UKC

I recently carried out a recce to Rosyth Quarry. I note the belay stakes at the top are a bit old and wobbly looking.  Has anyone considered a few bolts at the top of some of the sketchy bits or is this a trad only sort of place?  Not wanting to start a drama, just thinking about safety provision in a quarry.

a couple of solid anchors would be welcomed by me.

Don't put bolts in any of my routes.

Perhaps some glue in bolts in some exposed rock on top near the wobbly stakes, with the trad routes on the face left alone of course. Surely a bolt has less visual impact than a rusty stake?  

Oh FFS. Really? No, just don't. And as I said before, don't touch any of mine. I live 5 minutes away, I'll take them out soon as you put them in.

In reply to aln:

My original post said: "Not wanting to start a drama" oops 

Simple question to those who use the quarry, Do you want to make it safer?  Would a couple of bolts detract from the cultural importance of the offensive graffiti, Buckfast empties and accumulations of trash.  

I see other quarries are getting developed across Scotland, I personally think natural rock is sacred and should not be touched but quarries are an eyesore, and often are particularly dangerous and are well suited to sport climbing.

just bung a couple of new stakes in?

No, but that is not really the point. Climbing culture is the point here.

Some are an eyesore, some are not. Some are dangerous, some are not. Some are suited to sport climbing, some are not.

I think your level of insincerity in that oops created a critical insincerity density and the resulting black hole is now threatening the entire forum.

- Post with an alt account - check

- Post a deliberately divisive issue - check

- Make like you are all innocent - check

- popcorn - check

Still, I think it's the fastest I've seen a thread degenerate into personal insults so maybe you get is some sort of record for being a terrible person.

My sincere response to your question: I prefer stakes, in my experience they don't snap, so if you have time and money on your hands, new stakes would be a nice idea.

By the way, unless they are actually waving in the wind, stakes do not "look" wobbly. Can I suggest that before you do anything else you go and find out whether they _feel_ wobbly or if they just happen to have been driven in at squint angles.

That isn't really the question you are asking though is it?

That is rather a loaded way of putting it. The two things (bolts and litter) are not equivalent, so implying that anyone who tolerates litter must also tolerate bolting does you no favours.

This seems to be the crux of the matter - it suggests that you are not just in favour of anchor bolts, but also full bolting for sport. This is exactly the "thin end of the wedge" that those of us against anchor bolting wish to avoid.

Rosyth quarry is safe, and gets reasonable amounts of traffic. Therefore I see no justification for making a change, let alone such a controversial one.

Sometimes the no bolts rule exasperates me, like at the top of a sea stack (where everyone is going to be ebbing), where a mass of fifty pieces of tat all rotting and blowing in the wind is infinitely more visible to the general public than a couple of discrete bolts (or a chain as at the top of the Inaccessible Pinnacle). Similarly, I feel a couple of discrete abb bolts at somewhere like Diabaig is infinitely preferable to the alternative sketchy downclimb, but I can appreciate others feel that if you can't get yourself down safely then don't go up in the first place.

However, back to this OP, if a belay stake can be used then that is always going to be the preferred choice. Those stakes at the top of Rosyth are deep in and although they're not rigidly concreted in I don't recall them being 'dodgy'. Putting a few bolts in there I suspect would open the doors to others thinking it's okay to have belay bolts in other places, and then potentially stick some in the walls too. We're at a point where there's huge influx of new climbers in the last few years and personally I feel the trad traditions need to be well protected to ensure they aren't swept aside by the numbers of new climbers who feel that everything should be easy and accessible to them. Just because someone isn't willing to put the effort in to learning the skills needed to climb outside, and accepting that it is not a zero risk sport, that doesn't mean we should dumb it down to their level. 

Ding ding!  We have a winner! 

Whoever had 12 posts please come on down and collect your prize...

Slightly disappointed that so far no one has said, “You don’t have to use the bolts.”

Easy mate! I come from a trad background on sea cliffs and am fairly new to sport, so imagine whatever the hell you wish me to be in your eyes.  I simply asked a few questions and wanted some reasonable discussion and hear some different view points and understand why some quarry areas are getting bolted and some others aren't.  In my view pristine sea cliffs should be left alone,  manky quarries, well I struggle to see the harm of some decent pro if suitable trad doesn't exist.  No conspiracy here mate, never placed a bolt in my life,  so please try not to be so obnoxious.

