Not a troll or trying to fan the bolting flames, just curious. Why some and not others. Does anyone know the history / story behind some of the "sport" climbs at the Gunk's? Like why are the bolts (if you can call them that) still on Sente and Thin Slabs? How about Arrow? Weren't they placed on rap... how come they weren't chopped? How about some of the "crucial" pins found throughout the Gunk's... when they eventually go will they be replaced by bolts or will someone go up and hammer in a new piton? I know the obvious answer is that without them the routes become X in places but the guide is full of X pro rated climbs. The pushing the standards thread also falls into this question... wouldn't a few well placed bolts open a few new climbs? Why was it allowed back in the Arrow 1st ascent days but not any more?

Again, I am not looking to get flamed or revive the bolting bad blood. I’m looking for some historical perspective... and really need to know the story behind that homemade "bolt" on Thin Slabs P1

Charlie

the preserve's policy, detailed in both the select (pg. xii)and swain (pg. 13) guides, states that only those bolts and pins placed prior to november '86 would be grandfathered, and can be replaced...there are histories of how this issue was settled in the introductions to dick's black guide (pg. 55) and in swain (pg.11-12) ...

Wow... thanks for that animated reply. That’s exactly the kind of lively discussion I was hoping to generate. I’ll run out and research those references to get my answers. I guess I’m the only one who came up to that bolt on Thin Slabs and thought "what the hell is the story behind this thing?" or why the bolts on Sente are the text book example of "absolutely unacceptable" but still in use.

When I asked him, Will Crowther said that he placed the bolts on Arrow in order to make the climb more accessible to people. He knew that it was a good top pitch and felt that with the bolts it would become the popular classic that it has. (Side note: I've always thought it interesting that this route showed up on the cover of Swain's second edition to this trad climbing area.)

Why was his bolt chopped on Moonlight? Because at the time it was felt that the climb could be reasonably, i.e. relatively safely, done without it. Countless subsequent climber have proven that to be the case.

Now what about Sente? (Or Absurdland, or some others). Are these climbs less classic? Has Sente been left alone because the climb is viewed as reasonably done without the bolts? (Not by me!) Is it because the bolts are on the first pitch and there is an attitude that clips close to the ground are too sport-like?

Given the sorry shape of the Sente bolts, I'd like to see them replaced (historical interest in that funky hanger notwithstanding). Maybe the way to frame that question, though, is to ask other climbers or the Preserve if it's seen as a climb worth keeping in what had been its customary (relatively safe, relatively accessible) condition.

chazman ...

It's an interesting question. I think the answers are many, but none are complete. I believe the existence of bolts in the Gunks is more due to different personalities than anything else.

The bolt ban yorick refers to is something that transpired in reaction to a bolting war that flared up almost exclusively out at Lost City. A new generation of cutting edge climbers were putting up stuff that would remain X without a bolt ... stuff like Clairvoyance or New Mutants. Bolts were placed, bolts were smashed. (Some contend that Clairvoyance can be protected without the bolts, but if you've ever been up there to look at where the wire "placement" supposedly can be made, you'd understand why a guy like Gruenberg, known for his major X routes, would place the bolt.)

This all happened in the context of the national climbing debate that was raging at the time over pre-placed protection. It is indeed ironic that several classic Gunks routes had been created with this very technique long before this huge debate flared up.

In looking for answers, I guess one should first take into account all the aid pins that had been hammered into the Gunks and then subsequently used for FFAs later on. Even though Stannard brought clean climbing ethics to the Gunks, he was using McCarthy's aid pins on Foops during the FFA. On Warp Factor 1, Williams and DuMais drilled a bolt at the crux for aid. Stannard used it to free the route.

Then again, people can argue that those original aid pins (and bolts) were placed from the ground up. And they'd have a point.

Ultimately, there seems to be a small fudge factor in the traditional history of the Gunks. And it's hard to fathom why some routes were allowed to be bolted and others not. As previously metioned, one factor is definitely the one concerning whether a route could be protected at all without a bolt or two. But it also seems to be about the personalities of the bolt placers and how they were regarded by the rest of the community. In addition, what were the personalities of the people who resisted bolting? Bolting occured during McCarthy and Stannard's day, yet they never smashed a bolt. Ken Nichols on the other hand made it his jihad to smash every bolt he could.

Why exactly was Arrow or Never Never Land allowed to be bolted and New Mutants not? Why does Beer and Loathing remain bolted to this day ... yet Pumping Pygmies had the insitu gear removed immediately?

I also think that in 1986 there was resistance to the next generation of climbing. For some reason at that time, American climbers were strongly divided over the direction that climbing was going in.

At the Gunks, you had guys like Scott Franklin who had established a 5.13 from the ground up ... but was reviled for placing three bolts on New Mutants. Guys like Mileski and Gruenberg, known for their serious routes, took it on the chin for placing one bolt on Clairvoyance. Dave Lanman, who establshed several hard 12s tradtionally, had his bolts on Running Man smashed. And there's the great story about how Frank Minunni confronted Ken Nichols after he established Future Shock with one bolt -- explaing to Nichols that no matter who does it, if the bolt is smashed on the route, he was going to come after Nichols. (The bolt is still there.)

My guess is that Lanman, Franklin and others were making a decision that flew in the face of the generation that immediately proceeded them. Clune, Raffa, Romano and others had devoted their energy and passion to putting new, hard, bold routes up in tradtional style.

Of course, there again (with the notable exception of Romano) their generation changed the rules of the past as well. Instead of pre-placing protection, they would work routes in seige parties and yo-yo routes ... not pulling the rope after each attempt as had previously been done. They even went as far as to top-rope To Be or Not To Be before making the FFA. And even some the most venerable Gunks traditionalists put a bolt or two up on the cliff ... including our own RG on Farewell to Fingers.

