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WBraun
climber
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Oct 27, 2015 - 03:38pm PT
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The anonymous internut nutcase JLP just called Ammon and mucci mediocre clowns.
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Alpamayo
Trad climber
Davis, CA
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Oct 27, 2015 - 04:03pm PT
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701 woot drivel woot!!11!!
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shipoopoi
Big Wall climber
oakland
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Oct 30, 2015 - 10:41am PT
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just thought i'd put in my two cents here. i have done a lot of bolt replacement in the valley, on my own dime...just like erik has. some of my work has been on lurking fear, where there are 3/8" and 1/2" bolts on all the anchors. i also added a free variation with extra bolts on pitch 2. although i did not replace the dowels/rivets on pitches 4 and 7, i approve of their replacement so that free climbers can protect themselves properly on extreme ground. i don't see this as a dumbing down, i see it as modernization.
so, it seems like everybody on here has a pretty strong opinion on erik. personally, i consider erik a friend, and an ally in the bolt replacement department. erik, like myself, has given consideration to the masses of people now on el cap. it is freakin packed up there with the nasal congestion and salathe/freerider clogged with people. so, some extra bolts here and there can help with the congestion. there should be 2 sets of bolts and anchors for going up and down up to heart ledge and up to sickle so parties don't crawl over each other. hudon adding a convenience anchor on the freerider so that belayer and leader have a visual with each other is a typical example of extra bolts that do nothing to dumb down the route, but help with the crowds and contingencies of hard free climbing. sure, i did not need them, but if mark hudon, a hero and contemporary of mine sees fit to retro this, then i back him up.
having just finished the sea of dreams with paul gagner, i can tell you that those anchors suck, and that a young energized team would do a world of good to do some replacement up there.
the expanding anchor especially could use a couple of bolts. but the belay at the end of the to the tooth pitch is a natural belay that should not have bolts added, because, although time consuming, there is a good natural anchor there that could handle a bivy. paul and i added one 3/8" inch bolt on the top of the last A4 pitch because we had to bivy there and there were 4 bad bolts there and we needed something to sleep on.
it seems erik has really taken a lot of criticism from his efforts on wash column, which i do not know much about, and i am not commenting on here. but erik does get a lot of kudos from valley regulars such as myself for his efforts, it is mostly here on supertopo that he is exorcised.
although i am adamant against changing the character of a pitch by retrobolting the leads, there are some routes that need help. when i put up lunar eclipse and bermuda dunes, barbella and i were using cheap zmac rivets, and the terrible dowels that were common then. i hope that all these have been or will be replaced because they suck and barbella and i actually wanted to put in good rivets, but just did not know how back then.
so, just saying there is a lot of grey area here, and that special circumstances abound on certain routes.
my one pet peeve with erik on this thread is that he claims richard jensen added the bolts with alunimun hangers to the anchors on the sea...an action richard vehemently denies. and if richard, my new friend, says he did not add bolts or any holes on the sea during his 5th ascent with mark smith, then i believe him...and i'm not sure where this misunderstanding occured.
kudos for erik communicating on this thread when there is so much animosity toward him and his efforts. i hope erik, and others, will continue to upgrade anchors, and even add anchors to alleviate overcrowding. moderization might seem like a bad thing to some people, but this is not the sixties,and as long as everybody is respecting the first ascent enough to not add any holes on lead(except in the case of a compromised hole, or broken off flake) then we are not actually making the climbing any easier.
ciao, steve schneider
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Vitaliy M.
Mountain climber
San Francisco
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Oct 30, 2015 - 10:56am PT
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ST is very much considered a joke in The Valley.
ST is as diverse as the Valley. You have a lot of trolls and a lot of climbers with a solid resume, such as yourself, Mark.
Nice post by SS. I consider it a big service to replace anchors, or add bolts to an anchor in some cases. Adding bolts to replace rivets on variation for free climbing, makes sense. Adding bolts in the middle of sustained aid...nope - that would be dumbing down the route. Common sense guys...
Let's be happy there are plenty of lines that are suitable for all sorts of climbers.
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the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
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Oct 30, 2015 - 11:38am PT
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There is a range of opinions here on Erik, and I'm sure there's a range of opinions from Valley climbers who don't post here. Many people have expressed support for his efforts, while questioning some of his controversial practices.
It seems most people aren't opposed to adding bolts to anchors (on wall climbs anyway).
