Front page of the Wall Street Journal. Woah.

[Guest]

Wall Street Journal
June 11, 2003

PAGE ONE

Bolts in Rocks Have Climbers
Screaming From Mountaintops
'Trads' Cling to Their Cliffs
With Removable Hardware

By DEAN STARKMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


Patrick Seurynck was scaling a dangerous 400-foot granite cliff near Aspen,
Colo., last June when his partner above yelled down some disturbing news:
"The anchors are gone!"

The 48-year-old Mr. Seurynck, who has been climbing rocks for 10 years, had
just spent weeks drilling and placing numerous stainless-steel bolts for
securing ropes. He knew immediately what had happened: A bolt chopper had
struck. He climbed down safely, fuming.

"It was just arrogant audacity," says Mr. Seurynck, still riled.

Whether to bolt or not is a smoldering question in rock climbing these days
as the sport comes to grips with growing popularity. Once the domain of a
scruffy few who embraced an ethic of self-reliance, conservationism and
risk, rock climbing is being overrun by a new generation less connected to
its daring past. The result: a culture clash on the rocks.

Traditional, or "trad," climbers favor passive protective gear -- metal nuts
and spring-loaded retractable metal wedges called cams. These are slipped
into cracks and then removed by the last climber to make an ascent. Climbers
say newcomers put up permanent bolts merely to make hard climbs easier.

"They are there entirely and utterly for the convenience of climbers, who,
in my view, have just gotten incredibly lazy," says Richard Goldstone, a
Poughkeepsie, N.Y., math professor who has argued for fewer bolts at the
Mohonk Preserve, a traditional-climbing mecca 80 miles north of New York.

The less-fastidious new-schoolers, sometimes called "sport climbers,"
dismiss the critique as elitist. They say bolted routes allow relatively
safe climbs on even advanced routes and along lines that otherwise couldn't
be climbed at all. Besides, they say, bolts are becoming the norm.

"Everywhere there's a cliff, you'll find some bolted routes," Mr. Seurynck
says.

With at least 450,000 regulars now on the rocks in the U.S., up from about
200,000 a decade ago, land managers fear that bolting is getting out of
hand. "All of them are looking to prevent a proliferation," says Randy
Coffman, a National Parks Service official.

National Policy

The bolt controversy now is coming to a head. An interagency panel of
federal land managers has agreed to a common, national "fixed anchor" policy
for wilderness areas, completing an administrative process that started
after the U.S. Forest Service tried to ban new bolts at Idaho's Sawtooth
National Forest in 1998. Among the issues: whether bolts should be banned as
"installations" -- like bridges and tool sheds -- under the Wilderness Act
of 1964; whether to replace older rusting bolts; whether new bolts should be
allowed; and who gets to decide, climbers or the government.

As a result of the agreement, the Bureau of Land Management has drafted a
regulation that will require government permits to put up new bolts -- a big
change. "It does recognize that climbing is a legitimate and appropriate use
of wilderness," says Jeff Jarvis, a BLM wilderness manager. But, "we have
responsibility to manage that use."

The nation's main rock-climbing group, the Access Fund, in Boulder, Colo.,
is probolt and favors leaving it up to climbers to decide when to place
them. The group fears bureaucracy, so it is hoping the agencies provide
"timely authorizations" for anchors, a spokesman says.

But a minority of climbers, including some big names in the sport, believe
restrictions are needed. The antibolters echo the position of environmental
groups that say permanent bolts degrade rock, look bad and allow climbers to
disturb raptor nests.

Last September, the bolt question nearly derailed a summit of some of the
world's best climbers who assembled in Innsbruck, Austria, to write a
climbing code of conduct for the International Mountaineering and Climbing
Federation. The fiercely probolt Swiss delegation -- from a country where
rock climbing is promoted as safe, tourist-friendly "vertical hiking" --
threatened a walkout if the group adopted an antibolt position. "They're
trying to take the danger out of climbing," scoffs an American delegate,
John Harlin III, editor of the American Alpine Journal, in Hood River, Ore.,
who helped craft a compromise in the summit's final report, The Tyrol
Declaration, which carefully straddles the issue.

