retro bolting- colorado

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Bob D'A

Trad climber
Taos, NM
Jul 24, 2013 - 11:32pm PT
I talked to Chris and it seems that no one had any info on the status of the FA claim or where the line of the route was. No repeats in 25 years and no info from the first ascent party in place like Boulder that seem to be very strange. Seem he/Chris did his work trying to gather info before bolting it.

I think Chris is a good person and doesn't deserve the slander that he is getting on this thread. Get all the facts and then make a judgement. That would be the wise thing to do.


If Mr Byrne does exist and did do the same route I will also thrown in a $100 to any cause he chooses.
goatboy smellz

climber
Nederland-GulfBreeze
Jul 24, 2013 - 11:37pm PT
I think Bolting Bob's inability to answer simple questions of FA's speaks volumes.

Bob,
Tell us your version of the Sport Park?
Tell us your version of Tonnere Tower and what it was like before '92?

fluffy

Trad climber
Jul 25, 2013 - 12:14am PT
if it was done with pitons that were replaced with bolts, that seems like a public service that no one would complain about

wrong

anyway rossiter's still around and I'm sure the FA info he published wasn't just made up like some are implying. doesn't seem like he was even asked??
Bob D'A

Trad climber
Taos, NM
Jul 25, 2013 - 12:40am PT
Ok...the plot thickens...I just talk to Mark Soot who was on the FA of the first pitch with RR and knew and climbed with Thom...seems the pitch in question was established as an aid route as Thom was doing a lot wall climbing at the time. Mark doesn't recall Thom ever climbing that hard at that level of the old route (12c x).


Mark's take on it that Chris did a service to the climbing community by replacing the old bolts and establishing a fine free pitch.

I have contact info for Thom and will try and call him tomorrow sometime. I'm leaving in the AM to go San Francisco to visit my new grandson.

The way it is going doesn't look good for the hanging crew.
steve s

Trad climber
eldo
Jul 25, 2013 - 12:41am PT
Just a little history .....Mission and myself tried freeing this line from the ground up on trad gear in between goes while trying to lead China Doll on gear from the ground WAY back in about 1986 or 1987. This was back in the day when only a hand full of climbers even knew about Dream Canyon. We knew that Kyle Copeland had aided China Doll and we had heard rumors that Thom Byrne had freed this line. While we knew who Thom B. was we never asked him about the route or really questioned the ascent. We just tried to climb it .Same with China Doll. As for the route in question we managed to get up to where you start under clinging and traversing right where we proceeded to be stumped by the lack of gear and the difficult climbing. We reached our high point on the gear that was obviously available at the time and we might have placed 1 piton at our high point to provide a safe way to lower off.
Over the years we never heard of anyone completing this climb except for Thom B.
It's not my place to question the ascent and I have no dog in this fight I am just trying to provide some info and history.
I will add this quote from the late great musician Frank Zappa......"Ultimately who gives a Fuk anyway! " Peace and fuk- nes Steve sangdahl
klk

Trad climber
cali
Jul 25, 2013 - 12:51am PT
If Mr Byrne does exist and did do the same route I will also thrown in a $100 to any cause he chooses.

sweet
goatboy smellz

climber
Nederland-GulfBreeze
Jul 25, 2013 - 07:36am PT
Bob D'A

Trad climber
Taos, NM

Jul 24, 2013 - 04:45pm PT

Dude...your name calling, stupid posts and ethnic slurs are doing nothing for your cause. You are a poser and nothing more.

Oh the irony!

Bob,
Tell us your version of the Sport Park?
Tell us your version of Tonnere Tower and what it was like before '92?


Bob D'A

Trad climber
Taos, NM
Jul 25, 2013 - 09:48am PT
Eric...post the 100's of retrobolted routes in Boulder Canyon then I will give you a little history lesson.


See you in the canyon sometime.


patrick compton

Trad climber
van
Jul 25, 2013 - 10:02am PT
So has the abomination been chopped yet or is this another thread of blow-hard old men jerking each other off?
RyanD

climber
Squamish
Jul 25, 2013 - 11:43am PT
Yeah u guys gonna do this all day again?? Let me know if so & I'll cancel my plans to mow the lawn.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jul 25, 2013 - 12:28pm PT
one good way to suss out the history of a First Ascent is to alter it and see what the reaction to the modifications is...

it seems that re-equipping routes has been a controversial topic in past threads, and that's a good thing (at least it's about climbing). The whole topic goes back to the origin of the aesthetics of style, a topic that became important once it was realized that using technology could get climbers up anything they wanted to go up... style sets the acceptable amount of technology to use, and is a rather arbitrary concept put into practice.

I've done a few FA's in my time, and the they tended to be on the "lighter" side of technology rather then the heavier... mostly owing to the fact that these FAs were ground-up affairs with no (or very little, e.g. seen from other climbs) inspection. Whether or not a new line has some redeeming value is hard to judge until you've been on it and grappled with it... then you might have had the wherewithal to equip it appropriately for a "fifty seven point six five eight star dick wrenching mega-classic" or abandoned it completely with a "meh."

