[T_B]

Unless the pegs are replaced. This does actually happen.

I’ve placed pegs and I’ve drilled bolts. The two things are very different. A bolt can go anywhere and it’s 100% reliable.

I've also placed pegs and drilled bolts, so I too fully appreciate the difference!

The fact that a bolt can go anywhere while a peg can't holds no water in this debate for me. It matters if it's a new route and you're the FA with that decision to make, but as a repeater you simply encounter what is there - you are not working with what the rock gives you, you're working with what another person has given you.

The fact that a bolt is 100% reliable is an argument for it for me - as jwi and Will Hunt have pointed out above, the idea that you can make a meaningful judgement about the quality of a peg is to quite a large extent illusory.

If there's going to be fixed gear hammered or drilled into routes, it might as well be durable and sound.

If you can rely on the peg bolters to only drill into the original placement then I understand what you’re saying. But I can’t rely on that - see N Yorkshire for trad routes getting fully retroed.

Fixed gear on trad routes whether pegs or threads should always be treated suspiciously. In the same way that every wire placement isn’t a bomber rock 7. I don’t agree that fixed gear has to be “durable and sound”. It might be psychological or something to aim for! Dodgy fixed gear is just part of trad climbing to me. Barbarossa is now a F7b as far as I’m concerned.

[spidermonkey09]

Are there pegbolts on Yorks lime then? I thought sport and trad were coexisting quite happily tbh.

Also Barbarossa does not sound like a 7b from comments on ukc, are you just willy waving or are you being serious?

[T_B]

Sorry - edited my post.

Sport and trad coexisting quite happily?

Obvs a lot of people think it’s OK that Cave Route Righthand, one of the top 10 single pitch E6s in the UK was retroed rather than becoming one of the top 10 E7 single pitches in the UK. I don’t. That’s just one example.

[andy moles]

Barbarossa is now a F7b as far as I’m concerned.

Fine by me, I've got limited use for British trad grades when it's at or above my limit anyway. So long as the guidebook makes it clear that the bolting is a bit spaced 

[T_B]

Also Barbarossa does not sound like a 7b from comments on ukc, are you just willy waving or are you being serious?

The nature of that route was a bold, bouldery crux wall followed by an enjoyable but straightforward E3. The wall bit is now bolt protected. You’re not gonna deck out. Take the E6 if you like!

[spidermonkey09]

Sorry - edited my post.

Sport and trad coexisting quite happily?

Obvs a lot of people think it’s OK that Cave Route Righthand, one of the top 10 single pitch E6s in the UK was retroed rather than becoming one of the top 10 E7 single pitches in the UK. I don’t. That’s just one example.

Yeah, fair enough. I have absolutely no problem with Cave Right becoming fully bolted. But it largely happened before I moved up here so if there was drama I missed it. I was always under the impression it relied on loads of fixed rusty shit anyway (a lot of which you can still see) and so was largely a clip up anyway, much like Yosemite Wall at Malham went on about 25 pegs. I'm sure you're about to educate me! 

I haven't done Barbarossa so am fully going on those comments, some of which sound like pretty full on trad experiences. It's a bit facetious but clipping one bolt does not make a sport route I don't think. But kind of irrelevant.

[Neil F]

As usual in the UK we are conflating the issue of fixed gear with trad climbing when the real erosion to trad ethics (which I presume is the primary concern here) is taking place on routes with no fixed gear. It seems odd to me that people are so concerned about a handful of routes being resto-modded whilst on-sight trad climbing seems to be dying on it’s arse. I’ve seen enough films of high end headpoints to know its not guaranteed outcome climbing but I’d still say the skills and experience of sprinting up a pre-practised route with known and often tested gear, is closer to sport climbing than setting off on a pure on-sight. Yet, we unquestionably accept the former as pure trad and the latter as a unacceptable if it involves fixed gear that’s been replaced. Of course people still on-sight Right Wall, the Main Cliff E5s, stuff in Pembroke etc, (and to that list we can now add Horrorshow and the routes at Criag yr Adar) but there are loads of E5 in Wales that don’t get done. If we strip the “bolts” from Horrorshow and Craig yr Adar they will go back on this list; if that happens trad climbing really been preserved/improved?