Bolt, Unbolt

Now, a prominent German climber, Alexander Huber, is soliciting support for
an expedition to unbolt a route put up last year by an international group
on El Gigante, a 2,500-foot cliff in Basaseachic National Park, Mexico. The
route's name, "Logical Progression," particularly annoys traditionalists.

"They see us as the old guys who are going to die, and they are the new
generation, and they call their style the new style," the 35-year-old Mr.
Huber says.

But Luke Laeser, 29, who spent two months last year affixing the route's 380
bolts, says the route is just too dangerous without bolts. "We knew some
people wouldn't agree with it," he says. "But there's not one way to do
things."

Rock climbing -- ascending a sheer rock face, sometimes called "technical
climbing" -- branched off from mountaineering around the 1920s. Equipment
was crude: hemp rope, moccasins and a few iron pitons. The sport was
reserved for the adventurous few. The first climber ascended 150 feet or so
with so little protection that the grim maxim of the day was, "the lead
climber must not fall."

The end of World War II brought advances in gear, including stretchy nylon
rope that didn't snap as easily as hemp, and it brought growth. In the late
1960s, Yvon Chouinard, a renowned climber, as well as an equipment maker and
the founder of retailer Patagonia Inc., began promoting the more
environmentally friendly nuts and cams, which became standard.

The sport's boom in the 1980s and 1990s brought climbers with fewer qualms
about bolting. Sporting power drills, they bolted routes according to their
own tastes. In their "bolt wars," extremist trad climbers yanked them out
just as quickly. But thanks to the laissez-faire policies of the National
Park Service and other federal agencies, the number of bolts has steadily
risen. Yosemite National Park's famed cliffs have hundreds of bolts, while
Joshua Tree National Park, east of Los Angeles, has thousands.

Purists plead with local land managers for restrictions, but sometimes
antibolt vigilantes still take matters into their own hands -- as in the
case of Mr. Seurynck.

The real-estate broker was so enraged by the Aspen incident that he launched
his own investigation. He ultimately determined that Jonathan Thesenga,
until recently the editor of Climbing Magazine, had yanked out most of the
bolts on his route.

Mr. Seurynck's "J'accuse" posting on a climbing Web site last September sent
climbers into a tizzy. Mr. Thesenga, in his online reply said he pulled only
"blatantly superfluous bolts." The route could have been protected with
traditional gear, he maintained. Mr. Seurynck says he has recently rebolted
the route.

Write to Dean Starkman at dean.starkman@wsj.com3
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1055 ... 00,00.html


Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) http://wsjbooks.com/floating
(2) http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1055 ... 00,00.html
(3) mailto:dean.starkman@wsj.com

[ynot]

Strait up. Where have I heard that name,Thesenga,before?

[Rain Man]

His name was tossed around this site a little a few months back for a) the bolt-chopping incident named above and b) tossing a white gas container off a cliff onto a MASSIVE boulder below during a (might be wrong here) New Year's celebration. The posts referred to are from rock climbing.com and is about 15 or 16 pages long.

[kato]

Interesting article, but they don't really explain the distinction between crack climbing and face climbing, i.e. that some faces cannot be protected in the traditional manner.

[Guest]

While there is clearly some info missing regarding the need to protect faces with bolts, I was just surprised to see this article on the front page of the WSJ at all. It really seems pretty well done to me considering it's not in a climbing publication.

[Steve]

I hear ya Lynne, but it is tough for the mainstream media to wrap their hands around the idea of climbing. When you eat sleep and breath the activity the complex issues of sport, trad, bolts, ethics, etc it is much easier to digest. That bolt chopping stuff in CO was reported in by the mainstream media awhile back. There were some reported incidents up in Washington state too.

[tomdarch]

There's a quote I heard somewhere: "I totally trust everything that good journalists write, except for the stuff I actually know about, in which case they are blatant idiots." I'm still confused as to why editors don't have people involved in climbing review articles like this before they run them.

Rant Mode:

This article is (for the most part) 10 freakin' years late!

It totally fails to explain why bolts are the only possible pro in some situations. It doesn't mention that bolts are small and almost invisble in most situations, particularly in wilderness areas.

