Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
|
|
|
Apr 21, 2014 - 10:48pm PT
|
FA gets to call the shots on this one. Totally depends on what he wants to leave behind. Personally if the pin is a critical piece I turn it into a bolt and use the pin on annother FA somewhere...
|
|
drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
|
|
|
Apr 21, 2014 - 11:03pm PT
|
LOL ^^^^^^^^
He was putting up 12R routes when he put up that 5.9.
|
|
rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
|
|
|
Apr 21, 2014 - 11:06pm PT
|
(6) The fixed pins could be removed and bolts placed in less optimal positions than the fixed pins were in.
Greg, that possibility didn't occur to me. Is this a question of there being no limit to human stupidity, or was the region where the pins were placed in some way not suitable for bolts?
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Apr 21, 2014 - 11:33pm PT
|
First Ascents are done for lots of reasons in lots of styles... there aren't any hard and fast rules.
If you are going to leave something to the community, however, you should equip it with the best gear you can at the time you're doing the route. Replacing the pins for bolts would be a good thing.
If you are out having fun and you wouldn't expect anyone else would do your route, how could it matter?
Here's some old hardware we found on a line we thought was an FA... obviously it wasn't up to this point. Higher above, however, it probably was...
can't quite date the pin, but certainly not earlier than the 1970s, and probably not later than the 1980s...
...maybe a good story behind it too, but we'll probably never know.
|
|
Greg Barnes
climber
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 12:15am PT
|
Greg, that possibility didn't occur to me. Is this a question of there being no limit to human stupidity, or was the region where the pins were placed in some way not suitable for bolts? I think it was simple - the pin was super reachy and hard to clip, so if they placed it to the right of the crack it would have made the clip significantly easier. Being a popular route at Joshua Tree, this would likely have led to chopping. So instead they placed it left of the crack, making the clip harder.
I've had discussions with a good number of FA folks on piton replacement with bolts. Some are all for it, some give conditional approval, some say no. The latter tend to be where the original piton was less than stellar, so replacement with a bolt of any type would have made the route a good bit safer (for instance the thin knifeblade on the 5.11d R pitch of Bombs Over Tokyo, one of the boldest leads of the era). Simply replacing the piton with a new one was fine in that situation.
It's always important to take this on a case-by-case basis. Many old piton placements are fairly bomber clean gear placements, and of course should not be replaced with a bolt. Just like a fair number of old bolts next to perfect cracks were not needed at all once cams were invented.
And there is a long history in some areas of not replacing pitons even if the route becomes more dangerous and difficult to protect. Yosemite and Tuolumne are such areas, with a good number of examples of fairly popular routes becoming more runout and difficult to protect. This is only to be expected considering that many of the routes were aid climbs where people just left a lot of iron in the rock, and when freeing the aid line, who wouldn't clip the piton?
|
|
bhilden
Trad climber
Mountain View, CA/Boulder, CO
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 12:17am PT
|
Here are a couple photos of the knifeblade from the Pinnacles:
|
|
clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 12:26am PT
|
untrustworthy piece of metal that is left behind for the safety of the unsuspecting
B.Kay, Seems that the "unsuspecting" should stay in the safety of a gym or hire a guide.
|
|
ruppell
climber
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 12:26am PT
|
I've pulled more than a few old pins by hand. I've never been able to pull an old bolt by hand.
|
|
clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 12:29am PT
|
What route at Pinnacles was the kb from?
|
|
bhilden
Trad climber
Mountain View, CA/Boulder, CO
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 12:39am PT
|
The second to last pitch of Bill's Bad Bolts.
|
|
clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 12:40am PT
|
B. Kay,
You said "unsuspecting". I pulled out two old pins off the North Face of Fairview Dome in 82, they looked suspicious to me, just like a few bolts, blocks and holds have.
One year later from a non expanding splitter? May have been your ears ringing and not the pin when you placed it.
|
|
clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 12:59am PT
|
Cracks expand and contract, sometimes in hours
I am going to use this from now on whenever I can't remove a piece of gear.
Sh#t! The crack contracted!
