War In the Franconian Jura

[guypercival]

Alex Megos climbs a new 8c+ which is pretty close to one of the first 8c’s in the Frankenjura.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CF2nBj3BfgB/?igshid=11vug0af9q0j1

A couple of days later the bolts are chopped and understandably not impressed. I couldn’t really work out why.

https://youtu.be/WjSq1oFNsRk

The issue starts being discussed at about 3:52
The bolts were removed at they compromised the quality of a classic route. Marcus Bock comes across as a twat as far as I can see.

In the UK we have the situations here where trad routes are affected by new sport routes and bolt chopping follows. Are there instances where a sport route was not considered legitimate because it compromised the quality of a neighbouring sport route.
Or as a nation we really don’t mind gridbolting.

Just wondering

 

[tomtom]

I want to know if knee's are involved before investing time in the video

 

[guypercival]

I’m afraid not #carrotsforassholes

How about #kneebarsforassholes

 

[Bradders]

Without watching the video that sounds really stupid. How can one set of bolts possibly interfere with another?

 

[abarro81]

1. On the specific question about the route, it's useless discussing it unless you know the crag and routes well (doubt anyone in the UK does)
2. I love the carrotsforassholes hashtag. This shit makes climbing so much more interesting.
3. Bock sounds like a grumpy old fucker, but Megos sounds like a cocky little shit.
4. I don't know enough about the local ethics regarding bolting links and things close to other routes to know if there is an established local ethic in this regard. Which makes it hard to have an opinion. Megos's argument about one person shouldn't choose to unilaterally debolt works both ways, i.e. one person also shouldn't choose to bolt a possibly controversial line without consultation...

 

[danm]

Any German who reacts humorously to Grimer doing Nazi salutes at them and trying to stick a fake Hitler tash on them is OK in my book. Plus he looks like an elf. I'm talking about Megos here, not Cock.

 

[Sasquatch]

In the initial account it sounded like there was an application process that allowed for the new route. It may not have included bock and the original bolter though... maybe a faulty process. Also, Just because someone did something originally does not give them everlasting rights to it and the rock and the neighboring rock, etc. that's just crazy.

 

[guypercival]

https://youtu.be/4anRccLpi18

I had completely forgotten about this. Lawyers, the police and potentially the Courts. It seems so unregulated in comparison here.

Discussed 12:32-18:40

 

[mrjonathanr]

Sure you didn’t mean to post this in Fiend’s bolt chopping thread?

 

[Motown]

Can anyone explain the ‘saftsac’ insult (translated as ‘juicebag’ at 15:09)?

Found this https://www.dw.com/en/saftsack/a-16677064 but doesn’t help with why it’s offensive.

 

[mrjonathanr]

Wordreference translates it as ‘jerk’.
Saft = juice and sack has a number of obvious translations.

 

[guypercival]

Maybe I should have done. Fiend could style himself on Marcus Bock and become a self appointed crag custodian, roaming the land with an angle grinder and liberating crags of illicit metal work thus preserving the traditions for the future generations.

 

[GuyVG]

Personally, I love the Franconian rivalries. I was told by a local, with a strangely Australian accent, that one group sandbagged Megos into thinking he’d done the first ascent of a boulder problem in their neck of the woods, waited for him to make a YouTube video of it and then revealed it had been ‘done years ago’. In response, Megos then allegedly went to their main crag and did their classic 8c in ‘brushpoint’ style. Haha. Cocky bastard.

https://youtu.be/mayAkYesBCw

Sorry for the EpicShite link

 

[Ged]

Without watching the video that sounds really stupid. How can one set of bolts possibly interfere with another?

Pretty easily surely? If there's a really good route up a bit of rock, you could easily add another line of bolts a metre to the side. It would be pretty unclear what holds we're "in" for each route, and thus mess up the original route. Crags definitely get ruined by having too many routes on them

 

[Kingy]

Too many bolts closeby reduces the proudness of a line, if its classic in the first place. There is something about setting off up a wall with only one line of weakness to the top which is appealing. Bolting some random variant or linkup is often not a worthwhile undertaking and usually symptomatic of boredom and can compromise an existing line. Burn For You, a classic 8c that this new line Megos climbed in his video is very close to it. The FA'ist of Burn for You was not best pleased that his masterpiece had been so encroached upon. I understand he wanted to have been consulted. Obvs in the UK at certain honeypot crags, its linkup central but where there is loads of rock to bolt, why bother with linkups, just bolt another 5* classic

 

[Bradders]

Without watching the video that sounds really stupid. How can one set of bolts possibly interfere with another?

Pretty easily surely? If there's a really good route up a bit of rock, you could easily add another line of bolts a metre to the side. It would be pretty unclear what holds we're "in" for each route, and thus mess up the original route. Crags definitely get ruined by having too many routes on them

That just makes no sense to me whatsoever. Perhaps it's because I'm mainly a boulderer but I think most sport climbs follow "routes", not lines. I.e. they tend to follow weaknesses due to a sequence of holds, as opposed to a feature of the rock / crag.

At least in comparison to lots of boulder problems and grit trad routes where they very clearly follow a feature of the rock that happens to have holds on that make it climbable.

With that in mind, how can putting bolts in that follow one sequence of holds, be interfering with another set of bolts along a different hold sequence? Especially given that for it to have been necessary to put new bolts in, the holds on the new route must be sufficiently distant from the original holds as to make clipping impossible / weird / contrived.

The proudness of a sport climb is surely far more a function of the crag or section of crag it's on, not the actual sequence of holds. In my opinion anyway. As such, I can't see how different routes up the same bit of crag are any more or less proud. Progress is just as proud as Northern Lights for instance. True North is just as proud as Urgent Action.

At the end of the day, it's all just something to do anyway.

 

[GuyVG]

Without watching the video that sounds really stupid. How can one set of bolts possibly interfere with another?

Pretty easily surely? If there's a really good route up a bit of rock, you could easily add another line of bolts a metre to the side. It would be pretty unclear what holds we're "in" for each route, and thus mess up the original route. Crags definitely get ruined by having too many routes on them

Progress is just as proud as Northern Lights for instance. True North is just as proud as Urgent Action.

Those routes aren't that close together?

 

[jwi]

If all alternative versions, squeezed in lines and link-ups in this world got all their bolts chopped overnight I would not shed a single tear. (I do a lot of sport climbing)

 

[GuyVG]

If all alternative versions, squeezed in lines and link-ups in this world got all their bolts chopped overnight I would not shed a single tear. (I do a lot of sport climbing)

Tell me you have a massive amount of limestone around where you live without telling me...

 

[jwi]

Even when I did not, I refused to do link ups. So much so that I ended one of my routes in the middle of the crag instead of following one of the lines to the side to the top. (But, hypocrite that I am, when no one else stopped in the middle of the crag and instead used the line to the left to the top I removed the anchor. I was a poor student, and could use the anchor chain somewhere else)