I know Steve McClure and Caff have been pushing the on-sight bar but very few climbers I know or follow seem to, even those that do trad. For an example of how things are take a look at UKC logbook for Merionydd. 25 odd ascents in 2 years for this E7 but not a single one for the longer standing 3 star E4 it bisects (with a peg!). This isn’t a slight on anyone who’s done it (I fully intend to have a look myself once I’m fit enough to walk in!) , just that when we get all concerned about the demise of trad climbing it is from the weirdly myopic perspective of fixed gear.

So yeah, go out and strip routes of all fixed gear but I'm not sure if that leaves UK trad in a better place if people then walk past it in favour of a quick headpoint around the corner. Applaud someone for removing the bolt from Barbarossa but don’t be surprised when it reverts to sea grass and no one has at for another 10 years.

To be clear, I'm not saying anyone has to go and on-sight anything just that I bristle slightly when trad climbing is defined by headpointing only.

Thank you Teaboy!

The widespread adoption of pre-practised leads of trad routes which would have been routinely climbed on sight 20+ years ago, is the biggest change (some would say threat) to UK traditional climbing in recent years.

I wonder how many of those getting so exercised about a genuine attempt to properly resolve the problem of rotten fixed gear (particularly on sea cliffs) - albeit an attempt which has arguably gone too far, without the checks and balances of proper, informed debate - regularly indulge in this counterintuitive practice themselves (yet still regard themselves as traditional climbers)?

I speak as someone who has led Citadel in its original form; Barbarossa in its original form; 15 men... in its current form (all on sight) and followed Citadel in its current form (amongst countless other examples).

Neil

[petejh]

I’m arguing for trending towards removing pegs from British trad climbing altogether. If a peg can be backed up with natural pro then it’s unnecessary anyway so get rid. If the peg can’t be backed up then it leads to this dilemma of whether to replace it with a bolt to ‘preserve’ the route, which should never be acceptable IMO. So get rid, and take the route back to its original state. And update the grade to suit.

I've always been around 7-out-of-10 in favour of Ali's view on pegs. Placing pegs is the root of the problem, the problem is trying to work out what to do with what's been left behind by the short-sighted actions of first ascenionists. Imo pegs should never have been placed as leader protection, especially from the 80s on. Perhaps they really didn't know better about the long term corrosion in the 50s/60s/70. But by the 80s they must have known, especially on coastal climbs. Who really thought it would be a good idea to hammer non corrosion-resistant steel spikes into rock climbs and leave them there forever to rot? 

Getting rid of all pegs without replacing any of them is a step too far imo. That level of ideological purity could result in erasing hundreds of great trad routes by making them so bold as to be de-facto unclimbable for 99.5% of climbers. For what? An ideologically pure vision that doesn't allow for pieces of long-lasting bomber fixed gear to exist on rock climbs where previously there was corroded fixed gear? I thought teaboy's point was spot on - trad isn't defined solely by a lack of fixed gear (although it is an important consideration).

The logical solution seems to be a mixture of removing the large majority of pegs and not replacing where it makes sense not to, while some edge cases retain minimal bomber fixed gear where the quality at a particular grade seems to justify it. In those cases it makes sense to bend ethical guidelines so pegs can get replaced with long-lasting stainless or titanium bolts. There'll always be grey areas and not everyone will be in total agreement. But then I'm probably naïve and believe people can be sensible and balanced and make good judgement calls.

This is what’s been attempted in N.Wales. The bolting is getting deserved flack because it started from a dodgy premise that isn’t transparent to other climbers outside a relatively tiny circle of knowledge. Pretending the peg replacements aren’t bolts takes people for fools and denies people a chance to have an informed opinion on the matter. There's also been some over-doing it on routes that a lot of people think don't benefit from the bolts.

[northern yob]

Just to clarify at no point have I argued to remove anything other than unwanted bolts.

