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thisrod wrote:

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It's interesting how, 5 years ago, the question asked on Qurank was, "Why does Queensland need any sport routes, when timid people who want to do the moves can toprope?"

[Apologies for my absence. It's probably in everyone's best interest that I don't come here more than once a month.]

The problem of bolt spacing for me has arisen slowly over many years, and it arises in a possible combination with a second contentious issue: of the recent (decade) challenge to top-roping as a truly credible climbing protection. This is alluded to in your own comment "timid people who want to do the moves can toprope" ... the current climbing fraternity is rather frigid towards TR as a valid protection and to use it beckons derision from peers. One paper guide to KP even goes so far as to say that one cannot claim to have climbed or FA'd a line if it is only by top-rope.

Being a time-warper (frozen in time - or perhaps thawing out - after an effective 15 year gap), I have watched these changes:

• In the late 80's the dominant ethic was "if you fall, you are lowered to the ground to start again". Almost no-one Led at KP. Bolting was accursed. Leaders on trad were watched in absolute awe and were revered. All climbs in guides were cited with their original TR FAs.
  
• In the 90's we watched in disgust as people hung on top ropes and were sometimes almost dragged over cruxes by the rope tension from their belayer. Bolts started appearing and the same people who hung dogs on tope ropes simply hung them on each sequential bolt in a pathetic simulation of leading.
• Now I've reappeared in the late 00's and Toproping is virtually relegated to some concept of being not-even-real-climbing, as if the unweighted protection has a great deal to contribute to the ascent's true completion. (Ah, it has a psychological effect you say!)
  
• Almost no-one TRs in this era! Why!? (I moot peer-pressure, as described later.) I've watched garden-variety climbers struggle to climb 15s and 16s on lead! Not because their leading skills are weak, but because their most basic climbing skills were absent - they're so fall-averse (because of the Lead) that they're failing to learn the basic climbing moves - feet and hands finessing the rock stuff - not ropes and clips! If only these same climbers hooked a TR on some other climbs they could learn more about the pure craft and joy of holding the rock - rather than clumsying their way up a Lead-protected ladder with no real hope of learning climbing while looking on in disapproval at my TR as I sail daintily up a [them+5] grader - as if I'm doing something illicit.
  
• Guides now trivialise or entirely fail to cite the original FTRAs and dominantly cite the post-90's bolting FLAs. The original ascender who first dared the line, climbed it and named it in the 50's, 60's and 70's is now of little import compared to the first person who broke ranks from the 80's-ethic and dragged a cordless drill and a pot of glue to the cliffs.
  

I can only surmise that the current demeanment of toproping is a response to the very severe and degrading top-rope hangdogging of the 90's. The idea that dominates seems to be that all top-ropers must also somehow be cheeky hang-doggers (whether the buggers will admit it or not!), and now I see an interesting mirror for that in the comment earlier that "Bolting lines so people can dog they're way from bolt to bolt to get up a climb will do no one any favors." So now we assume that anyone who desires a mathematically safe bolt line is cut from the same cloth as those bloody 90's hang-dogging top-ropers? And by golly, we're going to space our bolts out so that you can't just hang-dog from bolt to bolt - that'll stop you naughty hang-doggers! "After all, only hang-doggers would want a safe bolt line ..."

Look my point is hang-doggers will always find a way to dog up a climb and falsely claim their grade in bar-talk. Cheats will always find new cheats. It's the paradox of law. Write a law, you invite subversion of it from those who are that way bent.

But, I plead for you all to consider again that the climb is the rock, not the protection. If I free-climb a piece of rock, and I do not weight my protection, what does it really matter what form that protection took? - I didn't weight it! Am I not allowed to protect my own life and the life of my partner to the best of my conscience, and still have the respect of my sporting / interest peers for having acheived the athletic accomplishment of the climb?

Humans are a creative lot, and I don't expect bolts to be a long-lived part of climbing history. Sometime in our lifetimes a far-superior climbing protection will appear that makes no alteration to the rock and will be applied by each climber as they travel, as frequently as they choose themselves to apply it. Perhaps gecko-pads as pro, rather than as footwear? And how will the FA's placements of gecko-pad-pro be defined and recorded accurately so that repeat ascentionists can "truly repeat the climb as done by the FA"? This is impossible with portable-sticky-pad-face-pro. So focussing on "the Pro as being an essential part of the climb" is a nonsense. The rock is the climb. If any pro whatsoever is weighted the climb was not completed. If pro was not weighted the climb was completed (or it was knowingly Aided, which is also valid). If pro was not used for some distance, it was soloed (if in part). Any other defnition is missing the transient nature of the science of safety. Today's de-rigeur is yesterday's lame. Bolts will pass. The rock is forever. The climb is defined by the rock and the moves, not the pro.

Who dares to rename and regrade Hillary's Step, and claim themselves the FA because of protection-du-jour?

Yet I can show you dozens of famous climbs at KP now attributed to people who were sperm when the FA was truly completed. And this rewrite of history on the back of nothing more elaborate than "protection-du-jour" justified by "Top-ropers must all be hang-doggers, and hang-doggers aren't true climbers, so these can't be true FAs". These would call Hillary a hang-dogger.

If you want to stake a claim in history, don't make it one of petty theft. Do something more worthwhile than bolt up a decades old route and declare yourself Napoleon.

As for the dogmatics who say that the climb must be repeated as per the original F(BoltLead)A: the only way to truly repeat the FBLAs at KP in the style of the FBLA is to [stupidly exaggerated example follows] have a mate pull all the bolts and repack the holes with rock-bog (because the FBLA faced up to bare rock), then go and hang on a TR and drill them all again, and re-glue bolts in, then zig-zag up and down making sure they all set ok, and then finally pink-point it a few times, and eventually red-point it.

Because you are dreaming if you imagine that somehow those bolts at KP were drilled during the actual one-off First Bolt Ascent, or that the bolts were placed without any prior knowledge of the climb and then the FBoltA went up the climb red-point on-sight without beta - on a climb that has previously been climbed by every climber for up to 5 decades on TR .

Anyway. I do appreciate the many well-thought-out (as opposed to mine, which would benefit from many edits and culls), but contrasting, comments that were added after my last one. I deliberately stayed offline, as it seemed that my view was a fairly isolated one.

Sorry about the essay. I just shouldn't write when I'm taking pain-killers.
Coming out of the 90's time-warp I seem to be noticing a really obvious anti-TR thing, something that is oblivious to those who've been around continuously. Or I'm just wrong. Perspective is never absolute.

I am still struck by the comment that was made that "After all, only hang-doggers would want a safe bolt line ...". I mean if you are deliberately wide-spacing bolts just to chase off hang-doggers, geez, that's terrible - what about the honest majority who just want a decent climb? I've been spinning the line for decades that lead climbing is an mathematically safe practice - you place the pro so as to continuously prevent a ground fall. Now you're saying on a public forum that you're happy to space out permanent pro in a public-showcase climbing location to make a ground fall happen just to scare off the cheaters. Extraordinary logic. "Nuke the entire site, it's the only way to be certain".

Meanwhile I'm trying to sell the idea that climbers are really responsible safety conscious citizens to some parks guys. I don't see how proudly setting booby traps for unwitting future climbers is good for the sport's appeal to our state's administrators.

I'm going to have to get back in the time capsule for the benefit of social peace. The idea that scaring off hang-doggers is more important to anyone than some beautiful person's life is inexplicable to me.