RRC Archives

Sharp at Emerald City. I did it yesterday for the first time. It is actually a pretty cool route. It starts as an OW and quickly changes to fist and then quickly to hands, to a rest. The finish is a shallow splitter fingercrack on a nice slab with a brief traverse to a nice perch.

The gear is good and the climbing is nice. The only real flaw I found in the route was that the anchor involves belaying off a bolt on a sport route and to get down you must rap from the lone bolt. It needs real anchors that are seperate from the other route.

If you haven't done it you should. I didn't tape and I still have all my skin, so the name doesn't reflect the texture so much as the shape of the rock. Overall a safe and fun route.

sounds like a fun route, WT. Hows the gear at the start, in the OW?

Dude, you pay for the anchors and I'll drill them.

Here's the way to do it: belay your partner up, set an anchor in that pocket, and finish up on othe sport route no anchor required.

I must disagree, I thought that route was of no account. Too short. It's Got a cool move though. Check out the 2 pitch dihedral to the left of it for a fun 5.3 with a top out.

J.H. wrote:Dude, you pay for the anchors and I'll drill them.

No, I'll drill them. I wouldn't trust you to drill a hole in your own head.

Sandy wrote:sounds like a fun route, WT. Hows the gear at the start, in the OW?

Probably a #3.5 or a #4 would protect it. I just bouldered up til a #3 would fit cause I don't have big gear.

Hey, before you go a bust out a drill, better check into who owns Emerald City! I might be wrong but I think the Forest Service owns it. Might have to go through some red tape to add new bolts to a line that never had any.

I was making a joke. I do think it needs anchors though.

And the unofficial USFS (landowners of EC) policy is that maintenance and upgrading of top anchors on existing climbs are left up to climbers.

Things may have changed since I made the inquiry a few years ago, but that used to be the POV. And the route does have an "anchor". It would just be an upgrade.

Wicked Tribe wrote:No, I'll drill them. I wouldn't trust you to drill a hole in your own head.

Listen folks, I've got way too much going on in my life to take a few precious seconds away from climbing to drill some anchors. So put down your pitchforks and rest easy.

Maybe I shouldn't have suggested it in the first place. However I am a firm believer in solid anchors for any route. The anchors are the single most important aspect of any climbing experience. It really bugged me to have to rappel off of one bolt. Especially since someone had left a completely inferior quicklink to lower from. I left a biner instead.

I definitely don't want to die while climbing. Anything that puts me in risk of doing that concerns me enough to take some kind of action to prevent it from happening again. That doesn't mean I'm going to go add bolts to runout sport routes or R rated trad routes, but improving the anchor situation to a route that people climb (and somewhat frequently by the looks of it) doesn't bother me one bit.

I know of a few instances where someone has added bolts to a trad climb that had poor anchors and there was a great outcry in this climbing community. As far as I know however, no one has ever chopped top anchors from a climb, though many have threatened to do so. Is this because everyone is to timid to follow through on their actions? No. It's because deep down, we all see the benefit of good solid anchors. Heck we even see the benefit in shoddy anchors. Look how long it took for the very poor anchors at Fortress to be replaced. Its great to go there now and see that almost all, if not all, of those spinning cold shut hangers are gone. Anyone out there complain that that should not have been done?

I'm posting this here, more in response to the Who Should Bolt thread as a preemptive strike because I just know someone will carry that discussion over here and say I am a mad gumby bolter.