[abarro81]

A friend just told me that he'd heard that Tarn was pretty much off-limits right now as there had been some accidents involving problems with the bolts, and the first few bolts of most routes had been removed until they're rebolted.. Does anybody have any knowledge on this? Trying to find out as I'm supposed to be heading there in a few weeks time, but can't find anything on the internet.

[HaeMeS]

http://www.kairn.com/news_-72957.html

Bolt failure on route in the Amphi.

Article says: Après inspection du goujon, il s'est avéré que l'ancrage, placé dans un toit, était non-expansé, comme neuf !
Translation: The bolt wasn't tightened and came out.

As the rock down there is relatively soft, use of normal (Fixe-type) bolts isn't very wise. Best use glue-in bolts. Given some of the routes in Gorge du Tarn are pretty runout or have severely overhanging starts in (sometimes) soft rock, this calls for some rebolting. Article says sector Oasif is to be rebolted - till then, be carefull. Same applies with all other venues with soft/waterlogged rock and goujon type bolts. Be carefull with collonettes and non-glue in bolts as well.

Hopefully the guy who fell will be allright soon.

[RichK]

Hi Alex, we were in Tarn last week, but not for long . All routes 10yrs+ have had the first few bolts removed & no entry tags attached.

[RichK]

.......this accounts for about a 1/3 of the routes...many of the good lines/classix.

Chatted to your pal Mark today about it........

U could try Boffi instead(Gorge du Dourbie). Supposed to be awesome. Shark has been recently.

Alas we didn't get there, partly 'cos we couldn't find the path to the crag, partly cos it was pissing down.

The other way in (Via Ferrata) is closed until mid June 

[HaeMeS]

More info in French here: http://www.grimper.com/News/5360-escalade-interdite-par-arrete-municipal-dans-les-gorges-du-tarn-des-precisions-s-imposent.html

Basically all expansion bolts placed in soft waterlogged rock and or flowstone rock are suspect. Applies to all climbing areas. Nothing new here. Good thing though the local government bans the climbing as this will speed up rebolting. Same thing happened at Seynes several years ago (though that had to do with faulty staple bolts).

It has an interesting note on the end: last year several quickdraws failed because they were placed in a bolt with a maillon rapide allready in place in the bolt. The upper karabiners of the quickdraws failed because of the cantilever action implied by the impact force of a fall. First time I've heard of this type of karabiner failure. Don't use maillons to lower off a route, but leave a karabiner instead...

[abarro81]

Cheers for the info.
Useful knowledge on not clipping into a bolt with a maillon too.. Guess it's better to clip through the maillon instead of the bolt in that situation?

[S Smith]

Has anyone come across any information about when the re-bolting is meant to happen, or when the Gorge will be open again?
 
Am going with a few friends for 3 weeks in June.  Don't think it'll be a massive issue though, Boffi and Jonte both look fantastique!

[ChrisC]

Will be over there next week. I'll post here if i find out anything useful.

[ChrisC]

Just left the tarn.  There's actually quite a lot closed, and they are still in the process of removing bolts.  Crags we'd been climbing at last week that aren't in the local guide, but are in the german mistral one are being stripped also.  It's anything with an old 8mm bolt, and some of the rest that are being closed.

There's still a whole load of routes there obviously with bolts in - we had a good 2 weeks without feeling like we were running out, but the percentage closed is significantly greater than that suggested in the UKC thread. 

[Marky]

Any updates re progress - was thinking of going mid July. 

[The Aaronator]

Has anyone been lately? Have crags/lines started to open up again? Is it as bad as has been suggested?

[The Aaronator]

Has anyone been lately? Have crags/lines started to open up again? Is it as bad as has been suggested?

Bump

Anyone???

[Johnny Brown]

several quickdraws failed because they were placed in a bolt with a maillon rapide allready in place in the bolt. The upper karabiners of the quickdraws failed because of the cantilever action implied by the impact force of a fall.

Whilst we're at it, can anyone explain this more clearly?

[Serpico]

several quickdraws failed because they were placed in a bolt with a maillon rapide allready in place in the bolt. The upper karabiners of the quickdraws failed because of the cantilever action implied by the impact force of a fall.

