If it helps to clarify, the guys who left the gear on Kansas City were from out of town - New River Gorge by way of Moab.

Gotta give him credit for getting after it while locals were busy gang toproping...

DL

Well I guess that settles that debate.

Rob:

Obscure question.

If you need to ask, maybe you actually know the answer.

My personal feeling is, the climber in question was foolish to say the least, but taking the gear would be unethical.

I think I've twice bootied a small amount of gear that in retrospect, I now consider theft and ethically horrenous.

State rangers have, at times, acted with questionable ethics too. Fortunately they haven't tortured or beaten people, at least that I'm aware of.......

Who's a state Ranger???? Like I said I would have told the Preserve that I had the gear if the owners came looking. Of course I would have returned their gear to them if I knew who it was. But bad on them for leaving it there. This isn't Moab, or the New. If I were traveling around, I certainly would have asked what the local ethic was before littering a route with gear.

RR

The funny thing about the party in question is that they are strong enough to lead it ground up evry time. Why would you was time pinkpointing it, missing out on the chance of a true redpoint. Doesn't make sense at all.

Before we get our panties too wadded into a bunch, seriously, how many parties were inconvenienced or prevented from doing the route because there was gear on it for less than 24 hrs.?

I think the OP was using this as an example for what is right and wrong and not necessarily just speaking to this one instance.

Rob,
My guess is that there are very few trad areas where the local ethic includes preplacing gear on a climb that was freed over 25 years ago. I'd be interested in hearing about those areas where this is the norm. It's like driving in another state, you gotta know the laws when you get there.

Ta,
Dizz

nobody is prevented in doing the route, but you'd have to rap the route, strip the gear, lead the route, and if you were nice, replace the gear. PITA!!!

Where I climb nowadays (also an area with very strict trad ethics) the 5.12's (depending on if it is popular or not) will get led between once to maybe 9 times on a weekend, and I deal with having to move peoples raplines because they throw them down on the route I'm doing all the times. You don't know, and its not right to disrupt other peoples experiences.

Apply the usual test for gender/number/*-ism: swap the gender/number/*.

So: if someone had left gear all over High E all day just because they were doing a photo shoot or project-ing it, would we even be having this "debate"? I think not.

Ethics aren't different if you're on a 5.12 or a 5.2 ... the only thing different are the egos or lack of humility involved. So yeah, bad on them for leaving it there, no matter who or what.