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Fixed draw cuts rope ~> fatality 19-Oct-2012 At 11:49:42 AM SteveC

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I think (hope) the FB "like" is synonymous with "draw attention to", in that if you click on the thumb, it gets flagged on your wall and people who stalk you can then see the link that you've drawn attention to and can also read it. I've been saying for years that, along with the thumbs up sign, they need a thumbs down, a sad face, a laughing face, an angry face an indifferent face a politically interested face etc. to cover all possible reactions that I could have to any link.

As for the fixed draws, I first came across this on roof routes in grotty spanish limestone caves. Fair enough, bolts are in hard to reach places, there are long slings, the routes are horizontal for 20 metres and there is virtually no UV reaching most of them. And only hard climbers are going up there so they can probably tell whether a sling is old and brittle.

In the States, it seemed much more like convenience for the masses on popular routes and warm ups as well as on the hard roof routes. I was mostly worried about UV damage, so I keenly fondled every fixed draw I ever clipped. Only through doing that did I find some razor sharp biners on an 11.something warm up route in Maple canyon! I mean razor sharp like you would lose a finger if you were pumped and grabbed this thing! This route didn't need fixed draws as it was just a steep wall route next to the pipedream cave- not hard to clean. But it was obviously popular, I climbed it several times either as a warm up or because I couldn't send anything in the cave, so I'd argue that the popularity of a route should disqualify it from having fixed draws! Unless the slings are chains and the biners have a tungsten carbide coating.
Reserve this sort of thing for steep routes where 20 metres of back jumping is the only other option. And make it the exception not the rule.