I’m saying we shouldn’t replace fixed gear. The time it takes for it all to disappear should act as a reasonable cushion, ripping it all out now would be a cluster fuck.

I understand the headpointing argument, but I don’t believe swapping some pegs for some bolts on some routes is gonna change the fact that headpointing is quite popular.
The ultimate prize and the best style possible will always be onsight with no fixed gear! It will always trump an onsight with some bolts/fixed gear, so if it’s style that’s important to people I’d say that’s what people should be aspiring to.

[Fiend]

Are there pegbolts on Yorks lime then? I thought sport and trad were coexisting quite happily tbh.

I actually burst out laughing at that!! Yorkshire lime is probably the flagship example of mass retro-bolting.

[Fiend]

As usual in the UK we are conflating the issue of fixed gear with trad climbing when the real erosion to trad ethics (which I presume is the primary concern here) is taking place on routes with no fixed gear. It seems odd to me that people are so concerned about a handful of routes being resto-modded whilst on-sight trad climbing seems to be dying on it’s arse. I’ve seen enough films of high end headpoints to know its not guaranteed outcome climbing but I’d still say the skills and experience of sprinting up a pre-practised route with known and often tested gear, is closer to sport climbing than setting off on a pure on-sight. Yet, we unquestionably accept the former as pure trad and the latter as a unacceptable if it involves fixed gear that’s been replaced. Of course people still on-sight Right Wall, the Main Cliff E5s, stuff in Pembroke etc, (and to that list we can now add Horrorshow and the routes at Criag yr Adar) but there are loads of E5 in Wales that don’t get done. If we strip the “bolts” from Horrorshow and Craig yr Adar they will go back on this list; if that happens trad climbing really been preserved/improved?

I know Steve McClure and Caff have been pushing the on-sight bar but very few climbers I know or follow seem to, even those that do trad. For an example of how things are take a look at UKC logbook for Merionydd. 25 odd ascents in 2 years for this E7 but not a single one for the longer standing 3 star E4 it bisects (with a peg!). This isn’t a slight on anyone who’s done it (I fully intend to have a look myself once I’m fit enough to walk in!) , just that when we get all concerned about the demise of trad climbing it is from the weirdly myopic perspective of fixed gear.

So yeah, go out and strip routes of all fixed gear but I'm not sure if that leaves UK trad in a better place if people then walk past it in favour of a quick headpoint around the corner. Applaud someone for removing the bolt from Barbarossa but don’t be surprised when it reverts to sea grass and no one has at for another 10 years.

To be clear, I'm not saying anyone has to go and on-sight anything just that I bristle slightly when trad climbing is defined by headpointing only.

Good post but where the hell were you when I was arguing this all the time on UKC and getting slagged off all the time for having that sort of stance??!!

[shark]

We will have to disagree on that one Simon. What's your thoughts on the bolting of routes up the river at Central that no one seems to have mentioned?

Fair dos

Mixed feelings. The crag is so inherently loose it feels like it should be all bolted apart from one or two classics and I don’t think Knuckle Knocker fits into that category. Not familiar enough with the crag to know how other routes have been affected - Wight Fright?

[andy moles]

I've always been around 7-out-of-10 in favour of Ali's view on pegs. Placing pegs is the root of the problem, the problem is trying to work out what to do with what's been left behind by the short-sighted actions of first ascenionists. Imo pegs should never have been placed as leader protection, especially from the 80s on. Perhaps they really didn't know better about the long term corrosion in the 50s/60s/70. But by the 80s they must have known, especially on coastal climbs. Who really thought it would be a good idea to hammer non corrosion-resistant steel spikes into rock climbs and leave them there forever to rot? 

Getting rid of all pegs without replacing any of them is a step too far imo. That level of ideological purity could result in erasing hundreds of great trad routes by making them so bold as to be de-facto unclimbable for 99.5% of climbers. For what? An ideologically pure vision that doesn't allow for pieces of long-lasting bomber fixed gear to exist on rock climbs where previously there was corroded fixed gear? I thought teaboy's point was spot on - trad isn't defined solely by a lack of fixed gear (although it is an important consideration).

