Project Draws: How Long is Too Long?

[EricDorsey]

Thank you for being so serious You must be a joy to climb with.

[Rotarypwr345704]

Maybe you didn't get the memo. No one on this Forum climbs. We all just pretend we do.

[cramacam]

Regardless of convenience and awesomeness/non-awesomeness of pre-hung draws... Would it not be easiest to say that no draws should be left overnight? Sure would make policing easier for the community.

[rhunt]

If i want to hang my draws on a project, I can keep them there for as long as it takes to send the route. If in that time another climber decides any one of my draws are dangerously worn, they should change it out without any regard for my property. Isn't that they way it always was Hugh? I can remember changing out draws on resurrection at the undertow wall (one of the only routes that was Fixed on that wall back then..and for reasons I never knew), because they were badly worn - I was looking out for me not the whole community.
I think there is a BIG difference between project draws and permanent draws. Project draws are hung by a particular climber for his or her convenience at the risk of others using them, taking them down or even stealing them. Perma draws are hung on a route that deems them necessary ...ie cave route and the like.

And yet I rarely climb anymore but I will be down in two weeks for the FIG 12hr adventure race - you'll probably see us riding by in the PMRP.

[bcombs]

It seems that if the plan is to establish guidelines for how long personal gear can hang, we are setting ourselves up for more work than would have come from just keeping what is already hanging in good shape. I think that the only solution is no gear at all or only on a cleaning bolt and anchors. Bottom line on gear already hanging and the concern that the individual climbers "choice" to use them or not creates a potenitial security concern, let's just all adopt a rule that we hang our own on the bolts anyway and after climbing remove the hanging gear and our own. Leave the hanging gear at the base. Bolts will happily take two (or bait and switch on your way up).

Now, with all that in place, the common scnenario is going to be dude-brah hangs his draws on Snooker and then goes down to let his brochacho warm up on Buff. Meanwhile someone else comes along from the Undertow wall trail and removes his draws from Snooker while hanging their own and leaves them at the base. Brocephus comes back and is all flared up like a banty rooster because someone took his perfectly good, sunbleached, half sharp Omega dirtbags down. Flexing occurs and the situation deteriorates into some lanky jackass falling off the ledge at the base and getting hurt.

I like PD's as much as the next guy / gal, but I don't see how we can set rules for the duration of people's projects. Any arbitrary number of days picked will result in pretty much what we have today, once it has been hanging too long someone always comes along and takes it down / replaces it.

[the lurkist]

I agree with you Rob. I think leaving your draws up on a route is your choice. I would like to see folks just hang them the day they came out and take them down the same day. That probably won't happen, so my personal practice will be to clean your draws and leave them on the anchor (not the base) so they won't get arbitrarily taken, and hang my own. This is maybe a step back to pre PD era, but if we can somehow communicate that this is a community standard to the visiting, young, uneducated climber, then we will have not re inforced bad habits of trusting fixed gear and encouraged personal responsibility of committing one's own gear to a route.

[rhunt]

I agree that your draws hung for the day is about really the most any climb needs. That's how it went for the 80% of the project climbing I did. You either sent your climb first thing hanging them and had that to spray about or you used the hanging the draws burn to brush holds and go over the moves one more time before the redpoint burn.

Hugh, can I ask you, do you think the undertow wall needed perma draws? How many times did you clean routes left of Chainsaw, was it really that difficult?

Again, it was a really bad idea from the start to go about fixing routes with PD because climbers were too stupid to know they were climbing on bad gear. I am not saying we should have stood by and watch the newbies possible get hurt BUT just like with the bad GriGri epidemic we could have taken a more hands off - educated the newbies approach. I think Zac said this in another thread and i will reiterate, the next step in this process of protecting people from themselves would be to put auto belays on all climbs because people just got too stupid to belay properly.

[Green3]

Now, with all that in place, the common scnenario is going to be dude-brah hangs his draws on Snooker and then goes down to let his brochacho warm up on Buff. Meanwhile someone else comes along from the Undertow wall trail and removes his draws from Snooker while hanging their own and leaves them at the base. Brocephus comes back and is all flared up like a banty rooster because someone took his perfectly good, sunbleached, half sharp Omega dirtbags down. Flexing occurs and the situation deteriorates into some lanky jackass falling off the ledge at the base and getting hurt.

This theoretical anecdote is ridiculous. And if someone took my draws (which are neither sunbleached nor sharp) off a climb while I was gone from it for 35-40 minutes, while I'm sure I wouldn't push you off any ledges, I would be kinda pissed off and let you know about it.

Calling your antagonists "dudebrah" and all its variations doesn't make the "someone" in your story any more right.

[climb2core]

Now, with all that in place, the common scnenario is going to be dude-brah hangs his draws on Snooker and then goes down to let his brochacho warm up on Buff. Meanwhile someone else comes along from the Undertow wall trail and removes his draws from Snooker while hanging their own and leaves them at the base. Brocephus comes back and is all flared up like a banty rooster because someone took his perfectly good, sunbleached, half sharp Omega dirtbags down. Flexing occurs and the situation deteriorates into some lanky jackass falling off the ledge at the base and getting hurt.

This theoretical anecdote is ridiculous. And if someone took my draws (which are neither sunbleached nor sharp) off a climb while I was gone from it for 35-40 minutes, while I'm sure I wouldn't push you off any ledges, I would be kinda pissed off and let you know about it.

Calling your antagonists "dudebrah" and all it's variations doesn't make the "someone" in your story any more right.

Agreed green3, if the standard becomes any gear seen on a route is fair game to be removed, it will create even more problems... Gear at the top, base, or taken as booty without a legitimate reason.


Well, I guess you could leave a rope on it... If that wouldnt be considered abandoned too...

[the lurkist]

No, the UTW doesn't need or require fixed gear. As Toy said, none of the routes at the Lode were created with the thought of fixed gear.
Yes, PD were placed to remove the hazard of sharp gear and hopefully prevent a disaster, but ( I said this then) that gear needs to monitored too, and we have realized an unintended consequence of installing PDs- that it encourages people to get in over their heads. The very thing we had hoped that PDs would avoid- a hazardous situation- has actually facilitated a bigger one- young climbers learning they don't have to take any responsibility for the integrity of gear. Bad idea.
The numbers speak for themselves. Friday before gear was stripped- a typical day at the UTW with 50 people overwhelming the routes. The Sunday and Monday after, 8 people.