Jon reminded me about a week ago about this event, basically the BMC are trying to come up with a best practice guide for bolting and they wanted to test a load of different types to see which met the UIAA standard (European 15KN direct pull out, British 20KN direct pull out).
There were a lot of old people stood around looking at the floor when I got there and I couldn't really understand why until it dawned on me that they'd bolted the bed of rock rather than a section of the crag. Jon gave me a quick visual tour of horseshoe and I was surprised that the main face resembled quality, it was then explained why this place gets a bad rep (albeit a little quietly as Gary Gibson wasn't far off, being loud), all of the choss to the left etc. was bolted, mainly by Gary.
Various bolts were tested including:
Fixe Glue-ins (>20Kn)
Capsule Glue-ins (Kristian didn't like these for some pretty obvious reasons)
Screwfix 17p through bolts (20KN and they didn't budge)
Gary's homemade staples (13KN failure load (on average) )
the most interesting bolts were a new design touted to be sustainable as when they're ruined you can supposedly stick a bar through them and twist them out and then drill out the glue and reuse the hole, simple. They're made out of 6mm stainless steel that forms a normal P-shaped head and then twists around the other leg (like a liquorice stick) to create a heavily key'd pattern, at about 12mm, diameter.
This means the head of the bolt is fairly thin and looks pretty insufficient in my opinion, Jon raised a good point: these would be absolutely useless to lower off midway up a route, something some of the old boys didn't seem to see the point of. These were pull tested and although the head deformed (A LOT), they didn't totally fail, it was a different matter when we came to take them out, the bar deformed the head of the bolt even more, it then wrapped around the bar before quickly shearing off, and thats before they're even at all worn/degraded. Useless, which is a real shame.
The BMC then kindly offered all volunteers chip buttees and a brew which was welcomed as it was freezing, Bonjoy declined and quested out into the wind (a braver man than I)...
Later on: my finger well and truly gave up on me, (pulling out a chair for breakfast hurt like hell) and when it came to training up the board (I had one last ditch effort to convince myself it was ok...). I could feel my injury holding me back . Oh well, going to look at gyms tomorrow, I need to get well and truly psyched for something else or what, with the lack of work I'll have absolutely nothing to keep me entertained!
I found this the other day and thought it was a good read. Lee will probably enjoy it but I doubt a lot of other people will.
The title of this post is the name of a Jon (John?) Redhead route that I overheard a story about this morning:
Supposedly JR's Hilti failed on him whilst placing THE bolt for this route so instead he borrowed someone else's Bosch. After clipping the bolt and climbing a long way past it he noticed his draw had unclipped itself leaving him in a bit of a sticky situation (I hate trad, scary stuff), and hence the name. A (semi) interesting snippet for anyone who has bothered to read this far.
3 comments:
hi paul. i must admit, i didn't "read this far", but did skim down to the bottom... the J.R. story is 99% correct. i believe he had a single krab on the bolt (foolish), which came unclipped. so really, it wasn't a demon of bosch, but an almost predictable result of stupidity. vic wants to borrow your arms as your finger's out of action. i think she'll look daft, but i suppose she'll be able to scratch her own back.
me again! did that 'totally sick system bro' problem tonight. it IS brilliant, although the name is cringe-worthy. still can't manage that slopey 7b. ho hum. hope the finger isn't as bad as it sounds. see you soon.
Shame about the finger yoot!!
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