The logical solution seems to be a mixture of removing the large majority of pegs and not replacing where it makes sense not to, while some edge cases retain minimal bomber fixed gear where the quality at a particular grade seems to justify it. In those cases it makes sense to bend ethical guidelines so pegs can get replaced with long-lasting stainless or titanium bolts. There'll always be grey areas and not everyone will be in total agreement. But then I'm probably naïve and believe people can be sensible and balanced and make good judgement calls.

This is what’s been attempted in N.Wales. The bolting is getting deserved flack because it started from a dodgy premise that isn’t transparent to other climbers outside a relatively tiny circle of knowledge. Pretending the peg replacements aren’t bolts takes people for fools and denies people a chance to have an informed opinion on the matter. There's also been some over-doing it on routes that a lot of people think don't benefit from the bolts.

This is a pretty accurate summary of my view as well. With the one caveat, as argued previously, that I think there's something to be said for the low visual impact of the 'eco pegs' (though obviously no one should be under any illusion that they are actually bolts).

As far as North Wales goes, the placing of new standard pegs, which has also been happening, is a more retrograde step than the bolts IMO.

I would also agree with Teaboy's observation that British trad has been changed far more by style of approach than it has by the fixed gear situation, which has always been a bit of a mess.

Personally I don't care - people can climb however they want, and if that's not in the most committing style that's fine. As long as everyone's honest about what they're doing, the idea that people 'should' be doing it in a particular way is absurd. But it's relevant to the fixed gear debate because if you care about 'Traditional' climbing, it's worth asking what your ideal version of it preserves and for whom.

[spidermonkey09]

Are there pegbolts on Yorks lime then? I thought sport and trad were coexisting quite happily tbh.

I actually burst out laughing at that!! Yorkshire lime is probably the flagship example of mass retro-bolting.

Where though ? What bolting crimes have been committed that are so heinous? I know about the Attermire escarpment stuff that happened around lockdown, cave route right as covered above and the Gresh deja vu clusterfuck.

Yew Cogar has some very good E5s right next to popular sport routes. 95% of Kilnseys trad routes remain unbolted, even Face Value. Malham trad is sacrosanct. Gordale trad untouched away from cave route right. Gigg south upper tier has no bolts at all. Where has been bolted that shouldn't have been? This is a genuine question not a piss take!

[spidermonkey09]

Also I agree with Pete and Andy. Think there's a lot to be said for the current use of pegbolts in the way they use existing placements and are very discrete.

[Hydraulic Man]

Yes White Fright and Sox.

[Stabbsy]

[Where has been bolted that shouldn't have been? This is a genuine question not a piss take!

In Yorkshire, stuff I can think of that was bolted while I was more active up there :-

- Dib Scar Right Wing : I did a fair few of these before they were bolted and they were genuinely good routes, similar in style to some of the Malham Right Wing stuff.
- Trow Gill Right Wing : Clink, Alick and others were trad/semi-trad before the bolts. Clink would have been a great E4/5 without the bolts.
- Giggleswick North : Buttress where Acid Drop/Acid Test is (Ivy Buttress?) has been (at least partially) retroed. Main crag used to have a few trad routes, some retroed and some that have been so surrounded by sport routes that they might as well have been retroed, e.g., The Ramp.
- High Stony Bank : Are there any trad routes left?

A lot of the above where bolted based on the "neglected crag, no-one goes there" argument. However, the Dib Scar routes were only developed maybe 10 years before being bolted (by the same people that developed them). For some of the crags, belays and descents were maybe a problem (top of Trow Gill being an example), but that could have been solved by bolt lower offs as at Blue Scar Left Wing and maintaining the original routes. This isn't necessarily to say that some of these shouldn't have been bolted - some of them make more sense as sport crags, e.g., Robin Proctor's, but it's the bolting without any agreement of what's fair game that pisses me off.

