Etiquette on pulling pins and pitons

I've recently climbed a few trad routes on which I noticed old pins/pitons being slightly loose. I wasn't able to pull any of them out, but it got me thinking about what I should do in the case that I do pull one?

My belief is that I should feel lucky to have gained a very cool historic piece of booty and that I should probably let the community that the pin/piton is no longer on the route via mountain project or a local climbing group.

When I told me buddy that I thought it would be cool to pull a loose pin, he told me that he thought the opposite. He told me that he believed that it was probably bad karma to pull a piece of history off of a classic route or any route for that matter.

I would love to hear from the community on this. What are your thoughts of ideas regarding etiquette on this matter?

I pulled a pin on Practice Climb 101 in Eldo years ago. It came out easily by hand and I had no intention of taking it out.

It left a great cam placement.

I thought all was well in the world. The next thing I knew, my inbox blew up with people wanting the pin back from me so they could put it back in. I would have happily given it to them even though it made no sense at all. I was a little busy and less than local though, so I never got the pin into the right hands.

I got another round of CC's in my inbox about a posse forming to replace the pin with a new one. Again, it made no sense.

Nobody was upset that the pin came out. That was never the issue. I just found it bizzare that so much energy got devoted to replacing a pin when there was better gear available in it's absence. I have no idea what ever happened with that.

Mason Stansfield wrote:

if you can pull out the pin by hand, then pull it out dont leave it to some gumbie who doesnt think to check it and then might peel. As for replacement, if its a super thin piece that wont take other gear like knifeblades i'd consider replacing it on my next return. If its a bigger piton usually with todays microgear you can get a good placement

I have pulled a number of pins ... if there is good natural pro to replace it then nothing needs to be done. Sometimes though the pin or new pin needs to be reset or placed respectively. Otherwise in some cases a bolt is a better option.

If mucking about with fixed gear you should be prepared to do make sure that parties following are not left in lurch. The exception is if the pin is loose.

Trad problems. . What to do with a piece of loose metal,

I hear you are supposed to build a shrine to it

I almost agree with Steve, but not quite. I think that if a pin becomes unreliable and that, when removed, there is an adequate placement for modern trad gear, then the pin should stay out. This could contradict his "don't change the nature of the climb" proviso, because if the pin was in a strenuous position, having to hang on place gear rather than clipping fixed pro will make the climb harder, perhaps significantly harder (even though such changes in difficulty do not usually end up being reflected in the grading).

I'd think of this as returning the climb to its natural state, which it seems to me is one of the ideals of trad climbing. Keeping the "nature" of the climb the same is mostly about enabling people who have already done it to repeat the experience. Those who are new to the route will take it for what it is, not what it used to be.

As for investing the pin with some sort of historical veneration, fine if you want to stick it in a museum somewhere; it doesn't have to be in the rock to receive whatever adulation is available for a rusting piece of steel.

The best way to remove loose fixed pins is by falling on them....no one can question you.

So, here's a question: if a pin pulls, or even if it is starting to get sketchy, and does not leave a good placement (say, either in crumbling rock*, or horizontal knifeblade placements), why should someone not replace it with a bolt? One of the mantras of repeating a traditional climb is to "preserve the experience of the FA," and in the case of pitons, FAs knew that their pitons were bomber. Someone who clips a twenty year old pin does NOT know that it is bomber. So why not yank it and add a bolt? Why should climbs be more dangerous for repeaters than for FAs?

• See Crack of Doom at the City of Rocks for an example of this.

I think it is a complicated question and so one without a simple one-size-fits-all answer. Many climbs are already much safer with modern gear than they were for the FA. It may be possible to get good trad gear near the crappy pin, if not in exactly the same spot, in which case there is no good argument for putting anything back in the bad placement.

Moreover, the idea that a pin in a crumbly placement or a knifeblade in an incipient horizontal were somehow "bomber" back in the day is wrong; such gear was marginal on the first ascent and remains that way now, so current ascents are not necessarily being forced to endure a level of risk greater than the FA.

Finally, the "mantra" about preserving the first ascent experience has always had limits; no one ever claimed that a FA generally regarded as botched has to be forever repeated in the crappy style of the first ascenders. And even if the first ascent wasn't "botched" in the context of the times, achieving it in a "better style" has always been an intrinsic part of trad climbing. The fact that we record and celebrate first free ascents, which are both harder and usually more "dangerous" than their aid versions, should make this point abundantly clear.

My suggestion is that as much as possible, trad routes should be returned to a natural state defined by the absence of fixed protection, and that making a route more challenging than it was on the FA is not necessarily a reason not to do this. When to draw the line in terms of increased risk is, of course, the real sticking point.

