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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jan 20, 2012 - 12:00am PT
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The hypocrisy was in the placing of the bolts not in the removal,
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sac
Trad climber
Sun Coast B.C.
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Jan 20, 2012 - 12:06am PT
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I do not support the route or the establishment but this goes to the point of someone dictating to me what I climb.
Perhaps you don't have to worry about that anymore...
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The Larry
climber
Moab, UT
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Jan 20, 2012 - 12:12am PT
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Damn, and I just bought a double set of quickdraws for that route.
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michaelj
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Jan 20, 2012 - 12:18am PT
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I don't have a dog in this fight, but wouldn't it have been better style to chop ground-up?
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Jan 20, 2012 - 12:28am PT
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This is a great story.
I'm interested Steve, to hear what your thoughts are, beside being angry.
I would have left them. Are the big dogs afraid that people would keep climbing them? And how would that hurt them?
They wouldn't have diminished my new route in any way.
Sounds a bit like the gym. "Dude you used a green hold! I thought you were trying to send the yellow route!"
Or the old bouldering circuit. "Hey man, that crimp is off route."
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JohnnyG
climber
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Jan 20, 2012 - 12:29am PT
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I've always wanted to climb that route...but I guess I don't easily have the option anymore. Anyone else out there like me? You know, there is so much history with that route. I thought it would be cool to check it out.
So, how many folks climbed it in a normal season?
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shipoopoi
Big Wall climber
oakland
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Jan 20, 2012 - 12:48am PT
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survival, i've got a Huge history with that route. four separate expeditions to chalten over a dozen years, never with much luck, but with a lot of expense. i got highest with dave turner on my third expedition. we got to pitch 8. way below the maestri bolt ladders.
i've argued for this route in the mags before, and always against rolo. rolo is a guy i still consider a friend and who i respect the hell out of not for just his exploits, but his attitudes in the mountains. but, we are, unfortunately, at opposite ends of this spectrum.
it's a historic route, even if it was put up in bad style, lots of things were, who are we to judge 40 years later.
there are literally stacks of expeditions lined up to do this route each season. some probably down there right now. and some not very happy with the american cowboys who chopped the route they just came to do. i hope everybody down there can be civil about this.
to use the standards of today on the routes of yesterday just doesn't make much sense to me.
rolo, i hope you are happy. i know this is what you really wanted. ss
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jan 20, 2012 - 12:50am PT
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Umm, there were two involved - Jason Kruk (Canada) and Hayden Kennedy (USA). (OK, Hayden's father was born a Canadian, or Canada/US citizen, IIRC, but whatever.)
We can speculate about the climb, what they did, and the consequences, but facts are helpful.
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Ben Harland
Gym climber
Kenora, ON
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Jan 20, 2012 - 12:51am PT
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Did they chop the compressor itself? Where is it now? If it gets re-bolted, will they haul the original back up there?
Interesting story indeed!
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jan 20, 2012 - 12:54am PT
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Coz man big props for all you have done.
But... While most of us from BITD are doing geritol shooters and looking for the metamucil, great alpinism is a youth's pursuit. I for one am heartened that the bar has been set so high by these young leopards. And I really hope no one is fool enough to go re-bolt it.
Steve can drone a dirge and dance in his dandies for all the good it will do.
His big concern is I believe commercial. All those "climbers" coming from around the world and lined up to get hauled up one route. How much was the guide fee for the Compressor Route? Just a guess but there is probably one or two other climbs around.
Well the summit of Cerro Torre is still there and all you have to be is good enough to earn it.
I for one have always felt that some summits should be earned and not bought. I know a few too many credit card climbers who's greatest ability to accomplish the climbs they went on was their ability to pay the price of admission. That is not alpinism it is commercial climbing.
I know that I am just old and in the way, never did anything worth a damn and should probably keep it to my self but I applaud both their climb up and their clean down.
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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Jan 20, 2012 - 01:05am PT
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Did they chop the compressor itself? Where is it now?
Chessler is gonna put it up on eBay just as soon as he gets a few signatures--Rolo, Bridwell, Hugo Chavez.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jan 20, 2012 - 01:06am PT
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What was reported by Colin Haley on January 17th, 2012, and is apparently on his FaceBook page:
"BIG NEWS: Although Jorge and I unfortunately fluffed this weather window, today we got to watch history being made through a Canon G12 zoom lens at Norwegos: Hayden Kennedy and Jason Kruk made the first fair-means ascent of the SE Ridge of Cerro Torre. Although I'm not 100% sure about the details, I think they took about 13 hours to the summit from a bivy at the shoulder, which is amazingly fast considering the terrain. The speed with which they navigated virgin ground on the upper headwall is certainly testament to Hayden's great skills on rock. Bravo! They might be in the mountains several more days (more good weather coming), but I'm sure we'll hear the details soon!" http://e9climbing.blogspot.com/2012/01/cerro-torre-sans-bolts.html (underlining added)
Perhaps Rolo has additional sources.
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guest
climber
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Jan 20, 2012 - 01:11am PT
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Fantastic climb by Hayden and Jason, and I think it's fair enough to return the route to closer to its natural state. If it's fair to indiscriminately blast bolts in, shouldn't it logically be fair to remove them? My opinion, one of many -- no clear answers. Though well put by Phil: "The imposition was Maestri's not Kruk & Kennedy. Good on them for cleaning up an historic disgrace."
To those so vehemently opposed to chopping the via ferrata, I wonder... I don't give credit to claims such as Steve's: "a whole slew of people are denied this route." What, so people have some inalienable *right* to climb a mountain that they otherwise cannot, by fair means, ascend? I wholeheartedly disagree.
