West Buttress 

That second pitch, which I don't think is anywhere near 5.8, was done without bolts for years and years. No bolts at the first belay either.

What about the two bolts on pitch 3? Were they added? I recently did the whole route with a friend without clipping any of the bolts but did use the bolted anchor. I thought 5.8 was a very fair grade for pitch 2 as did my partner. It is possible that the line of retro bolts on pitch 2 didn't follow the original route. Things to me looked a bit larger farther left. But since I was unsure of the route's path I followed the bolts without clipping them.

I heard about the bolts you're talking about Tater Tot. My understanding is that they protect a new line above the West Butt route.

When I climbed the route, there were no bolts on the first or second pitch, and as rgold says, it was quite a bit easier than 5.8, just a wee bit runout ;-)

Hmm, interesting.. Sounds like it may be appropriate to change the name of this page to West Buttress Variation? Does anyone else have more info?

Tater Tot, there were no bolts on pitch 3 either. I don't remember anything that shouldn't have been reasonable without bolts for a 5.8 climber.

As for pitch 2, my guess is that it went further left as you suggested, since without bolts one would obviously choose the most reasonable line. I do remember diagonalling left from the P1 belay and wandering a bit, but can't at this point, more than 45 years later, remember the exact line we took. It was definitely low fifth-class and totally appropriate to leave unbolted for 5.8 climbers.

It sounds as if the bolted way deserves to be called a variation, and if it is 5.8 (and if Needle's standards were respected by drilling on the lead), it would make for a more uniformly difficult route that would become even more of a classic than the original.