Re: Southern Yosemite Rebolting - List of Completed and Most Needed Projects

[daniel banquo merrick]

Bob and I also set up a descent down the gully climber's right of Banquo. Scramble down to ledges and several rappels.

Did you check the two anchor bolts on Scepter/Pit and Pendulum? As far as I know, the original Robbons bolts are still there. Have to be the oldest bolts on QT.

[NateD]

Great work, Clint, Bob, and Sharon!
Was just thinking that QT may well have the most hard ground-up ascents at Shuteye. And, is it possible that all routes to date have been done ground-up? Do you know, John? Maybe some of these new variations/routes mentioned were not done by traditional means.

[John]

Was just thinking that QT may well have the most hard ground-up ascents at Shuteye. And, is it possible that all routes to date have been done ground-up? Do you know, John? Maybe some of these new variations/routes mentioned were not done by traditional means.

The hardest were all done ground up. Don't know for sure about all of them though.

[susan]

Yes, great work! very much appreciate all the effort!

[DaveyTree]

Nice work! Thanks for the upgrades.

[Clint Cummins]

The routes may be ground up, but a lot of the FAs were in 1989 which was the powerdrilling era.
On Snake Eyes (5.12a to 12c), the first 3 bolts were 3/8", and were close enough that I think bolts 2 and 3 could have been drilled
by standing on the previous bolt and reaching up with a powerdrill in the left hand.
Bolt 4 (the 1/4" x 1" which I replaced) was on a left traverse, with nothing to hook that I could see.
It would take one decent finger hold with marginal feet and it could have been powerdrilled.
It's grainy like Joshua Tree along the base and through the crux.

The 1/4" on upper pitches (Midnight Caller, The Rising of the Moon) which I replaced were 1.5" long,
which is longer than what people normally drill for pro bolts by hand.
Lots of knobs/stances for those.

I'm not saying that powerdrilling on lead is not fun, but it may not be all that challenging, either.
We are not seeing something really amazing like The Promise or The Believer (on The Footstool, El Cap),
but I think the guys did have fun at Queen's Throne.

[NateD]

Neat observations Clint. Yes, those routes were indeed powerdrilled. I'm sure Eric Fazio-Rhicard wouldn't mind me sharing a few of his words on the matter:

"Herb turned Bob Kerry and I on to the ridge.  We went there for a month with two of the original bosch Bulldogs and 6 batteries.  We camped in sight of the Queens Throne and did new routes ground up every day for almost a month.  When the batteries were dead we would head in to town and would get a woman who owned a motel to charge up our batteries while we got food and supplies...

...We used 5/16th split shank bolts and probably SMC and leeper hangers.  The hangers may not be but the bolts are bomber as I have removed a lot of them on old routes and none really needed replacing.  Now I just leave them in if there isn't a ton of rust.  Feel free to replace any you like...

...Shuteye was cool in that it was virtually untouched.  Almost everything we looked at was ours to climb.  We also had Bosch Bulldogs which allowed us to be safer while still putting up mentally interesting routes.  Compared to the routes I put up today there were some pretty big runs at times.  Crown Jewel is memorable to me because it looks so blank I thought drilling from smears would be hard.  I planned to drill from the gear loop the drill hung on.  I also put all the bolts and hangers on quickdraws to speed up the process.  As it turned out there were enough little edges that I never had to drill from the hip and I never hung or weighted a bolt while putting it up."

[mungeclimber]

onsight stance!!!!


love that shit!

[Climberdude]

Fresno Dome Bolt Replacements

In September and October 2002, I rebolted the following routes:

"Narley Waves"  nine or ten (all) bolts replaced on both pitches, including belay bolts.

"The Woods" three bolts replaced.

"Split Decision" six bolts replaced, one hanger replaced with existing bolt.

Lower Willow Creek Wall Bolt Replacements

In October 2002, I rebolted the following routes:

Third climb from the left (at that time, not sure if this is still the same), replaced the five Pika wall hangers with 1/4" x 1-1/2" Rawl split shaft bolts with 3/8" x 3" Rawl five-piece bolts and Trango SS hangers.  I do not know the name of this climb since no guidebook has listed a name for it (it was not shown in Spencer's guidebook, but is in Slater's Northern California guidebook as well as Mike Archega's guidebook.

"Walk of Life", "Impatience", "Highwire", and "Starched Shorts"  replaced top homemade aluminum hangers (marked with "T" likely for Marty True) and 1/4" x 1-1/2" split shaft bolts with 1/2" x 3-1/2" bolts and Fixe rappel ring hangers.  Replaced seven lead protection bolts on "Impatience".  Although many of the homemade aluminum hangers were stamped with "T", likely for one of the first ascentionists Marty True, I found a homemade (?) Leeper-style (but thicker than a Leeper) hanger which was stamped either "L.W. 88" or "D.W. 88".  Since neither of the first ascentionists had these initials, I suspect L.W. or D.W. rebolted an existing bolt installed in 1988 during the first ascent in 1985.  Spencer's guidebook shows this route as curving, yet the actual climb is nearly straight up.

