Gotta agree, ice climbing takes the cake for dicey. Everything related to ice seems to be sharp and pointy for some strange reason. Plus you're falling on gear in water (albeit frozen.) I think I'd rather take my chances with gear that's in rock.
I assume this is primarily about falling on lead while power drilling, since hand drilling ends up being little different than just plain old falling on lead. I've done my share of the latter, but can only recall one case where it happened while using power. In the power case the fall didn't exceed 20' and it actually ended up being pretty benign. The fall was totally unexpected as I was on a hook on steeper rock. I hadn't marked the bit so I took the drill out of the hole to check length and the hook ripped the edge while I was in the process of doing that. As a result I was holding the drill instead of it being in the hole above me, and when the fall was all said and done I was still holding the drill, even though I remember no conscious thought to hang onto it. So at least in this case the fall wasn't much different than if I had fallen off hand drilling.
In spite of all the paranoia (mine included) about coming off and having the drill chase you, it seems to me that it is quite/extremely rare that it actually gets to that point. My main partner and I have been pretty much exclusively using power for years now, and the case I mentioned is the only one I can remember where the fall was uncontrolled. There could be a few reasons for this perspective I guess.
1) A good system for pulling the drill up from the last bolt - thus not having to climb with it. Falls typically occur while doing moves, not when finally on a good enough stance to think about drilling. Consequently the drill is below you, and off of you most of the time. Once you pull up the drill all you need to do is survive long enough to get the bit in deep enough that it can/will support the weight of the drill by itself. If the stance is really dicey one can take the drill sling off at this point and the drill is going to remain in the hole even if you do come off (the drill is independently belayed on the tag line.) In fact, this works out good for stances where you might not be able to get it in on one go, you only have to pull the drill up once although you may go up/down more than once.
2) If you do get sketched out once the drill/bit self cams in the hole you can wrap a finger or two around the bit right at the rock. Not much difference between this and the old practice of weighting the hand drill. You're going to need to red point afterwards either way. Louie's comment about using a draw on the bit is similar to fingers around the bit, but would work better if it was steep. Those SDS bits are pretty strong.
Everybody probably comes up with their own system, but it seems to me that for the most part it isn't much more dangerous using a power drill.
I do have to wonder about this comment as well:
I would second that running it out and then lowering back down to install interim bolts is kosher. It also allows you to verify the line of climbing and the best placement for the bolts after having actually climbed through the terrain instead of guessing which way you'll be heading after the bolt in question if you were to drill them all as you went, having never climbed the sequences.
Maybe if one was climbing well below their level? How does that work otherwise? That's like saying run out the entire pitch so you can tell exactly where it goes and what the sequences are, then lower back down and put the bolts in. At a minimum you'd always be doing two bolts worth of runout just to get one bolt in, and if the stance is sketch you're twice as far out and probably twice as terrified. Good luck with that. If one isn't over bolting in the first place you're not likely to want to skip anything while leading - unless it is easy. Maybe I'm taking that comment too literally, or Louie was mixing/matching his TD vs. GU - haha.
However, I do agree that if one wants to lower down and add bolts afterwards it is kosher. I've found that there are cases where there might be a single runout that happened for whatever the reason, and when the pitch is said and done eliminating that runout makes sense in the overall context. Not common but it can happen. This is probably the more the case Louie was addressing anyway.
