Hey Ed!

Also spent heaps and still spending. It’s quite easy to use biners while the top roping is going on and then once finished, thread through the bolts and rap off – NOT be lowered off. Raping off is better for the bolts and the persons rope.

Hi Ed,

Problem is too many climbers don’t know you shouldn’t run a loaded rope through a pair of rings or why. Writing stuff for our magazine today and will put a tech tip on it.

As for the bash-ins, some people want their names on a lot off climbs but aren’t prepared to put the money into even GIMBS. Its fairly easy to work out what’s going on.

Blackwall Reach Tuesday?

Cheers,

Toc.

Hi Ed,

Some people manufacture routes in the quarries and seem to get away with it. You’d get skun doing it outside of the quarries.

It’s all academic for me, I don’t climb at the level where I’m going to run out of climbs.

Cheers,

Toc.

without the old guard and their bashins we’d be living in a pretty sparse environment. anyone following on can replace with shiney SS GMHBs, or retrobolt with Ps. all-in-all the system seems to work pretty well.

Ed

Maybe in a perfect world the FA would equip every route with twisted Shackles/or equivilent. But the reality is, they don’t! 1. The quarries are probably the only place that sees enough traffic to even slightly wear the rings out and from most i have looked at,they seem to be totally fine 2. I think that lowering off the route and having double figures people toproping all day long are 2 totally different kettles of fish!. Lowering off is fine, thats why they are there(perth really doesn’t see the traffic to wear through rings quickly). The whole toproping (which seems to be happening in mass proportion…well for perth anyway on routes like penthouse and playboy) is of most concern.

Hey, if you are out there and people are keeping on doing this, firstly politely explain an alternative(i.e there own bloody biners) and secondly if that falls on deaf ears, ask them if they would mind donating money to the replacement cost.

Thanks for the offer of Bolts, but i have plenty, twist shackles would be the go:)

peace

Ed

I definately think we are both on the same wave length. I have around 15 Fixe double ring hangers and Im sure we there will be need for more.

having not climbed lots in the quarries which routes could do with new or better loweroffs.

I would much rather use glued in machine bolts to fix the ring hangers with and not use trubolts.

the anchors top of green beret which you can use for the 16 left of mullup is a shocker

double happiness

just cuious why you prefer GIMB over trubolts?

cheers

Richard has a point. We can all climb on manky bash-ins and if we like the route, put decent gear in. I did see a Mike Law article years ago, pointing out that a good carrot is probably going to hold better than a poor wire. A well glued glued bolt holds best. A badly glued bolt will hold jack-sh**. All pressure type bolting systems put strain on the rock which has already been stressed by being drilled. A geo physicist explained to me the formation of a conic fracture zone around drill sites, (which is why you don’t drill holes close together). Wet glues like HY 500 can soak into the fracture zones a little and offer some repair mechanism but pressure bolts, (and bash-ins), exacerbate the fracture zone. It’s not a problem that often, but I believe it was Mountain Quarry where a climber fell a few years ago, and the rock around the bolt failed and he ended up on the ground, (shaken, not stirred), with the bolt still in the piece of rock along side of him. (I’ve clipped a lot of pressure bolts and bash-ins), (and glues must be well done or they fail), but that’s the theory behind it. For those just starting to come outside who are certain bolts are good and natural gear is dodgy, all bolts are climb at your own risk propositions. What scares me is climbers coming outdoors with ability honed in the gyms, no technical gear skills, going onto hard mixed routes and repeatly falling onto carrots or actually any bolts, which they got to without putting any natural gear in. Just guessing but it seems to me that it is the lack of technical gear skills, (and laziness), which would stop climbers from putting slings or cordellettes into the lower offs for top roping or abseiling off the rings and pulling the rope through unloaded at the end of a session. There are other factors to think about here, beyond just wear as well. Lowering off through the rings involves a load greater than that of the climber, (it also includes a component from the belayer), and a direction vector that is not necessarily ideal. Abseiling off has the same direction vector issues, but less load, (no belayer).

Cheers,

Toc.

Im not saying there is anything wrong with expansions, especially not in hard rock…they are bomber.

I gave a personal preference for fixing loweroff ring hangers in areas such as quarries were they may get tampered with ..nothing else.

From my experience in replacing bolts, there is more risk of the bolt breaking/shearing off flush with the wall(due to corrosion from incorrect placement) than actually pulling out.

As for bashins, I think they have a place in a wilderness/ or low impact area. But in a quarry i think they are a cheap and selfish pile of $%#@.

There are many pics on the web of anchors that have been worn through from people TRing directly thru them, here’s one (unfortunately it’s oriented upside down but you get the idea):

http://www.redriverclimbing.com/album_pic.php?pic_id=2041

When I see anyone TRing off the top anchors I give them absolute hell. Usually they are just being lazy. Use your own biners!!

i hadnt considered the vanadalism/tampering factor before… but your right it is an urban setting so there may be scoundrels about

yawn.

i’ll be back in 6 weeks or so george and richard w. keen to continue as before.

hows the little wingman ?

he held up well in the big US of A.