OPEN DISCUSSION: Establishing a National Fixed Anchor Source

Andrew Gram wrote:

Yes, start a new thread for the nonprofit clearinghouse.

I'd love to see better standards, best practices, and just all around resources about intelligently bolting/rebolting/fixed anchors. I think it would make the right gear much easier to buy and research - I had hoped that the ASCA would spearhead that, but the education section on that site is awfully sparse.

Current Situation: Due mostly to corrosion, existing fixed anchors are being replaced in huge numbers all across the country. Often the replacement bolt is the same type/material as the one being removed, and thus it will need to be replaced again in the same number of years, wasting money and labor and creating more holes in the rock.

Not replacing them is obviously not an option, as safety and access would quickly be impacted.

New routes are often being put up with no regard to the lifespan of the bolts being installed. Cost is the only factor considered, and this means plated or galvanized bolts which we know corrode in only a few years in most areas of the country.

The UIAA is in the process of developing type & material guidelines that should ensure a fixed anchor has a minimum lifetime of 50 years, and hopefully longer. Given the huge number of bolts being installed, we in the U.S. want to get moving in that direction immediately.

For example, a 304 stainless expansion bolt should last 50 years in a high alpine environment, but a titanium glue-in is required at coastal areas near San Francisco.

The Idea: is to establish a Nation-wide, non-profit source for fixed anchors where any climber can buy bolts, chains, quick-links, etc. at the lowest price possible, and the bolts will be matched to the environment in which they will be used.

Materials that we know corrode quickly (plated and galvanized bolts) will not be offered, and it is hoped that this high-volume flow will provide stainless bolts at nearly the same price.

Emphasis will be placed on expansion bolts that are removable, so your great-grandchildren can easily replace them in 75-100 years without drilling a new hole. Glue-in bolts should last indefinitely.

In addition, up-to-date "How To Install" and "How to evaluate your Environment" information will be available in a single, vetted web-location. Much of this info is already out there but scattered and not vetted.

Examples
1) You need 10 bolts for a high alpine route, hand drilled on lead. A 304 Stainless 3/8" expansion bolt should do the trick and you get the same low-price as the guy buying 100 bolts.

2) You're bolting a sea-cliff in Puerto Rico. You need a dozen titanium glue-ins, and a How To Glue video.

3) You and your buddies are replacing 100 corroded bolts in the Red River. What should you use? There's already 4 rusty bolts for each clip and it looks like two of them once were stainless.

Okay, let the games begin. Don't shoot the messenger. Don't kill an idea in its infancy. Let's improve it.

Sounds like a good idea.

Would you restrict this to only orders from within the USA? I'm doing my route development about 100 miles north of the border, in Canada, could I also order from you?

David Gibbs wrote:Sounds like a good idea. Would you restrict this to only orders from within the USA? I'm doing my route development about 100 miles north of the border, in Canada, could I also order from you?

Well, it would not be me, I wouldn't be directly involved in either policy or fulfillment decisions. Customs duty, taxes, etc. might be an issue.

But if Canada would like to join in, I don't see any reason to exclude you guys. Or Mexico for that matter. The higher the volumes, the lower the prices we'd all benefit from.

The accountant in me wonders how this is funded? Also, why does this need to be at a national level? Perhaps local organizations could be better at developing this at a local crag level.

Having some sort of national guidelines would be nice so it's not a hodgepodge of standards like it is now.

BUT the buying power would basically require a monopoly on supplies and would probably nix the savings as monopoly tend to do. I thinking facilitating a buying group would be better. If the discount is at 100 bolts, someone sets up a pending buy, others buy into a share of the purchase, once the full order amount is covered, the order is placed and the product distributed to the buying group. Obviously limiting geographic area would help so they can be given out in person and not reshipped. This way companies still compete on pricing, quality and design.

A HELL OF A GOOD IDEA, JOHN. Buying power, standardization, new safe long-term hardware. Sounds like a Win/Win situation. Too bad the ASCA wasn't more proactive in extending their practices and focus in this direction years ago.

It would need funding to get started, but after that the pricing should be based at the minimum to cover the cost for the organization to buy the bolts and still cover operating costs.

In the mean time could something just be done to encourage people to set up their own buying groups? It could be as simple as a stickied topic in each of the regional forums, maybe add links for how to place the bolts appropriate for the area in the initial post. For some regions such as California the initial post might need to be longer, but it'd still be better.

What about some sort of buy in to get the initial funding needed.

Zac.St.Jules wrote:What about some sort of buy in to get the initial funding needed.

My thought would be membership fees. Only members can get reduced pricing.

Benjamin Chapman wrote:Too bad the ASCA wasn't more proactive in extending their practices and focus in this direction years ago.

This can be an awesome idea as long as it does not endanger access - done quietly through local climbing organizations may be better than a national clearing house. People should remember there are land managers all across the country who are contemplating banning bolting altogether, and even some who are removing existing bolts. Climbers do not exist in a vacuum.

I think people may have unrealistic expectations of the discount level. Even if someone institutes this type of thing, the bolt prices will still be 2-3 times that of plated bolts - if not more (depending on what plated bolts people were using).