Disappointingly, this saga will never produce a cartoon as good as the Hodge Close Bolt Wars one from 20 years ago with the Ministry of Ethics and Cavell Gregg flying the helicopter (because he'd had lots of airtime practice).

[Will Hunt]

Are there pegbolts on Yorks lime then? I thought sport and trad were coexisting quite happily tbh.

I actually burst out laughing at that!! Yorkshire lime is probably the flagship example of mass retro-bolting.

Where though ? What bolting crimes have been committed that are so heinous? I know about the Attermire escarpment stuff that happened around lockdown, cave route right as covered above and the Gresh deja vu clusterfuck.

Yew Cogar has some very good E5s right next to popular sport routes. 95% of Kilnseys trad routes remain unbolted, even Face Value. Malham trad is sacrosanct. Gordale trad untouched away from cave route right. Gigg south upper tier has no bolts at all. Where has been bolted that shouldn't have been? This is a genuine question not a piss take!

Some people aren't happy about Langcliffe Skyline. As one person said to me "there weren't many places where you could go and do reasonable E4s/E5s on Yorkshire limestone and there's one fewer now". You could arguably have left that whole buttress untouched.

I can't imagine anyone complaining about Troller's in the same way. The rock is superficially nice to climb on but internally quite shit; "like drilling into honeycomb".

Stabbsy's examples are fair. In Yorkshire we don't seem to deal very well with leaving the one or two viable trad routes on a buttress alone when the stuff around it gets retroed. High Stony is a good example of that but I can't honestly say that I miss Oedipus as a trad route. E3 seems like a horrible grade to give it and even if it'd been fairly graded I can't see many people going there to do it. The same goes for the Ivy Buttress routes. They looked good, but nobody was going to Gigg North to do them among a load of F6s. Climber's tastes don't seem to extend to tricky inland limestone and it's definitely not fashionable to go to somewhere other than Malham/Kilnsey/Gordale to do a mixed day of sport and trad.

There definitely should be more consultation when it comes to retroing old climbs. I haven't been to Raven's Scar (over the valley from Twistleton) but I can imagine that there won't be any trad left there soon. Though did anybody ever go there?

[ali k]

Where though? What bolting crimes have been committed that are so heinous? I know about the Attermire escarpment stuff that happened around lockdown, cave route right as covered above and the Gresh deja vu clusterfuck. Yew Cogar has some very good E5s right next to popular sport routes. Where has been bolted that shouldn't have been?

[Not especially in reply to you Jim] The difficulty is it's always a slow drip with retro-bolting, and the bigger picture is only recognised in hindsight. You could add cave route left to the above list. And yosemite wall further back in time. [just seen Stabbsy has added a more exhaustive list]. And Staying Power at Yew Cogar was retroed recently (fine by me). The E5s on the right there I'm sure will be at some point in the future too (also fine by me if they do - great little warm-ups they'd be). I'd be ok with Yew becoming a purely sport venue, along with a lot of other Yorks Lime crags.

The main reason I lean towards wanting to avoid mixed sport/trad crags as much as possible is to get rid of this grey area that Northern Yob has described well. And because all the evidence indicates that over time if you leave a blurred line between the two it'll tip over to the side of sticking bolts in the trad lines. I get why many people (reasonably) think we can reach a happy balance where trad and sport routes sit happily side by side, but in the long term I don't see it myself.

Another thing to bear in mind is that a lot of these routes were put up in the 70s/80s and there are still people alive who either did the FA or early repeats as trad routes. When these people are no longer around and there are fewer people with direct skin in the game / nostalgia, is there likely to be as much push back? If any?

I recognise the potential hypocrisy in my binary stance, and call me pessimistic, but over the long term I don't see it ending well for trad if we go down the road of wishfully thinking trad routes can coexist alongside sport routes on the same crag, especially if pegs start getting replaced with bolts.

[andy moles]

In summary of the views expressed on this thread:

Some people would like British trad to be as clear of fixed gear as possible (with the possible exception of threads).

Some people would like to maintain the rusty unreliable fixed gear status quo, possibly replacing like-for-like where possible.