Whilst we're at it, can anyone explain this more clearly?

Probably not...  with a maillon already in the hanger the krab (on the QD) sits on top of it, there's not enough room in the eye of the hanger for them to sit one in front of the other. Because it's sat on top of the maillon the spine of the krab is at a slight angle from the vertical, when loaded vertically (by a fall) the leverage can snap the krab.
Needs a diagram.

[Serpico]

A diagram:


P1000303 on Flickr

Not the worse case, but you can see how the top krab sits at an angle.

[Serpico]

Actually, here's your worst case scenario with the krab trapped under the nut:


P1000304on Flickr

[reeve]

Has anyone been lately? Have crags/lines started to open up again? Is it as bad as has been suggested?

A friend was there about a week ago, he said that about half the climbing was closed off. I can ask him / point him in the direction of this thread if you want to know specific sectors.

[Johnny Brown]

Thanks for the pics Serpico. Nothing the unretarded couldn't avoid by clipping under the maillon then...

[phil_nev]

Just got back from the tarn a few weeks ago and thought I should add to this forum topic with what I found out while there.

Ok so the story goes, late last year a very strong fenchie was trying an old open project in between Tennessee and L’amphi sectors. The route was bolted with 8mm expansion bolts placed in hollow rock. The poor guy fell on one of the bolts which pulled resulting in a nasty ground fall where he broke both wrists and both ankles. I was told by some locals that he will make a reasonable recovery but never reach his previous climbing ability (he was climbing 8c+/9a prior to the accident... Hi ODH , your still a tool!) due to the extent and severity of the injuries.

What I found out while in the tarn, was that a lot of the crags are actually on private land. In addition, the laws in France state that if someone has an accident on your property you can be liable for damages etc. Now the frenchie in question didn’t sue anyone, but the accident sure did scare the landowners. The knee-jerk reaction was to close the entire area off to climbers. The CAF (Climbing association of France) managed to negotiate the reopening of certain areas and sectors based on a a few conditions. These were:
- All routes bolted with 8mm and 10mm expansion were to closed. The first 3 bolts removed with a no entry tag placed wee the first bolt would have been. These routes would need to be re-equipped before being climbable again
- Routes bolted with 12mm expansions or Glue-ins would be ok
- Continued negations with landowners regarding access to the crags, with a number of alternatives being considered, including a permit/waiver system... Let’s hope this isn’t the case! That said, I guess it’s a better option than the alternative of a complete closure.

Overall this meant a large number of routes were closed. The main sectors that were affected were:
- L-amphi, Naviere, L’oasif, Planete causes, arc-en ciel, calemez vous, dromadiare, gullich (These entire sectors were closed, bar maybe 1-2 routes)
- A few other sectors had closed routes also, but you could still climb there

To give you an idea of how serious they are taking the situation, while climbing at de que fas aqui sector one day, the police arrived and questioned us about what we were doing. Asking us if we had placed the bolts, removed any no entry tags etc. Of course, we hadn’t, and they were on their way.


We first heard about the situation in march/april this year, but by that stage we had booked and paid for flights, accommodation etc and didn’t really know what to do. The info available on the web was limited I contacted a number of people via 8a.nu and other sites to try and gauge what would be open/closed. The info was still fuzzy and I was getting contrasting reports from everyone. In the end , we decided to bite the bullet and try our luck. As you read from the TR, we had a great time and there were plenty of routes open to climb on. That said, by the end of the trip ~5 weeks, we were starting to run out of routes to do, and the situation seemed to be changing week-to-week. Some rebolting had taken place while we were there which was great, but some routes were actually open at the start of our trip and closed by the end.

We climbed at Tennessee, de que fas aqui, shaddocks, le trone, ces beach, la muse, Moulin a huile, club house, holliandis, canyon, grand toit (Pretty much all routes open), as well as a the odd route at one of the predominantly closed crags. We spent the first few days scoping out what was open/closed and had a pretty good idea of where and what we could climb early on. You also have Boffi, Cantobre and the Jonte nearby as a backup all, all of which are amazing!

Hope this helps.