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 01:06am PT
|
Unless you're talking 304/316 SS then it's entirely dependent on the rock and conditions. Having checked lots of bolts and pins, in sea-level, western Oregon basalt, pitons by and large way out-performed 5-pc., non-stainless bolts for longevity. The caveat being, that was only the case for medium & long Lost Arrows and Bugaboos. All size angles were almost universally bad due to the minimal surface area in contact with the rock; small pins of all types were dubious; about 15% of Knifeblades were bad, 50% need to be reset. But still, in raw numbers, the pins held up way better than the bolts, most of which were corroded, spinning shite. The only exceptions were old, split-shank buttonheads of some really hard alloy which would all still be bullet-proof if it weren't for the fact all the ancient hangers on them have basically rotted.
But, that's in this locale - in other locales, climates, and altitudes your mileage will probably vary considerably. Bottom line for me is if you're going to go to the trouble of placing a bolt, then make it SS.
|
|
rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 01:06am PT
|
I've done several routes on remote unclimbed desert crags in the last year, leaving a few fixed pins. Since these were undoubtedly first ascents and most probably also last ascents, I see no problem. They are left as sort of an anonymous "kilroy was here" statement in the vastness of an uncaring universe. Perhaps a few millenia down the time stream some archaeologist will ponder the significance of the anomalous rust stains.
|
|
clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 01:15am PT
|
oh..... you rather skillfully avoided answering the question again I see
You are gonna laugh, but here it is...I like the way they look.
|
|
bhilden
Trad climber
Mountain View, CA/Boulder, CO
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 01:43am PT
|
Cracks expand and contract, sometimes in hours
Back in the mid 80's Todd Skinner was trying to put up some difficult routes at Devil's Tower that required heinous stemming with only thin seams for pro. He told me that they would place fixed pins on one day and then come back the next day and pluck them out by hand.
|
|
Greg Barnes
climber
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 01:55am PT
|
There are some routes where the cracks expand and contract daily by a large amount. Some Tuolumne examples: the anchor for Black Angel, the anchor on top of the approach pitch of You Asked For It/Swinger/Lechlinski Flake, the first pitch of Just Say No on Drug Dome. Don Reid has a big collection of squished stoppers from Tuolumne (I only have a couple). Grant Hiskes pulled multiple fixed stopper anchors off of Black Angel over the years. You can get gear fully fixed, then come back in the morning when it's cooler and pull the gear no problem. We got a #1 Camalot fully fixed while rebolting You Asked For It (left the first pitch anchor since we wouldn't need it higher, and by the time we rapped it was fixed), then came back in the morning and the cam pulled out with a centimeter to spare - and the cam was squished/deformed.
|
|
tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 06:01am PT
|
very simple. If you expect the climb to be repeted and the gear is critical gear make it the best that you can or give permission for it to be updated. If you are an egotistical prick, leave crap gear and tell everyone (including the women) who comes after you to sac up and be a hero like yourself. These are choices we get to make every day in life. To be an as#@&%e or to be a decent person. Do I hold the door or slam it in someones face. Do I grab the last brownie or offer it to someone else.... we all should have learned this stuff in pre school.
|
|
rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
|
|
|
Apr 22, 2014 - 09:17am PT
|
Even in the presence of the data from Joe Healy, in general the holding power of fixed pitons seems to have a far greater standard deviation then that of bolts. You don't know in either case for sure (assuming you don't have a hammer) how good the piece is, but an SS bolt is more likely to be a better bet in most areas.
I think I'm as allergic to bolts as anyone, having been raised with the Art Gran ethic that "even a single bolt mars a lovely line." But the attitudes towards fixed pitons in the U.S. were forged (the term is used advisedly) at a time when climbers expected, going forward, that the era of fixed pitons was over and everyone would be placing and removing the pitons needed for protection and aid. This expectation, which lay at the heart of Chouinard's development of chromemolly pitons, proved to be short-lived, as the unanticipated damage done by repeated placements and removals became all too obvious.
Clean gear saved the day, but also resurrected the discarded idea that fixed pitons could be a solution to at least some protection problems. But the perspective for fixed pins being a solution was still conditioned by the history of climbers carrying hammers and knowing how to test placements, and attitudes about fixed pitons never really evolved once the hammers disappeared and it became the norm that an accomplished climber might very well never have placed a piton, much less have any basis for judging one.
I naturally feel, as an old climber, that tradition plays an important role in shaping the development of the sport, but sometimes the underpinnings of traditional attitudes change enough to render the logic of those attitudes invalid. I think we are at that point with regard to fixed pitons. With perhaps a few local exceptions such as the ones mentioned by Joe, agreed-upon fixed protection should usually be the best bolt available. There are plenty of potentially acrimonious debates left to be had, the devil being in the very tricky details of "agreed-upon."
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!