The article mis-uses the word 'passive': "Traditional, or "trad," climbers favor passive protective gear -- metal nuts and spring-loaded retractable metal wedges called cams."

It fails to explain that even hardcore traddies clip bolts at anchors/rap stations. One of my favorite dumb-assed remarks from a climber was at Devil's Lake, WI (bolts in park: 2) "I've never clipped a bolt in my life! Uh, except at anchors." Whatever.

It doesn't differentiate between bolts in all-bolt routes, bolts on mixed routes, belay station bolts, and rap bolts. It leaves the uninformed reader with the impression that Yosemite and J-Tree are grid bolted. (Oh Dear! Thousands of bolts! That's awful! Eugene! Did you know that while we were driving our lard-asses through that Joseph Tree place in our RV, those suicidal climbers we saw were vandalizing the park with thousands of giant steel bolts?!?)

The "newschoolers" vs "oldschoolers" thing is out of whack. I've been clipping bolts longer than some (admitedly young) 'hardcore traddies' have been tying in. It isn't old vs. new, it's a philosophical clash. The article fails to clearly present the differing degree of danger involved in trad vs. sport climbing. Different climbers choose to take on different degrees of risk depending on the climb - this varies within trad climbing and sport climbing. The article describes this as 'elitism' vs 'popularism', which is inaccurate.

The article mentions the growth of the sport, but doesn't mention that the 3 reasons for the growth are: the bouldering pad, the climbng gym and SPORT ROUTES! "The sport's boom in the 1980s and 1990s brought climbers with fewer qualms about bolting." Hell yeah, we had fewer qualms about bolting because we were climbers because of sport climbing!

The article leaves the impression that "big name climbers" oppose the use of bolts. period. But other than Huber talking about one route, who are these 'big name climbers'?

Seriously bad journalism: "antibolters echo the position of environmental groups that say permanent bolts degrade rock, look bad and allow climbers to disturb raptor nests." What?!? Trad climbers can't get near raptor nests? Bull. Traddies disturb far more nesting raptors than sport climbers. I can't think of a single sport area that has raptor closings.

The article doesn't explain why the AF prefers leaving it up to climbers where to place bolts. In part it's becuase placing bolts in wilderness with a freaking hand-hammered drill is so time-consuming (particularly after a long aproach) that only a few bolts can be placed - you aren't going to grid bolt a granite crag with a hand drill after an 8 hour aproach!

" "They're trying to take the danger out of climbing," scoffs an American delegate." No, bolted routes take the danger out of those specific routes. Anyone who wants to run it out between marginal crack systems on micro-nuts can still do that on other routes. (retro-bolting is a seprate issue)

The article doesn't differentiate between bolting in wilderness and bolting in more impacted areas.

GRRRRRR!!! (OK, rant mode off)

It's really too bad that a poorly presented article like this is giving the typical dolt WSJ reader such an inaccurate and incomplete impression.

[Power2U]

Amen Tomdarch!

The truth of the matter is that only people who have been climbing for several years truly understand the entire issue on fixed anchors and the whole crazy "Trad vs. Sport" thing. Unless you are a climber...if you have been going to the gym once a week for the past year you wouldn't really understand this article...and you certainly wouldn't understand if you were the typical WSJ reader...the article misleads you in a lot of ways. Not ot say that you couldn't read up on everything mentioned above and learn about it.

I was in Yosemite last year and when I drove up and El Cap filled my winshield my first coment was, "Good God what are those shiny things...oh just bolts." Yeah right.....not "Wow that is one impressive chunk of rock!"

[Guest]

hmmmmm, well while I am disappointed at the skewed perspective the WSJ article will provide all who read it, it doesn't instill quite the rage in me that it does in you fellas. I'm not sure WHY it made the front page and find this fact to be such a novelty that it perhaps numbed me to the defects. I dunno. It is manistream journalism afterall. I wouldn't peck it to death like that, however it is obviously biased as hell and that is a shame, but what journalism is not these days?

I'm mostly curious why it is on the front page and what the point of the thing really was.. does someone have an agenda we should be concerned about?

[ynot]

Some Journalist got wind of the trad vs sport thing and wrote an article he thought was reaserched. Like Tomdarch said,he was only ten years late.