But what it seems most people are against and Erik is not as per his posts is:
changing the character of a pitch by retrobolting the leads
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aldude
climber
Monument Manor
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Oct 30, 2015 - 12:01pm PT
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If adding bolts to anchors is considered legit then the A6 grade is not possible...
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mtnyoung
Trad climber
Twain Harte, California
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Oct 30, 2015 - 12:15pm PT
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Out of over 700 posts on this thread, the best words are from the end of Ammon's of Oct 22, 2015.
Here's what "El Cap Pirate" said:
"We just want you to keep true to the hole count."
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Oct 30, 2015 - 02:48pm PT
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Steve, I much appreciate your "grey area" perspective, and I agree that there is such an area. I also appreciate your vote of confidence regarding my honesty.
I don't think that anybody here, myself included, is bagging on ES for bolt-replacement. I think that the issue concerns his quite apparent disregard for the character of (at least some of) the pitches he retro-bolts.
If you consider him a good friend, I take that seriously, because I have a lot of respect for you. My problem with him on this thread is that I have yet to see him even start to acknowledge that ANY of his tactics might be questionable if not downright odious. In general, I think that we don't want to see the character of pitches changed. He seems to refuse to acknowledge that point at all.
When you talk about transforming an aid pitch into a free pitch, and thereby improving drilled placements from, say, rivets to decent bolts, I certainly have a good measure of sympathy for that idea. But that sympathy wouldn't include bolting next to protectable cracks (even if the pro was sketchy).
I guess what I'm wondering regarding such transformations can best be cast this way. Let's say you have a formerly A5 pitch that by its nature is poorly-protected. You replace the few rivets with bolts, and it is still poorly protected. Great. I'm with you so far. But what if you now also say, "But those A5 seams won't take real pro, so let's add bolts beside the seams to 'properly' protect the free-climbing?"
See, to me, now you really are changing the character of the pitch. (I am here using the rhetorical "you" and am not referring to you personally.)
I well remember, for example, some really bold FFAs that Steve Wunsch did in Eldo because he worked moves far above really sketchy, tiny "pro" and refused to drill on what were originally aid routes. So, he stuck with the available "aid" placements and simply free-climbed the routes with "aid" protection, thereby not changing the character of the pitches. And that style (commitment to leaving the character of a pitch alone) has been repeated on many, many FFAs.
Drilling when "convenient" on free ascents of aid routes really does turn previously bold pitches into sport climbs, and, honestly, I don't respect that approach just to get a pitch to go free. I have no problem with "upgrading" any drilled placements to get a pitch to go free, as the placement of the existing drilling does go toward defining the character of the pitch. But it's a whole different thing to radically change the character of a previously bold pitch into a sport climb in the interests of "freeing" it. To me, at least, boldness is much more respectable than FFA.
I think that something like the intuitions I'm trying to express are shared by many/most that are bagging on ES. What's troubling to me in his responses is that he refuses to even ENGAGE in this sort of discussion; he avoids these core issues like they are not real issues at all.
Does this make sense to you? I'm not sure if I've well-expressed "the issues" as they matter to me.
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shipoopoi
Big Wall climber
oakland
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Oct 30, 2015 - 04:50pm PT
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richard, i think we are on the same page. i am against adding holes on pitches for free climbing unless absolutely neccessary, like one bolt i added on excalibur, and one bolt i added
on golden gate, with the permission from alex huber to only drill one bolt. if A6 means having bad anchors that could rip if the leader goes, then i call bs and say, let the belayer live.
but i think we need to see a standard on rivets that i understand among local lore to be either a "carrot" bolt that is a tapered down 5/16" machine head rivet(which i have never placed) put in a 1/4" hole, or a 1/4" split shaft buttonhead with a length of 1 and 1/4" to 1 and 1/2". placing bolts instead of rivets changes the pitch character, and is not cool in my book. i would give license to anybody qualified to fix any of the rusting time bombs up there. when bolts are added to pitches, i think a significant discussion is warrranted, and that acts should be transparent.
by the way, who DID put those stupid alunimun hangers on the sea of dreams. they are so wimpy that the hole has elongated on them due to stresses from hauling.
how do you spell alunimun?
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Oct 30, 2015 - 05:47pm PT
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I'm glad we're on the same page, Steve. And what you've specifically said sounds very reasonable to me.
A6 means having bad anchors that could rip if the leader goes, then i call bs and say, let the belayer live.
You and I both know that A6 doesn't exist. Ridiculous! I'm with you: Let the belayer live.