David Sahalie wrote:...I hear you are supposed to build a shrine to it

As always, David is prone to exaggeration. A mere turn towards Yosemite for a moment of silence is sufficient.

camhead wrote: Why should climbs be more dangerous for repeaters than for FAs?

Even a route that is fully sport-bolted and cleaned is not necessarily as safe for repeaters as for the developer. The skills of the climbers are a necessary parameter for calculating the relative risk.

In addition to making a distinction between rock in its natural state versus rock-prepared-for-climbing, we could also make a distinction between those who feel we should be making our routes safer for everyone/anyone versus those who feel we should be making our climbers better equipped to work with rock in its natural state.

The gray area is that many/most of us can see it both ways. The sticking point is that one person's barely noticeable piton/tat/bolt is another person's major alteration of the natural character of a route. Personally, I'm one of those people who routinely packs out old tat.

rgold wrote:I almost agree with Steve, but not quite. I think that if a pin becomes unreliable and that, when removed, there is an adequate placement for modern trad gear, then the pin should stay out. This could contradict his "don't change the nature of the climb" proviso, because if the pin was in a strenuous position, having to hang on place gear rather than clipping fixed pro will make the climb harder, perhaps significantly harder (even though such changes in difficulty do not usually end up being reflected in the grading). I'd think of this as returning the climb to its natural state, which it seems to me is one of the ideals of trad climbing. Keeping the "nature" of the climb the same is mostly about enabling people who have already done it to repeat the experience.

I agree that removal of fixed pitons returns a climb to its "original state". Maybe that's what we're after. Perhaps it's the aging climber in me that wants that fixed pin to remain at the crux so I can still climb the route. Funny how we each experience a climb in a temporal context.

Rgold ... remember giving me a lift from the Gunks to Boulder in John Bragg's van circa 1978? First time I heard Andean music.

Mark Pilate wrote: As always, David is prone to exaggeration. A mere turn towards Yosemite for a moment of silence is sufficient.

I laughed for a long time about this, hahaha.

Of course I remember Steve, although I couldn't have told you the date. 1978---thirty five years ago. My how time flies when yer havin' fun.

camhead wrote:So, here's a question: if a pin pulls, or even if it is starting to get sketchy, and does not leave a good placement (say, either in crumbling rock*, or horizontal knifeblade placements), why should someone not replace it with a bolt? One of the mantras of repeating a traditional climb is to "preserve the experience of the FA," and in the case of pitons, FAs knew that their pitons were bomber. Someone who clips a twenty year old pin does NOT know that it is bomber. So why not yank it and add a bolt? Why should climbs be more dangerous for repeaters than for FAs? *See Crack of Doom at the City of Rocks for an example of this.

The problem with your logic, Camhead, is that it involves using logic. These are Eldo climbing ethics we are taling about here; there is no place for logic in Eldo climbing ethics.

See Reboot's post above for further elaboration on this point.

Fixed gear == booty. Old manky pins are yours if you have a hammer to take them. You didn't need a hammer? Even more clear cut.

Solid, safe pins should stay. Ha! Which pins are solid and safe? Some rock climbing ethics are so farcical.

I like trad climbing. Trad weenies drive me nuts sometimes.

JCM wrote: See Reboot's post above for further elaboration on this point.

I keep seeing myself getting phantom quoted lately...should I take this as a compliment? I don't presume to have nice legs, maybe nice pecs.

Anyway, I presume we are all talking about rock routes? I don't have a problem w/ somebody pounding a piton over mixed terrain in the mountains, cause moving fast is part of the game, but I'm kind of ticked off at pin/piton scars on free routes (even if they wouldn't have gone free by now w/o those scars). I really can't see why a new one should be pounded in to make the matter worse.

camhead wrote:So, here's a question: if a pin pulls... why should someone not replace it with a bolt? One of the mantras of repeating a traditional climb is to "preserve the experience of the FA"

As mentioned already, I don't see the prevailing ethic as preserving the experience of the first ascent. More, equalling or bettering the style of the first ascent. So less fixed gear is, in some sense, better.

There's always going to be a sense of local ethics though. One of the places I climb in the UK (Avon) has a strong like-for-like replacement policy. That is, a total ban on replacing pitons with bolts. If another piton will go back in, that's fine; if not, leave it out, the grade may go up.

On the other hand, another fairly local area (Cheddar) has gone the other way. Some time back in the 90s it was observed that most of the routes were heavily reliant on ageing fixed gear (mostly pitons, the odd bolt) and the decision was made to bolt it properly. This work was carried out with the support of, and largely by, the original developers of the area, who decided it would make a better (and more popular) destination for sport climbing.

It's important to remember that once you pull a pin, you only have about 5 seconds to replace it.