got it stuck, or dropped it in a hard-to-reach place (it took me about 30 minutes "fishing" with my nut tool attached to a prusik and about 1.5m of cord to hook this particular piece of gear out). However, I would seriously hesitate in treating a complete belay setup such as the above, or a route full of gear, as "booty" - I might collect it, but I would have serious worries about my karma if I didn't try to find out who it belonged to, or at least leave a message with my phone number. Basically, if it's difficult to remove, it's booty. If it's easy to remove, then there could be any number of reasons why it was left there, many of which would make it morally very questionable to just take it. That's my 2.2 cents.

Tristan

"On climb, belay when ready."