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Over the last two weekends tim ball and Lars klessa added four new routes at gib rock.
Painters and dockers is a two pitch 15 that climbs from the toe of the buttress 10m right of dockyard wall. Pitch one follows the left trending ramp through an overlap to a dbb. Five fh and small cam in overlap if needed. The second, easier pitch goes up and left to a small runnel past three fh to a dbb just below the first cave of dockyard wall. A single 60m rope is sufficient to get down. Linking the two together for a 55m pitch is possible.
Go the dockers is an alternative start to the first pitch of p and d. Start at a left facing flake 5m left of previous route. A couple of medium cams to link to second bolt and finish as per p and d. Grade 15, 30m.
Left again about 10m is a thin face with five fh to the dbb of the first pitch of painters and dockers. This is the excellent Lars attacks. Thin sustained and a little painful on the tips!grade 21,20m.
Five m to the left of Lars attacks is an obvious right facing flake that does not reach the ground. This is Lars needs guitars. Great varied climbing with mixed protection. Three fh and three or four medium to large cams for the flake and horizontal. Make sure you place your top piece in flake well back due to possible expansion. Grade 19,20m.
Last October Tim ball and Ryan Watson added a bolted face climb to the left of woowoowoo at peak head. This is the runnel of love. Seven fh to a dbb. Excellent thin face climbing with the crux at the bottom and a sting in the tail, classic! Grade 20,25m.Correction! Painters and dockers starts to the left of dockyard wall not the right….I’m a dislexic agnostic insomniac….
The first third at peak head is new but the rest is clearly a retro bolt.
Stop whining, Ron. Go chop the bolts. Though if there’re belay bolts at the top, be nice if you left those in so we can try the top-rope.
Nice work with the retro @ Peak Head Tim.
Are you the Tim Ball on this site ?
http://sawtoothguides.com/mountain-guides/
You AMGA certified ?One would have thought you would know better being a guide and be understanding of local ethics and special places like Peak Head.
As for Tuam, nice to see hear from another bottom feeder.
Ron is one of the most respected and experienced WA climbers and is very entitled to his opinion. Note in other posts the opinion of the first acsentionist has also been recorded. Such opinions from these types of active climbers who have contributed significantly to the community, along with their actions, is what makes the local climbing ethic. This is something Tim Ball should have been aware of.
You can easily tell from the guide that the route was a retrobolt and it can easily be top roped with natural gear you don’t need bolts at the top for that. Indeed I and many others have done just that. The outcome was that we thought it was a great line and we were inspired and impressed by Scott’s solo. Not everything needs to be bolted.
I am confident it will be chopped when people have the time to prepare for the task properly so it is done neatly and with respect for the area.
We’re all aware of Ron Master’s achievements. That aside I’m sure he’s a regular person like everyone else. Right now his main achievement together with Scott Camps on the Woowoowoo/Runnels of Love thing is to be one of the few who have been polite and to the point..
Anyway the point, yes there’s a point, there’s been 20 000 words of outrage so far on the WooWoo bolts. Robust promises to remove them as soon as the first ascencionist could be contacted. Well he’s posted and he’s agin em. So everyone should be running to PH to erase the bolts. But no, seems the main purpose isn’t climbing, it’s to have a rant on the internet. We’re all still “preparing”.
Don’t go on and on. A mistake was made. Express gentlemanly regret at the wayward ignorance of youth. Get a hammer and chisel, or a little angle grinder if you’re not handy. Take off the bolts and be happy.And Tim let this be a lesson to you. If you’re going to trash local ethics, bring grid bolting to the wilderness, spit in the eye of the bold pioneers; then use glue-in machine bolts! They’re inobtrusive, no one will notice. (And they do less damage and last 10x longer).
Publishing on the internet doesn’t help either. I’ll give even money that not even Ron’s repeated Woowoowoo. They would never have noticed.
Then again if you’ve put in expansion bolt hangers every 2m, you will surely burn in retro-bolting hell.PS yes, Neiltroll, you’re right, there are runnels on top of Lizards of Oz that take top-roping gear. And it’s not good style putting in belay bolts on top. But hey, it’s not retro-bolting and I’m lazy.
I have not climbed wowowo and have no intention of doing so. The fact that I do not like the way it was led does not give me or anyone else the right to rebolt it. My and I would suspect most climbers view is that if you do not like it dont climb it. I would be pissed if someone rebolted one of my climbs without at least asking, it is not the style or ethics that we have adopted in wa. There is plenty of scope for new climbs down here, use your imagination and look.
Sorry to all regarding the runnel of love. From the description of woowoowoo I was confident that route was left of the runnel and my route was a fresh ascent. Given the vast array of different bolt types Already in place at peak head i didn’t realize fixed hangers were not acceptable. There are seven bolts in approx 25m. I placed anchor bolts so that the route would be easy to rap without over wearing the rope from the trad anchors that I used initially to drill from. As far as retro bolting other people’s routes the only things I would consider would be to add bolts to anchors. Is the local ethic too macho or too cheap to make decent belays? A bolted route is a contrivance whether you run it out 20m or two but single bolt anchors are just dangerous. Why not ban all bolts or introduce a long term maintenance program, how long will any bolt last on a sea cliff? Should bolters of thirty years ago be held liable for anchors that are no longer deemed safe?
I have just studied my copy of the west Australian rock guide and the topo for peak heads west face. Unless the topo is incorrect, the runnel of love is independent climbing between woowoowoo and the lizard of oz. I am a personal friend of Scott camps and have emailed him to try and shed some light. If the community is so against a route that they haven’t even climbed I will remove it. I suggest that if you are upset, go and climb it then tell me it’s wrong and I will do whatever it takes to appease the moral majority.
Tim, regarding bolt types, what you say in the second last post is kind of confused. I’m not an arbiter of local ethics. On bolt types there was for some time a concern on stress corrosion on expansion bolts. And if you’re going to tighten a hanger onto a glued in stud the bolt is still in tension and with a bit of chloride spray there’ll be scc, not to mention creep on the glue. But I’m an outlier, the hanger brigade is well established. One day I’ll chop your hangers and put in glue-in machine bolts, but I’ll probably get old and die first. If you want to know what people think is good bolting locally, best ask the guys bolting the south face.
yes I’m sceptical on all the claims on where it goes, though I think Scott did say it went up the runnel. Did you try top-roping the old route?
I guess we must be grateful that Scott didn’t solo all the lines on the West face.That last statement would have to be the funniest and clearly the truest statement of all the palaver carried out to date: “I guess we must be grateful that Scott didn’t solo all the lines on the West face”.
Its quite possible that a huge number of climbs have been soloed prior to bolting but why worry, the bolting wont take away someones ability to solo them again, and if the climbs are retro-bolted to make it climbable then so called “known” climbs should just have a side note “FA was a solo by such and such” in what ever literature they appear in.
None of the above applies if we talk about retro-bolting naturally protected routes.
Thank god most soloists wouldn’t bother to publish their climbs or the rest of us mere mortals would be left to either travel a long way or to only climb the tough stuff as that was all that was left to climb as even soloists weren’t keen to break their necks without bolts!!
If it can be top-roped it shouldn’t be bolted.
I don’t see how tim can call us locals macho and cheap when the guy who put it up isn’t local the guy who bolted it isn’t local and the guy who put the first post up about it isn’t local.fact is you will find us a friendly bunch who set bomber belays.
Gee John Boy, and here I was thinking I am a local (did you mean Albany local?). Pretty sure I’m not a guy though.
Sorry ang I did mean Albany local.