Still, looking back earlier than that, there are these hard-to-fathom exceptions to the tradtional history of the Gunks. Pas De Deux had its pins placed on rappel before the lead ... even though it was possible to place them on aid from the ground up ... why? The same goes for Crowther on Arrow. The bolts could have been placed from the ground up. Hell, Scotty banged in pins on Survival from the ground up. And then ... how does one account for Russ Clune (a strong traditional Gunks climber with a record of bold ascents) cutting down a tree and placing a bolt on rappel ... at Skytop?!

Anway ... I think it comes down to this ...

Pre-1986 there were few climbers who placed bolts. In the early days, the folks who placed bolts seemed to have generally put a lot of thought into their actions and made conclusions about the protectability of their routes, and more importantly, there didn't seem to be anyone who took it as their duty to remove or smash their bolts if they disagreed with their actions.

And the climbers who didn't pre-place or put bolts in ... well ... they made their FFAs in bold style and for the most part, climbers feel it's important to honor the style of the first ascentionist. In addition, many of the climbers who did place a few bolts were alos known for their bold, traditional climbing. (Had Clune and Raffa decided to place a bolt or two on To Be Or Not To Be, I am certain they would still be there today.)

Personally, I think that folks like Mileski, Franklin and Lanman also put thought into their bolting. They had earned their stripes as Gunkies and they were protecting visonary climbs that couldn't be protected in any other manner. But conversely, the Gunks community was probably deeply troubled in 1986 by the rise of sport climbing. While we know the Gunks can survive a few bolts and retain its traditions, at the time, you can imagine the fear that the community must have felt at the prospect of the Trapps or Lost City turning into another Smith Rocks. (I don't think that would have happened, but one cannot deny the fear of that possibility was justified.)

So ... like I said ... many answers ... none complete.

Almost certainly folks like DW and RG can illuminate this subject far better than I can.

Right you are. I was thinking of Wonderland, which has a bolt on the first pitch and which was, at least the last time I climbed it, an old 1/4 incher. But I'd forgotten about Never Never Land, which also has its bolt on the first pitch.

Nicely said and well thought out. Not being a top climber, I never took any issue with the war as I could protect anything I wanted to climb. The personalities involved were fun, enjoyable people from my perspective. It was hard to believe the stories heard over a brew until someone like Kevin B. would substantiate them. Thanks for the insight.

But I'd forgotten about Never Never Land, which also has its bolt on the first pitch.

Originally, it had three.

I think Lester has said it pretty well. I can only add a few remarks.

First, I didn't place a bolt on Farewell to Fingers and absolutely never would have. It was there as part of a direct aid start to Farewell to Arms and I just clipped it. It was kinda low, but certainly offered protection that isn't available now. In fact, although I've clipped countless bolts, I've never placed one myself. Given my stage of life, it is pretty clear that I'll end my climbing career without ever having placed a bolt.

Things like Arrow and Sente were done when free-climbing standards were still evolving in the Gunks. Remember, although Wiessner was a force, the major shaper of Gunks climbing was Hans Kraus, who came with a Dolomite approach that used a continuous spectrum of technique from free to aid. The celebration of and emphasis on pure free climbing as we know it arose in California at Tahquitz Rock, and those ideas were still filtering East when Crowther bolted Arrow. Although somewhat out of the mainstream, it simply wasn't an event of great ethical proportions at the time. Moreover, the Gunks was still a vast crag with lots of potential, and bolting with a hand drill is very difficult and time-consuming on Gunks rock, which is much harder than, say, granite. I don't think it would have occurred to anyone at the time that a few bolts would constitute a threat to the nature of climbing on the cliff, and so the contemporaries of the early bolters just shrugged and went about their own climbing, thinking no one would ever dream of extensive drilling.

When standards evolved, doing climbs without previewing, on the lead, and without aid for resting or working out the moves became the accepted way to climb. Bolts were accepted, as long as they were placed by the leader on the lead while free climbing. Lots of climbs, some of them truly ferocious, were done in California in this style, and many of these climbs remain an enormous challenge to this day. The Gunks, however, are too steep for a leader to stop and place a bolt while free climbing anything in the upper fifth-class range, so bolting was unacceptable because you couldn't do it without aid. However, no one thought a few ancient bolted classics like Arrow should be chopped. They were relics of a less developed age, and no one felt offended by their presence. At some point, almost every good climber went up and did Arrow (but not Sente!) without clipping the bolts, but this proved very little since the people doing this were fully capable of soloing the route anyway.

Later bolting efforts were not viewed so lightly. Those who did it were thumbing their noses at everything the climbing community held dear, and those were times when young people expressed their need to rebel by being more, rather than less, idealistic then their elders. Even though certain efforts were viewed as travesties, they were still seen as highly isolated anomalies, worthy of scorn but certainly not worth the damage and bad blood involved in destroying the routes. And so even a route as out of place as Beer and Loathing survived.

I think two things changed the general outlook: power drills and sport climbing. Taken together, it was easy to foresee a never-ending proliferation of bolted routes up tiny strips of blank rock a few feet away from protectable lines. Now, rather than being the result of the anomalous but very occasional behavior of a few stubborn individuals, bolting looked like a major on-going threat to the nature of Shawangunk climbing, and this was at a time before today's population pressures make it obvious that unrestrained bolting would be a disaster for the Gunks.

The original question seemed to imply a double standard, or at least some kind of suspicious inconsistency in attitudes towards bolts. I think that most of what happened was just an evolution of attitudes, together with a willingness to let the past rest in peace so long as it did not seem to threaten the future.