Oh cool, we should go climbing sometime. Drop me a mail if you're likely to be on Skye

Don't get me wrong, I am entertained by this thread, it's a very perennial issue that seems to come up every week or two on UKC.

wrt Rosyth in particular, there are very few places one can learn to trad climb very close to Edinburgh and (as grotty and crap as it is) Rosyth is one of the main ones so I think it's fair that it should remain a trad venue.

With a thread like this I think being anything less than obnoxious would be to not measure up to the standards expected on UKC :P

Way it goes on here innit, ask a question, in a polite way, get shot down for having the temerity to ask it and probably personally insulted to boot.

If the people who respond to you in that way think they're helping their cause I've got news, they're not. 

Next time someone new logs on here to ask about placing a bolt, are threads like this going to embolden them to ask the question, or just go ahead and place the f*cking thing?

Can we not just all be nice to people who ask questions?

Err, Aberdour is only round the corner, and is far far better a venue than Rosyth quarry!

Then progress on to Limekilns after Aberdour.

Just started using UKC and the forums myself, quite an eye opener isn't it!

I'm from Jersey, beautiful granite sea cliffs, no bolts allowed quite rightly. 

So here in Scotland there appears to be a mixed bag of bolts and or trad in quarries. Who works this all out, is it a free for all, or the result of some delicate negotiations between clubs and land owners?

We are all climbers who would normally greet each other on the crag, no need for war in a forum. 

I am safety minded and wouldn't want to see anyone get hurt for want of any reasonable compromises in areas where it wouldn't necessarily do any harm. 

I know all this.

I said "few" not "only".

Sounds like something Hitler would do!!

<Full House>

I would like to point out that I didn't bring up the thin end of the wedge apropos of nothing, OP escalated over three comments from a reasonable question about the potential for anchor bolts, to saying that they favour turning quarries into sport climbing venues.

So if OP had the 12 comment sweepstake then they clearly cheated.

Part of the reason for the acrimony is that this sort of question is asked a lot. You say you are new on the forum so will not have been exposed to that. The arguments never move forward so we tend to assume that people are just trolling, or at least have an agenda, at this point.

As you will see in another ongoing thread, retrobolting of established trad venues is strongly frowned upon, whether they are quarries or otherwise. People successfully belay off the existing protection at Rosyth every weekend without incident.

As I said on the other current thread ( https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/rock_talk/dollar_quarry_-_new_bolted_rout... ), sadly we have no good process or forum for this sort of discussion in Scotland. The result is a bit of a free for all - sometimes the bolts stay in, sometimes someone gets annoyed enough to go and chop them. The only certainty is an acrimonious thread on here.... 

Thanks for all the positive contributions to my question. If bolting is a controversial subject, I'm just glad I didn't ask if anyone was an anti vaxxer!  

(Don't start!)

This was your first mistake. UKC is not the place for reasonable discussion

If you place bolts near a city with lots of trad climbers who object to bolts they'll get chopped. The strange consequence is that the bolts are more likely to survive up north rather than in grotty quarries near cities.

The other factor in Edinburgh is Ratho. I don't see people who go sport climbing indoors at Ratho demanding to be allowed to climb in Rosyth quarry. 

Why would they when they can sport climb in Ratho quarry. (Who remembers that debacle)

Really? 

You ought not to be - "thin end of the wedge" is by far the more commonly used term on here.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/info/search.php?forum=0&dates=1&n...

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/info/search.php?forum=0&dates=1&n...

Sarcasm.

Closely followed by giving up.

Fair enough.

It's difficult to get sarcasm across on forum posts, particularly as none of us really know one another or really have a sense of if that's the kind of thing we would say in jest or something they would be serious about.

You're not wrong though....  You really don't have to use the bolts.

That's me being sarcastic now

I didn’t give you the dislike, in case you’re wondering. Why anyone would is beyond me but there are some odd specimens out there.

No worries, all good!  

Yes you're right, there really are some odd specimens who can seem to take a dislike to some of the most innocuous posts.