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interesting take caspian....for whatever reason, when I am on a route and I see a bolt on another route "too close" to me, it does feel weird. for whatever reason, the bolts I am clipping are totallly legit, but that bastard bolt 4 feet to my left is WAY out of place....go figure.

rhunt, you pick the crack, and under the darkness of night.....

pigsteak wrote:
rhunt, you pick the crack, and under the darkness of night.....

That doesn't sound right.

no it doesn't

Mt. Charlston, Potosi, AF, Logan canyon, are all grid bolted areas. If you notice most of the routes (mainly harder ones are linkups of different routes or climb around different sections of routes) The routes that are grid bolted are the ones in the steep caves that start in different areas and cris cross and isnt an obious line.

pigsteak wrote:seems to me we are drawing some arbitrary lines that wouldn't hold up under an asthetic argument.

but again, I'd bolt cracks.

Bolting is a common practice, but I don't see it as totally outrageous to question the aesthetics of drilling a bunch of holes into a cliff and then plugging them with steel. How long would it take time to erase the evidence of that? How long before three or four inches of rock wear away and the drill hole is gone?

But like you, pigsteak, I'd bolt a crack too. If I wasn't so lazy.

ZSpider

One famous climber with a well known opinion about aesthetics (Ron Kauk) thought the Dark Side and SC were grid bolted. I went up there with him and Johnny when he came to town a few years back. ..
Of course, he thought the Dark Side should just have one or possibly two routes on it.
His is defintely not wrong, but a different perspective.

What Wes said. What Hugh said. For me, if the lines are independent (do not cross), I am fine with that. I don't mind divergent lines either. It is a question of aesthetics for me. I put a lot of thought into how my line of bolts look. Remember this, all sport routes are contrived (not in the evil sense). If properly contrived, (by the bolter), we get a good route. Here are a few of my thoughts on how I contrive a sport route. I try to connect the dots (the bolts), from the anchor (we bolt from the top down), down to the first bolt. This can get tricky when "on-sight" rap bolting, especially on a long route. I have had to fix a few of my blunders! I want the rope to not only to"run" well, but to look good on the wall as well. For routes that take a plumb line, I try (rock and clip stances permitting), to bolt in a plumb line. It bugs the shit out of me to see (on short routes especially), an unnecessarily zig zagging "line" of bolts. My absolute favorite "line form" is a very gentle crescent that stops (the anchors), at the point where it would cross the vertical. This is what I strive for when bolting. If I fuck it up, I fix it. I have a few that I need to fix.

Well said Terry. For a good example of grid bolting check out Unlikely Wall. It looks like the developers tried to cram a large number of short lead routes into a very small section of cliffline on a limestone roadcut that can easily be toproped without all of the bolts.

Sometimes I wonder how close is too close for a neighboring route. 15' apart seems like a reasonable guideline to follow. 10' is getting a little bit too close for me and 5' is definitely too close especially since it seems more like a variation that could easily be toproped off of the anchors on the other route. Most of the time I try to let the rock "decide" where the bolts go and I let it guide me to the proper locations. Occassionally after leading a route I discover that I'm not happy with all of the bolt placements. When this happens I move them to a better spot. Of course, what feels like a better spot to me doesn't always feel like a better spot to others, but through trial and error eventually a nice route will usually emerge.

That sounds kind of boring Terry, get creative! A nice cross-stitch pattern or maybe a dot puzzle to the constallations........like a bonus in the end when you can see Libra.

I will do my best. There would have to be seven bolts. Would I have to count the anchors as two bolts? Damn! I will have to think about this some more!