[Fiend]

Taken from the significant repeats thread, I think it's worth continuing any discussion here to keep that thread clean, and obviously because UKBers can be trusted to have a useful and non-inflammatory debate about this if it's needed.

From Tom Randall's repeated of Captain Invincible:

1. At the mid-height peg cluster that was tied off - there were 1 x ok peg + 2 total shit peg. One snapped before I'd even got body weight on it so I replaced it like for like. So there is now 1 good, 1 ok, 1 total shit. As soon as someone falls off at crux I suspect the shit one will break.

With replies:

Can I ask the obvious question and probably be shot down in flames should we really be replacing pegs on the grit ? I,d probably go even further and say should they be removed and the route could then be a challenge for the yoof

its quarried (or was drilled in preparation for blasting) so guess its a grey area. if someone wants to remove them and improve the style of the ascent then great but blanket removal seems a bit wanky to me...

When considering if this is quarried grit, the block is at the edge of the quarry and is "mostly" quarried but still natural at the top: http://www.ukclimbing.com/images/dbpage.html?id=198671 - I'm not sure where the peg cluster is but I assume near where the seam meets the right prow, thus well in the quarried section.

Views on this??

Obviously Tommy knows exactly what he's doing so will have considered this well - and this is NOT any sort of criticism of him. But equally I'm sure there are other equally prolific and experience climbers who would have qualms about it??

[abarro81]

Nice one Tom and all, but...
Personally I think pegs are freaking dumb and should die out for free climbing. Pegs on sea cliffs are, in particular, total bullshit.

[Kingy]

It seems to me this boils down to a choice between either conserving a way of doing these quarried grit routes on lead with the peg protection that is in situ (maybe it was left there from an aid ascent back in the mists of time) or allowing them to become realistically non-leadable. Who is going to effectively solo French 8b+ with no weightable pro? What is wrong with the odd peg on quarried grit, as long as they are not new placements?

If its pegs were outlawed then the only future for this route would be on toprope I reckon.

[shurt]

Is this a good place to open the John Dunne Ilkley quary peg debate?!!

The 'quarried rock is fair game' argument seems a bit mental to me now a days in this age of free climbing. There will always be anomalies thought and CI seems like one of them as its had so few repeats. Amazing effort by Tom, maybe someone will reduce/eliminate the pegs in the future. I've no experience of the route so don't know if that just reduces the gear down to the few RPs Tom mentioned....

[dave]

Any chance of a micro cam in place of this replaced peg?

[Fiend]

Shurt: quarried grit has always historically/traditionally been treated differently as regards pegging and aiding, protection pegs, aid bolts, etc. Whether that's right or wrong, the "history/tradition" aspect deserves consideration as that's also one of the lynchpins of traditional ethics.

Dave: that is obviously a key issue. Tri-cams / C3s / Rock & Rollers / Ballnuts can give good old-scar options but maybe not in this case?

[reeve]

I'm not sure about my own opinions on this - there are a lot of grey areas - but I belayed Tom on this so I can maybe answer a couple of questions asked above. Bear in mind that I haven't been on this route so I hope that this is a fair representation of what Tom said (he's away on holiday now though so probably won't be able to contribute himself for a week or so).

Dave: I asked Tom about the possibility of a ballnut or alien, but I think the peg snapped off inside the crack so there is nowhere suitable for these as alternatives. He also said that the crack has a few other snapped pegs inside so this is obviously not the first peg that has snapped here.

Shurt: The pegs are fairly crucial to protect some hard moves before you get to the RPs, after which there is another hard sequence. The one Tom replaced is part of an equalised cluster. I don't think I specifically asked Tom but I got the impression that the remaining pegs weren't amazing enough to be sufficient on their own.

[shurt]

quarried grit has always historically/traditionally been treated differently as regards pegging and aiding, protection pegs, aid bolts, etc. Whether that's right or wrong, the "history/tradition" aspect deserves consideration as that's also one of the lynchpins of traditional ethics.

i agree with that. We've no idea what Millstone would be like, for example, if there had been no aid climbing there. Maybe it'd be the home to many futuristic lines for people with tiny fingers... Of course whats done has been done and there are great routes there. I suppose my point is that that it probably wouldn't happen again in this day and age and thats a good thing.

I think the area of route preservation where protection relys on pegs is quite a strange grey area. Lots of stuff related to this in somewhere like Avon where like for like replacement of pegs does happen. In some cases I'm all for a bolt rather than waiting for a peg to rust away before replacing it - it seems crazy. Not that that would ever happen or be considered on grit!!