In reply to andyathome:
> So they should be bolted? To 'improve' the 'venue'?
> But then we are told that there is a desperate need for more 'sport venues' for neglected sports climbers with no handy clip-ups so existing routes should be bolted up to cater for them.
If an existing route was done heavily reliant on pegs and these have since rotted, snapped or whatever then it does improve the venue to do something about them, regardless of what that something is almost anything is better than leaving them to rot, even removing them since at least they don't offer false hope that way.
As for neglected sport climbers - the old timers got to do them as clip ups back in the day when the pegs were new, and even pretend it was trad rather than the "poor mans sport" some of these routes probably were, so it seems a bit rich to me to moan that today's generation might like to see the protection in the same state it was in years gone by, just because at the time they were equipped only for the short term.
> And it doesn't make sense for people to have to lug trad gear along with them as well as their quickdraws so we should have to accept that certain crags are simply 'sport' (Portland?) and will get bolted.
Have you ever felt seriously disappointed that all the routes which were originally protected by drilled pegs (poor mans bolts anyway) on Portland with horrific top outs through the capping rubble have now been turned into reasonable sport routes? I haven't. If I wanted that I'd go to Gogarth.
> (Just why the hell the BMC does not adapt their bolting guidelines to say categorically that if a route can be adequately protected with leader placed protection it should NOT be bolted I do not know).
Define adequately in a way we can all agree with, and you've taken the first step to making it happen...
Also, how does that work in reference to the point above about pegs? Does adequate leader placed protection include placing a half dozen pegs in the pitch?