If you want something like this to really work, you need a strong local community where lots and lots of climbers donate money, and this pool of community donated money is used to bring the price of quality bulk ordered stainless bolts (or Ti for seaside) down to what the FA folks would pay for cheap plated bolts. This can be a lot of $$ we are talking about depending on the rate of development, the local community, and of course the rock type/area and what bolts people need.

As far as ASCA involvement, early on something like this could easily have caused the ASCA to disappear. I think people forget just how different the climbing community was about bolting only 15-20 years ago. Openly funding bolts for new route development would likely have dried up most donations early in the ASCA's history and could easily have led to bolt wars in some areas. Thankfully I think most people have chilled out and nearly all climbers now would like to see good bolts instead of ones that will rust in a couple decades (or less).

A reasonable estimate for a good 1/2" bolt and hanger even at massive bulk discount is still closing in on $10/bolt (especially if you factor in a belay station for every 10 bolts or so), how much do FA folks using plated pay? How much are you willing to pay?

If something like this got going, the very first thing it should do is an exchange program - FA folks send in their plated bolts and hangers, and get good stainless. The plated hangers get recycled (or sold to climbing gyms if any would take second hand hangers), the plated bolts recycled or sold to construction companies. We need to eliminate the temptation to use the old junk!

Greg - first, thanks so much for all the work you and the rest of the ASCA volunteers do. I don't think anyone is faulting much of anything that the ASCA is doing. This seems like a mostly parallel though similar type of effort. Keeping the ASCA's mission focused makes a ton of sense, especially because of the necessary sensitivity and diplomacy you mentioned.

Have you given much thought to updating the safeclimbing.org website? The site itself is very dated. The lists of bolt replacements are so incomplete that it looks like work stopped years ago, and a lot of the articles in the education section desperately need some pretty heavy updating. For instance, the How To Rebolt article by Chris for instance references defunct company names for current bolts(Rawls instead of Powers), is dismissive of glue ins, has no mention of 3/8" carbon steel bolts needing replacement, nothing about wedge bolt hole reuse techniques, nothing about mixing metals and corrosion issues, nothing about non-bolt anchor hardware standards, etc. I think many sections of the website as it currently stands do more harm than good.

Also, if modernizing the ASCA website is a question of needing skilled labor, i'd be happy to volunteer. I do enterprise scale web applications for a living, as do several of my climbing partners.

John Byrnes wrote: In addition, up-to-date "How To Install" and "How to evaluate your Environment" information will be available in a single, vetted web-location. Much of this info is already out there but scattered and not vetted.

Have you guys checked out the Access Fund's new Fixed Anchor Resource Center? This seems in line with what a national organization can provide along with funding to LCO's that have committed to re-bolting via the new grant program.

Building another national org is a huge undertaking, especially if it's essentially just trying to make appropriate hardware more affordable. There are plenty of communities where higher hardware costs might help developers apply some restraint before, for example, retro-bolting existing routes or placing bolts next to bomber gear on new routes. Maybe 3 high quality routes are better than 5 squeeze jobs, for instance. Lots of weird, localized stuff going on that a national org might have a hard time vetting.

Facilitating local, group buys might be a better approach if the manufacturer/distributors are willing to deal.

I hadn't seen that Access Fund bolting info before, but it is terrific. Thanks for pointing that out.

It sounds like the bulk of this idea is centered around new bolts going in but there are a few different facets to that.

As Greg B pointed out, the ASCA's mission needed to be focused on replacement and I think in order for it to be good at what it does it should stay that way. I think an organization that focuses on helping enable motivated individuals to upgrade bad hardware is still relevant and needed.

So, as the Access Fund has already taken a first step with their replacement program, I would think it would be worth while to engage them in a side conversation about what future place they see themselves taking in this matter. I don't think it's arguable that fixed protection can greatly impact access to the areas we use. The argument that the Access Fund is in a position to set best practices and offer the informational resources to do things "right" flows pretty naturally from the previous sentence. It wouldn't be authoritative or binding but it would be a set of guidelines and best practices local organizations and land management agencies could endorse/adopt.

I think federating it like that would help to avoid a "national" way of doing things which may prove to be limiting. As well, this kind of fits into my perception of how the Access Fund functions today. Correct me where wrong on that as I'm not super involved with the AF.

What's missing is a UIAA type body for the US that sets hard requirements/standards for the important details (edge spacing, hole spacing, etc). Maybe it's enough to rely on the UIAA?. However, I still think there is an argument to be made for why a working group attached to the AAC, AMGA, or whatever group that is best suited might be worth discussing.

So then that leaves the making the "right" hardware available to developers at the most manageable prices. Can a co-op model work for something like that? You do an initial buy-in and then get access to "member" pricing.

The general idea being that all the pieces can do their own respective things as best as possible and work loosely in conjunction to achieve the larger goal. That way a new organization doesn't have to spin up to meet some Herculean task of solving the bolting problems in North America.

Ceasing rambling...

