yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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I thought this might be worth reviving.
Yeah, it is pretty standard everywhere; the AAC now recommends it as well, and includes a reasonably coherent "best practices" justification to boot. http://americanalpineclub.org/resources-blog/2016/3/15/5ipkouk0id07cgc3dqks4fljnsgnx6. But as the only procedure, it suffers from the fact that some anchor set-ups might be too small to take a bight of rope---only a single strand will pass through. And then there is the fact that, at least in some cases, rappelling might be preferable.
Interestingly enough, you just expressed fairly clearly in another thread what I feel is one of the main problems with this procedure being taught as "standard" in the climbing courses. You said:
... the result is a climbing population that expects to have the same level of convenience everywhere they go, which means there is popular pressure for more of the same thing. The net effect is that the presence of ever more fixed anchors eventually creates a new population whose consensus favors...more fixed anchors!
Because the methods under debate eventually change the population, the debate can easily disappear as the potential for alternate perspectives disappears. This is one of the ways conservation fails in all areas. The drug addicts, if you will, get to run the show. And of course part of running the show is heaping scorn on those who would try to slow the march of "progress," so any efforts at conservation will always be met with irrelevant ad hominen attacks.
When I first came to live in Balcarce, I knew right away that the bouldering was the best I'd ever seen. For several years, all my wife and I did on the hill behind our houses (called "La Barrosa") was boulder. At that time there were no other climbers in Balcarce and for roped climbing we always went to other areas. Then, after a few years, she got busy working on her masters thesis. She was also was working full time, so she had no freedom to go out climbing. Since I had no one else to climb with, to compliment my solo bouldering, I decided to put up some routes. These routes are absolutely no big deal. They are short (40 to 60 feet long) not very hard (5.8 to easy 5.12) and I put them up entirely for my own amusement. I never expected anyone except me, my wife and maybe a few friends to ever climb them. At any rate, when I bolted I wanted to make the routes "safe" (always a judgement call) but I didn't put bolts where good gear was available. This was not so much an "ethical" decision as it was a practical one. Why hang there hand drilling a 5/16 inch bolt when it was an easy matter for me to place gear? Another thing I did on many routes was put anchors at the top, where rapelling was more apt then lowering. This was for two reasons: (1) on some of the routes the top out involved an interesting and challenging move that (I felt) added to the overall quality of the route; and (2) to me, there is something inherently pleasing about climbing to the top of a wall rather than just climbing up to chains hanging down near the top, clipping in and lowering.
At any rate, after a time people came on their own to climb these routes and a small group of local climbers began to evolve. And some of the visiting climbers were downright pissed. The routes were dangerous or poorly bolted, they said (which was true in some cases if you just used the bolts and didn't place gear). Also, having to top out and rappel from anchors was just all wrong. Because the routes were on private property, if any one was to be hurt or killed climbing (especially if this got media attention) there is a good chance we would not be allowed to climb there any more. So I gave the the go ahead to retro bolt and add bolts wherever they wanted to. I'm not real happy with the result, but I wouldn't go so far as to say I regret having started this. It's still a fun area for me (and others). Though I have no plans to ever place another bolt again.
Recently we spent eight days climbing in City of Rocks and did about 30 routes. Some of them were well bolted face climbs, others were "mixed" routes and some were pure gear routes. If I remember correctly, not a single one of the routes had rings that could be lowered from without untying (lots of chains in the City). In some cases a natural belay had to be established and afterwords easy third class led to rappel chains. In one case a natural belay was followed by an exposed fourth class downclimb. All that adds to the experience, as far as I'm concerned.
I guess a big part of what I'm trying to say is that when the kids learn that the "right" and "safe" way to get down from a route is to pass a loop through the rings and lower without ever untying then by definition any route that is not set up this way is poorly done and unsafe. That's part of my problem with this being taught as a standard procedure in the courses and then seeing all the local routes being re-equippped to fit the procedure.
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