Some people would like to minimise fixed gear, but have occasional bolts where they preserve a route at a certain grade that would otherwise be very bold.

Unanimous: there should be consultation before these actions are carried out.

Are the BMC area meetings the only channel that anyone is proposing for consensus to be established?

[spidermonkey09]

Examples noted. I guess I am part of the 'problem' in that I really don't see the issue with bolting these apart from the lack of consultation. The problem is how to do this. BMC meetings are poorly attended (11 at the one last week) and in any case, the BMC is not a governing body, its representative.

Ali, don't Cave Left and Yosemite fall into the category of always being poorly protected sport routes as they relied on a large amount of pegs? But I do take your general point about it being a slow process where the impact is only realised later. Tbh though I think Yorks lime is a bad hill to die on (not that you are!); the routes are short, sometimes on iffy rock (eg Attermire Escarpment), often relied on pegs anyway, and never got done before they were bolted. It doesn't make for a compelling case for leaving them as trad lines.

I didn't really mean to revert to Yorks lime, I just didn't understand the context properly. Elsewhere in the UK, I feel like the balance largely works pretty well? The recent NWales issues are not being replicated wholesale everywhere; eg no bolts have been sunk in Pembroke, the Lakes, Scotland, Cornwall?

[Will Hunt]

As an aside, there's been a few mentions of Yorkshire being the home of retro-bolting and the 'wrongful' loss of trad routes. Maybe not exactly that, but you know what I mean.
My hypothesis, which may be entirely wrong, is that this is a hangover prejudice from some pre-millenium time when people started to bolt easy routes (not just the F7s at M/K/G). Lots of disagreement, lots of discussion, thick end of the wedge etc etc etc, with much of the disagreement focused on crags that people might actually want to climb at (while those same discussions in the Peak would have been about shitpits that people probably wouldn't even sport climb in). Because these crags filled up with easy routes then the cognoscenti could happily ignore them and look down their noses at those who climbed there.

I'm sure that's entirely wrong. Happy to be corrected. Why is Yorkshire viewed this way but not the Peak?

[andy moles]

The recent NWales issues are not being replicated wholesale everywhere; eg no bolts have been sunk in Pembroke, the Lakes, Scotland, Cornwall?

There have been a few bolting controversies in recent years in Scotland (though Scotland is a big place, so they've been less concentrated). There was some strong local opposition to the retro-bolting of Farrletter Crag - the bolts were chopped once, but are now well established with the single exception of Too Farr for the Bear (E4), which has become more popular since the rest of the crag became sport. As far as I can tell, most locals approve of the situation. There's been pushback against the bolting without consultation of Glenmarksie and some Torridonian sandstone crags, and maybe to a lesser extent the retro-ing of a trad line amid sport routes at Brin. Opposition too to bolting of abseil stations at Diabaig. Perhaps others I'm forgetting or not aware of, but again I think the strongest outcry is against a lack of consultation.

[ali k]

Ali, don't Cave Left and Yosemite fall into the category of always being poorly protected sport routes as they relied on a large amount of pegs?

Yeh absolutely. To my mind these are far better suited to being sport routes (as are a lot of other venues) so I would just accept that and bolt them. If the lower left side of Malham finished with a nice pull over onto a flat and stable ledge to belay on, and all those routes (yosemite wall, tremelo, space race, zoolook etc) were protectable to some degree (without pegs), then there'd be an argument to have kept it trad. Similarly, if the amazing bit of rock in the Leap finished at a crumbly overhang just below the top, and if most of the routes relied on pegs, then it would be more suited to being a sport venue IMO.

[SA Chris]

Actually been some retrobolting going on here, but they were poor trad routes, and there is such a paucity of low / mid grade sport that no-one minded. One of the new routes starts up one of my favourite boulder problems, but it only affects the aesthetics.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/yellow_crag_clochindare-9703/#photos

Glen Lednock seems to have settled back after the in / out bolts, likewise Farletter

https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/lower_glen_lednock-19696/#maps

 https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/farletter_crag-389/#overview