Mark Fletcher

[John]

Thanks for all of the hard rebolting work, Mark. That is a lot of work!

The stamped "LW" is for Lavon Weighall one of Mark Spencers partners. He had a workshop of some sorts and would fabricate batches of homemade hangers for use out in the wild.

I am currently sorting out the Willow Creek Wall routes and have some questions on the route order and what you found when you replaced the hardware there:

When we were last there I found that Walk Of Life still had original hangers. It is the route with two buttonhead studs without hangers at the direct start variation (they could be rivets I suppose?) Are you sure you replaced Walk Of Life?

The "third climb from the left" looked like the first climb to me, with new hardware that is. I have the post-Spencer Guide, Spencer route "Condor-10d" as a stray route on my list with no home yet but should be in that area. Do you know how hard the route you rebolted was? I have questions in to Spencer but he gets busy.

The curving path of Impatience is still correct in the Spencer Guide. The straight path up to the third bolt appears to be a direct start to Impatience called "Eh Mon-10d". I led it thinking it was a "5.9+" and was ashamed of my whimpering on a "5.9". When I realized it was a different climb I felt relieved.

Thanks!

[Climberdude]

John,

Thank you for the clarification regarding L.W.  It is always nice to connect something regarding a climb to a specific person.  To be more clear, I did not replace any of the lead protection bolts on "Walk Of Life", "High Wire", or "Starched Shorts", but rather I replaced bolts at the top anchor of these climbs.  I believe I replaced them so that there still remained three bolts at the top since originally there were three bolts.  I wrote this information from information I had in my climbing journal.  It is quite likely that I replaced bolts on a direct start of "Impatience" that may not be shown in the Spencer guidebook as I found that the bolts went almost straight up in a line.  I highly doubt that what I revolted was "Walk of Life" because I led the route after replacing bolts and there was no way even then that I could lead 5.11d which is the rating of "Walk of Life".  The climb I led felt harder than 5.9+, so I suspect I was on some kind of direct start.

I am pretty sure the third climb from the left at that time which I rebolted is now the 5.10a climb marked as Climb 2 in Mike A.'s 2nd edition Fresno Dome climbing guide (still the third bolted climb from the left).  I used Trango stainless steel hangers, so if the current third route from the left has Trango hangers, then this is the one I rebolted.  The bolt count shown in Mike's guide corresponds to the number of bolts I replaced.  I was really surprised when I originally noticed that this climb had Pika wall hangers on it.  I knew these hanger well since I had many of them for replacing hangers on aid climbs.  I really did not think people would use these climbers for sport (or semi-sport) climbs, but given that this route was likely put up in the very late 80's or early 90's, there were many more funky hangers available on the market.  It would be nice to put names to these climbs rather than just numbers.

Mark

[susan]

It is always nice to connect something regarding a climb to a specific person.... It would be nice to put names to these climbs rather than just numbers.

I hear that. Good seeing you out there again!

[daniel banquo merrick]

Bumping this thread.

We have figured out a reasonably reliable way to remove 3/8" wedge bolts leaving the hole in good shape. At Pinnacles, we have been removing old wedge bolts at Discovery Wall and replacing them with longer ASCA 5-piece 3/8" sleeve bolts. We simply drill the hole deeper.

The spinning of wedge bolts for removal was developed by others but I figured out how to do it without power tools.

Others had fabricated a puller using an acme threaded rod and wrenches but I figured out how to do it with modified riveting tools.

I don't think there are many old rusty wedge bolts in SoYo but if you know of any, list them here or send me an email. If there are any, I may go do some replacement work next summer.

Wedge bolt removal - hydraulic tool - 14 minute video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M__vbflqzI

Mechanical tool - 6.5 minute video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC20qXhNjD0

[mungeclimber]

nice! Love seeing this!

The spinning part is left out of the video. And you're vid is in granite. But what kind of damage is spinning doing in the hole before pull when in pinns rock?  In other words, I could see reusing the hole with a larger diameter bolt, but not the same diameter bolt (even if a sleeve design replacement). The risk being that the contact made with the back of the hole where the cone and sleeve make contact is no longer uniform and thus more subject to reduced strength when loaded. Let me know if I'm not describing that well.


Any thought on extending the length of the handle to make the stroke 'easier'?

thx again Dan!

[daniel banquo merrick]

Munge,

I left the spinning out of the short video but it is in the long one. Pretty boring stuff.

Here's a 10 minute video of the first bolt we did at Pinns:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a0oBTF4UFs

The spinning doesn't touch the hole, spinning is all about the contact surface between the cone and sleeve. To get the new 5 piece bolts to work in Pinns crud, we actually enlarge the original hole with a 10mm drill. The Powers Power-Bolt is supposed to work with a 3/8" or 10mm bit but we have found that they sometimes don't work in a 3/8" hole.

Any thought on extending the length of the handle to make the stroke 'easier'?

Watch the first video with the hydraulic tool.

The mechanical tool with short handles develops enough force, up to 5000 lbs, to break rusty old 3/8" bolts so longer handles won't do anything but make it harder to carry around.