Brendan Magee wrote:The accountant in me wonders how this is funded? Also, why does this need to be at a national level? Perhaps local organizations could be better at developing this at a local crag level.

My personal opinion is:

Today FA's pay for their own bolts from a variety of sources. They would continue to pay for them from this national source.

Great idea. Let me know if you need a procurement manager.

Thanks for the great discussion everyone. I just wanted to assure folks that the Access Fund is paying attention to this issue (and this thread). We have tried to be very thoughtful about how we engage with the issue of bolts and re-bolting old routes. I have to agree with Greg - the community's posture on bolts and re-bolting has changed a lot. We wouldn't have touched this issue years ago. But as the bolts of the 80s and 90s are getting worse and worse we felt we needed to do something. Greg Barnes and the ASCA are great but the problem is so big we stepped in too. First we held a conference on the future of fixed anchors in 2012. We've been working behind the scenes to support manufacturers and local orgs and volunteers to develop products and techniques to re-bolt safely and sustainably. We finally released our Fixed Anchor Resource Center, complete with how-to videos, thanks largely to Jason Haas, Greg Barnes, Greg German and others. And in partnership with the AAC we launched a new Anchor Replacement Fund. The application deadline is September 15th so spread the word and apply soon!

By the way, our funding guidelines state that grantees must use "1/2 inch stainless bolts where power drills are allowed or 3/8 inch if hand drilled." This is not as rigorous as what the UIAA has been working on, but it is a start. I have personally been on a number of email threads with the UIAA; a small group of people are still working out the details of a classification system that addresses the issue of stress corrosion cracking (SCC) as well as what types of bolts and materials are and are not appropriate in various non-SCC environments. The goal is that any anchor placed in a given environment last at least 50 years. One issue which remains unresolved is whether 304 is appropriate in certain settings. Some hold that 316 is the minimum for any climbing anchor. It seems to me that 304 is most likely adequate in places like Moab, but I'm a layperson when it comes to materials science. Nearly all SS sleeve bolts are 304 by the way. In any case if the UIAA (or anyone else for that matter) recommends people use an anchor that is significantly more expensive than what has been used in the past, there needs to be very good reasoning and science behind it. I also think we (and the UIAA) need to address the issue of what happens after that initial 50 years. That's one reason why I think sleeve bolts, especially the Legacy bolt, have so much promise - you can take them out and re-use the hole. They are essentially future proof in the likely event upcoming generations of climbers look at what we're clipping today and declare it outdated crap. Hopefully people are going to be climbing on these beloved formations for thousands of years, so even 50 years is a little shortsighted IMO.

The Access Fund is continuing to consider our current and future role in addressing the issue of bolts and re-bolting. Please know that we are monitoring this thread and this issue, and we welcome your input and advice.

Brady Robinson, Executive Director, Access Fund

Greg Kuchyt wrote:What's missing is a UIAA type body for the US that sets hard requirements/standards for the important details (edge spacing, hole spacing, etc).

That's not a matter relevant to the UIAA. That's a technical detail relevant to the manufacturer of the bolt, and it varies depending on multiple factors including the bolt itself. You can find the critical edge spacing distance in the manufacture's supplied technical literature for the bolt you are choosing.

A little off-topic, but this is the closest I've found...

One GREAT thing about MP has is a database of climbs, which is ever growing. I know admins have a lot to do, and giant-site infrastructure is very difficult to modify, but one idea I had is a way for people to UPDATE when an anchor/bolt is bad, worn, etc. Something on existing routes. Like a little button on the routes page that can notify the local steward that attention is needed. I'd love to see something along the lines of a "donate" button on a route/crag that lets people quickly donate to improve an anchor/bolt. I've seen some pretty warn anchors on very popular routes. I am sure if it was easy lots of people would pony up a couple bucks to upgrade a route they enjoyed. Or after a road trip toss a couple bucks to the crag.

I've found the more easy and in-your-face you make donating the more you get. Maybe MP doesn't want that persona, but maybe it does... or we can find a better way.

As a bolt manufacturer and supplier to most of the bolt funds and organistations in the world (including the ASCA) I know only too well how most of these things pan out. Without rigorous leadership (read that as dictatorship) the whole thing turns into a mess of contrary arguments, personal disagreements and often collapses in the end leaving larger divides in the community than before.

The issue of who is the "official supplier" and what discount can be expected is very difficult, most companies who have distributors in the USA cannot and will not undercut their distributors. To supply an organisation which is directly competing with a retail network who are providing advertising, promotion and support would be insane. As far as I know there is only one manufacturer who would be able to supply bolting euipment without disrupting their normal distributor system.
Having a central source undercutting normal retail channels will distort the market unless all the manufacturers are involved, otherwise the choice will be limited and the decision about which products will be offered will bring us back to the first paragraph.
For myself the maximum discount which we give to the ASCA (and recipients from grants from the Access fund) would not be increased no matter how large the order, there is a bottom line which has to be covered and I would imagine the other manufacturers are in the same position.

Anyway, there are already non-profits supplying climbing equipment, what is with REI or MEC? And that thing Dave Pegg was involved with?