This isn't the same as developing a sport crag, top-down, with the intent to make a convenient climbing area (nothing wrong with that, in principle).

Once you've made it through the ground-up, perhaps the quality of the route is evident, and worthy of actually having enough equipment on it for others to enjoy, we'd go back and put in the gear...

If it is a "statement climb" the FA may not (I haven't made a "statement climb" the statements I could make are not very significant).

Unless you know the history of the FA you're completely in the dark regarding the appropriateness of re-bolting the routes....

In Yosemite Valley and in Tuolumne, a lot of bolts get chopped. Protection bolts don't tend to be added so much as convenience bolts for belay/rappel anchors. There is a whole other debate regarding this genre of retro-bolting, but convenience bolts are frequently chopped.

In areas of development where routes may not be publicized, FA teams will eventually discover and adjudicate routes that may end up on top of each other... the later route's FA team unaware of the work of a previous FA team. Secrecy in developing an area presumes that no one else will have an eye for the area... not always a good assumption, especially over a long time.

I know that retro-bolting at Lover's Leap is contentious, and that some "new" routes are put over old routes. A vigorous set of locals aware of the history of the place will do the hard work of setting the routes back to their original condition. It's hard work and gets the point across.

And while it would be preferable to track down the history of a climb before modifying it, it's not always done...

...but steeping yourself in the history of a climbing location is a good preliminary and preferable to incurring the wrath of locals (past and present) and having a lot of hard work be chopped for lack of knowledge of the area.

In this particular case, it seems, at least some of that was done.

This will be an issue until the history of all the climbs is recorded... that being impossible (as many of the authors are no longer available) the climbs that had been done and lost to history will face "updating," in many cases the climbing community doesn't even know that they had been done previously.

chill

climber
between the flat part and the blue wobbly thing
Jul 25, 2013 - 03:26pm PT
Goat - Whatever the validity of your position, you weakened it when you called Bob a "dumb guido". If he were black would you have gone with "dumb nigger"? I know its just the internet and all, but I always thought (or hoped) that your average Tacoans were above ethnic insults.
ontheedgeandscaredtodeath

Social climber
SLO, Ca
Jul 25, 2013 - 03:51pm PT
It would be interesting to know if any climbers younger than about 40 have gone to the trouble of removing retro bolts and / or convenience bolts.

bhilden

Trad climber
Mountain View, CA
Jul 25, 2013 - 04:17pm PT
It would be interesting to know if any climbers younger than about 40 have gone to the trouble of removing retro bolts and / or convenience bolts.

Convenience bolts are not just a younger generation thing. It seems like every year there is an application to the Eldorado Fixed Hardware Review Committee to add fixed anchors to popular trad routes(1st pitch of Blind Faith and 1st pitch of King's X come to mind) so climbers don't have to do the upper pitches and can just rappel off after doing the 1st pitch.

Surprisingly, at least to me, some of the strongest supporters of adding these fixed anchors are some of the old guard who pioneered hard free climbing in Eldorado. One of them told me their reason for wanting the anchors is that they wore tight shoes and they wanted to get the pitch over and back to the ground because their feet hurt. Sad.
Todd Gordon

Trad climber
Joshua Tree, Cal
Jul 25, 2013 - 04:46pm PT
Everyone knows that fixed anchors are so you can get back to your beer quickly;...that is common knowlege..
caughtinside

Social climber
Oakland, CA
Jul 25, 2013 - 04:54pm PT
That route got done by two guys who post here on the same day last winter and both said it was nothing special.
Alexey

climber
San Jose, CA
Jul 25, 2013 - 05:02pm PT
It's especially funny to see which of the knee jerkers spouted off on MtnProj, without knowing a g@#$%mn thing about the route in question
Good point Elcap. some of them even registered today on MP to announce the vision about the ethics

Edit 15 hours later: I noticed that Kalen Glenn who registered today on MP to condemn retrobolting of the route in question - removed his the only one post.
I mentioned this , as now my above remarks linked to the void
SteveW

Trad climber
The state of confusion
Jul 25, 2013 - 05:19pm PT

Me wonders what Largo and Rick Accomazzo would think about
retrobolting?
Levy

Big Wall climber
So Cal
Jul 25, 2013 - 05:44pm PT
I am gonna go out to Eldo & place 10 or 11 bolts on Perlilous Journey. Since it rarely gets climbed it's Ok for me to retro bolt it as I see fit, right? I'm gonna put in at least 10 of the new 3/8 S.S. bolts & hangers on that thing so more "common folk" can get up it.

Maybe when I go to Tuolomne Meadows next week I'll put some more bolts on some of those runout routes that nobody does these days. You Asked For It is gonna be one of the best sport routes when I get thru having my way with it! F!#@ing cool dude!! do I get to re-name it too?
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jul 25, 2013 - 05:50pm PT
Me wonders what Largo and Rick Accomazzo would think about
retrobolting?


Rick A: http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1617265
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