Likewise, the lack of an escalator up the thing denies hikers from reaching the summit. Side note: the "elitist" accusations about Hayden & Jason are absurd; every person reading this is "elitist" if they, as a climber, do not want escalators, elevators, and helicopters to the summits -- I mean, hey, why should mall-walkers be denied a chance to also stand atop Cerro Torre (or: insert name of your favorite technical summit here)? Somewhere along our climbing spectrum lies an accepted use of technology -- sticky rubber, stretchy ropes, bolts when needed -- and nobody who has actually seen the Compressor Route themselves could, in any rational way, try to claim that Maestri's line of bolts comes anywhere close to reasonable. It's bizarre, outlandish. Maestri was a great climber, but his Compressor Route was insane; perhaps he was insane, or just maniacally obsessed with Cerro Torre. To read some of the history of him and CT is fascinating. Bolt ladders beside perfect cracks. 400 bolts on a route that could reasonably use, I dunno, 20? Fewer? Sure, it's still "hard" because it's Cerro Torre. So what. That's meaningless. Riding my bike to the Estes Park post office in winter is hard, with the wind and all. I do know what I'm talking about here -- I've seen the Compressor Route up-close, as I rapped past its never-ending line of bolts after climbing CT a different way in 2007 -- within the spectrum of natural difficulty that exists on CT, only the most self-delusional could consider the Compressor Route anything but a travesty and a rape of the mountain.
We roll our eyes at people getting dragged up Everest with oxygen and Sherpas short-roping them the whole way up. Ahhhh, but when it comes a mountain we actually want to climb, like Cerro Torre, then we consider an equally unfair means of ascent -- like Maestri's abomination -- to be something that should stay? Fine if you want to climb it, I think, and I can understand the "it's there, might as well leave it" sentiment. But to look at it rationally, I think it's also fair to understand the sentiment of removing it. To get so indignant, Steve and others, about a bolt ladder route being removed, so upset that you're fuming and unable to see the other side of the issue, well, I think it's completely irrational.
I, for one, love the idea of a mountain being so steep, so difficult, so imposing from all sides, that there is no easy way to its summit; or even the notion that it is simply too difficult to climb until we are good enough, and so we walk away. It's a very different attitude than even the great Cesare Maestri had on his attempt, but I think it's a valuable attitude nonetheless. Bravo, Hayden and Jason.
--Kelly Cordes (sorry, my name doesn't appear with how I signed up on ST years ago)
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Snorky
Trad climber
Carbondale, CO
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Jan 20, 2012 - 01:18am PT
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The boys made a bold correction. The bolts were a monument to narrow self-interest and unchecked ego. They had no place in wild mountains. To venerate them is to celebrate hybris. Maestri sold his soul. As for their historical value, many more of us will get to witness and contemplate them and their story in a museum than on the headwall of Cerro Torre.
Those who defend the existence of the bolts as some sort of in situ climbing archaeology should remember that these bolts were not placed in the spirit of exploration and adventure, but in a selfish force of ego. Should fixed ropes and discarded oxygen cylinders be left on 8000-meter peaks because they contribute to historical context?
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Jan 20, 2012 - 01:29am PT
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Thanx Sketch, your perspective is a weighty one.
I, for one, love the idea of a mountain being so steep, so difficult, so imposing from all sides, that there is no easy way to its summit; or even the notion that it is simply too difficult to climb until we are good enough, and so we walk away. It's a very different attitude than even the great Cesare Maestri had on his attempt, but I think it's a valuable attitude nonetheless. Bravo, Hayden and Jason.
Since when, as a young developing climber, I heard the whispered tale of what was then called the hardest summit in the world, Cerro Torre was seared into my very being as the ultimate quest for purity and aesthetics in alpinism. Conversely The compressor Route has always been an insult and an abomination to me. Those who have ascended it's historic passage have lost nothing. Those who would claim to have lost the chance probably never really had much of one.
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crunch
Social climber
CO
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Jan 20, 2012 - 01:33am PT
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I, for one, love the idea of a mountain being so steep, so difficult, so imposing from all sides, that there is no easy way to its summit; or even the notion that it is simply too difficult to climb until we are good enough, and so we walk away. It's a very different attitude than even the great Cesare Maestri had on his attempt, but I think it's a valuable attitude nonetheless. Bravo, Hayden and Jason.
Yeah!
Beautifully put.
I can see how there is a precedent set with the bolt route being long-established, popular, historic and how maybe it should be grandfathered in and all. My head figures someone will go back up and re-establish the route. My heart agrees with Kelly.
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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Jan 20, 2012 - 01:35am PT
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Kudos to Kelly for putting his name to his post.
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shipoopoi
Big Wall climber
oakland
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Jan 20, 2012 - 01:36am PT
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kelly/guest, that's some beautiful thoughts you got on this issue. i think all of us are enraptured by this peak. if i got my panties in a bunch over this issue, i can tell you that, at least they are nice pink panties.
kelly, i've met you a bit and totally respect the shite you have done. especially for a freaking welterweight or whatever you were.
so, i'll think about what you are saying, and hope you can see that i might have a point or two also. ss
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Jan 20, 2012 - 01:38am PT
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to use the standards of today on the routes of yesterday just doesn't make much sense to me.
That was kind of my point. Although all seem to agree that the compressor was put up in bogus style, I just don't see how it's existence, or even climbers less-than-you climbing it, takes away from you climbing CT in the most bitchin' style, by the most bitchin' route you want.
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