Regarding aluminum hangers, Mark and I picked up the idea way, way bitd from seeing them sprinkled here and there. Ours, though, were much tougher than the ones we saw here and there, which did badly elongate. Certainly they could never be as tough as good, hardened steel. But we started with 6063 angle stock. The stuff wasn't cheap and was harder to find, but it was supposed to be far tougher than basic aluminum angle or 6061. We placed a number of those at Big Rock way back when, and we observed them for years. Ours were not elongating, even on routes that saw a lot of falls. So, I think that they performed better than the others we saw here and there.
Point is that quite a few people were tying aluminum during the era in which Leeper and SMC were the primary manufactured hangers. At that time SMCs had a known problem with fracturing, and Leepers, while better in that respect, were very thin (damaging carabiners) and also fractured in some cases (Mark and I still have a couple of fractured Leepers, and we sent one to Ed for analysis at one point). So, quite a few people were making up alternatives from aluminum, and that era lasted for quite a lot of years.
Finally, it's actually quite difficult to determine who did what on a given route, even in the early ascents. On the SoD in particular, Mark and I counted about 300 holes, and obviously (being closely watched) we couldn't have possibly drilled even a significant fraction of them. We were the fifth ascent, so three other teams were up there between the FA and us... all respected teams.
Hmmm... various of the FA team members have stated that they drilled very, very little on the route, certainly not hundreds of holes. So, SOMEHOW literally hundreds of holes sprouted up on that route. WHO did all that drilling? There are various theories, but there is not a clear, widely-believed answer.
And this is a case in which you have a VERY small pool of suspects to choose from. LOL
In short, unless somebody flat-out admits to this or that behavior, it's pretty hard to say who did what on any route that has had repeats.
So, long and short is: Who knows? And, really, the subject is irrelevant, because the thread is about ES's tactics that he does admit to. And on those, there is a pretty wide-spread consensus that I wish ES would start to take seriously.
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aldude
climber
Monument Manor
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Oct 30, 2015 - 05:58pm PT
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Beyer,Vidal and maybe even Klaus may disagree.
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gunsmoke
Mountain climber
Clackamas, Oregon
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Oct 30, 2015 - 06:34pm PT
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I've been at a supposed Beyer A6 anchor. Wasn't A6.
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Mark Hudon
Trad climber
On the road.
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Oct 30, 2015 - 07:19pm PT
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Well said, Steve.
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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Oct 31, 2015 - 09:11am PT
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Out of over 700 posts on this thread, the best words are from the end of Ammon's of Oct 22, 2015.
Here's what "El Cap Pirate" said:
"We just want you to keep true to the hole count."
drljefe came up with the best words IMO
Watching Tom bust a gasket crying “ISIS!” and sh!t while Woot Boy keeps barfing rainbows is just too much!!!
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Braunini
Big Wall climber
cupertino
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Oct 31, 2015 - 11:19am PT
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Chuff, chuff, chuff your muff
Loudly down the thread
If you get butthurt
Don't forget the cream!
Chuff, chuff, chuff your muff
Loudly down the thread
Throw those who disagree overboard
And listen to the slander
Chuff, chuff, chuff your muff
Loudly down the thread
Ha ha, tooled ya
I'm a climber too
This is hands down the most egregious crime in this thread
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nature
climber
Boulder, CO
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Oct 31, 2015 - 11:47am PT
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thanks for that, clinker.
I had to find jefe's post just to read the whole thing. Couldn't help but notice Burchy ball cupping Jefe a few posts later. ;-)
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Lurkingtard
climber
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Oct 31, 2015 - 07:24pm PT
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Erik's all like Hey gang Steve Snider said I was cool and do cool things.
But missed the part where Steve condemns adding extra bolts and retro bolts to routes. Two things that Eric has said that he has done.
Erik completely ignored Ammon's post where Ammon said that he f*#ked up a pitch on s Shortest Straw.
Erik should run for president. He acts just like a politician.
Edit. W00T!!!
~~~
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ß Î Ø T Ç H
Boulder climber
ne'er–do–well
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Oct 31, 2015 - 07:49pm PT
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Freezing Forum Topics That Degenerate into Personal ... Approval
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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"Yer little mansy's a hoser..."
TRUE!! Anita and I are LOL'ing together over this one!!
Might have to open Bill Coe's much appreciated gift of '06 Piemonte Barbera, and it's not even Friday night yet.
Bill - what's yer username here? Plaid told me, but I can't remember....
Edit from Anita514: "W00t! W00t!"
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