82 Crag continuation

Lots of the work at the 82 Crag this past week.

On Sunday Block Party was completely re-bolted save for the few wedge bolts that were there. These were checked to make sure they weren’t spinners and torqued properly. The anchor was repositioned to be slightly higher and more to the right more properly dropping you over the mid-anchor if only rapping on a single rope (70m recommended). Also the top anchor was changed to an inline chainset to make things easier for the rap and retrieval. The left bolt on the mid anchor will be updated with a matching Raumer ring anchor hanger whenever I get a chance to climb that pitch next.

This evening I knocked out a bunch of smaller to-do items both on the Steep Wall and Main Face.

  • The anchor on Solarium was swapped out with an all stainless captive carabiner rig
  • The anchor on Crusty by Nature was swapped out to an all stainless equalized pig-tail rig
  • The increasingly problematic 5th bolt on Doggfather was replaced with a glue-in bolt. This bolt was pulled solely by spinning it with the drill. In over 200 bolts replaced, this is the first time I’ve seen this happen and it is somewhat disconcerting.
  • The old bolt holes on Doggfather were patched with epoxy
  • The 2nd to last bolt on Truffle Hog was pulled and replaced with a glue-in (video)

Here’s a video that covers the bolt on Truffle Hog.

It’s Not a Cruise

Based on a cursory inspection of the hardware on It’s Not a Cruise I had assumed the bolts were stainless five pieces and thus not a pressing issue. Recently I noticed that one of the washers was corroding and realized it was likely these were plated steel bolts. Sure enough even though some looked ok from the exterior, behind the scenes they were very corroded. Most of the bolts were spinners because the cone/sleeve interface was corroded in place. One was even clogged with mineral deposits.

Second bolt had to be moved because removal left the hole unusable, the third bolt was really close to a shallow left-facing flake which under the right circumstances could open the gate of a draw and that placement was moved left. The fourth bolt was in hollow rock and was re-positioned slightly right into better rock.

Professor Booty

All protection and anchor bolts on Professor Booty were replaced with some of the last 12mm AustriAlpin glue-in bolts left in the pool. The second and third protection bolts were re-positioned to put them in better quality rock but the rest of the placements are all using the original holes. Anyone who had climbed the route previously will be interested to know that both anchor bolts were true spinners, yikes!