How to Bolt a Sport Climb - Ground Up

Welcome to how not to highline. What am I saying, Ryan? So a lot of the videos that we do, we focus on one bolt and how to place that and what that bolt breaks at. Today, we are going to focus on putting in a route and we're going to do that ground up. So stay tuned to watch us screw around. Hi, I'm Ryan Jinks and this is Bobby Hutton and we are in Little Rock, Arkansas. And we are going to show you how to bolt from the ground up instead of just how to hyper-focus on the details of a single bolt because the entire process is a process. Now, Bobby's going to explain to you about this area and why we're doing it and all the details. So this is an area that I've been working on for a couple of years. The goal behind this area was to put in a lot of easy, beginner-friendly multi-pitch climbing. Most of the routes here are sport and my goal is to have them pretty well bolted. And today, we're just going to add to that list of routes. So let's talk about some ethics and logistics first. Bobby, why are there not bolts on this rock and what makes it okay to put bolts in this rock? This rock, I believe it was just far enough away from the road and low enough angle that nobody else was inspired to come out here and put in bolts. There's been development going on in this area for 50 or 60 years and this rock specifically was untouched. I chose to put in bolts here, put in routes here as a way to kind of expand the climbing in this area, give beginners that are coming from gyms a spot to go that's not as scary, not as high consequences, say, going to nearby classic areas. And it's also important if you do put in something that you put in stainless steel, stainless steel hangers, stainless steel bolts, because you want the stuff to last longer than you. It's pretty shitty to have to replace rusty crap 20 years later and that's basically what a lot of re-bolting projects are doing is replacing stuff that really wasn't put in that long ago. But I think the climbing community knows that now and stainless steel is becoming more common and popular and standard. We just like to make sure we reinforce that idea. Or if you're near the ocean, titanium is the best. Bobby, why put in the bolts if there's cracks up there? Because in Yosemite, if there's cracks, rarely do I ever see bolts except like maybe on a big wall. Yeah, so this area, I do have some trad routes up here that are almost exclusive, that are pure trad, no bolts, or that might have some bolts during very blank sections. Most of these routes are fairly featureless. They don't have cracks. So you might be able to get the whole three or 400 foot route you would have. So there's cracks up there, but blank sections, and in order to get more routes on this rock, you have to put in bolts. Yeah, so you could do some routes entirely trad. You'd be looking at runouts of minimum 75 feet on a lot of these routes. Snake dike. Yeah, so with the thought of actually having people enjoy the routes that I put in, I have put in bolts. And that's the difference of them, one person coming out here a year to do an X-rated route versus them actually being enjoyed. So a thing we're starting is leave less trace, and that's mostly for highliners because highliners don't need as many bolts on top of things where more people can see them. It is nice if we can leave as few bolts into rock as possible, but it does open this area up to a lot more people, which gets more people away from the crowded areas. I think if we're being... And part of leaving that less trace is leaving bolts that don't rust and stain the rock, or they leach off and kill all the lichen. The plated steel, the zinc on it, will actually affect the rock as well. So stainless is more important, more than just important for longevity, but for staining purposes. And on this type of rock, the stainless is actually fairly camouflaged, kind of a dull metallic color that when the sun hits it, if any of you guys have climbed slab before, more often you can confuse little granite crystals to bolts, which is very disappointing sometimes. Very disappointing. Tell us why you picked this specific spot. How do you pick a spot? So it's kind of big picture. Like I look at the whole wall and I try to see where the line goes, where the moves are on a multi-pitch route. As far as I can see up the wall, I try to pick out belay stations. If I'm setting up a rock route that are 35 or less meters, so I can get back down. If I'm rappelling or for a longer route, it would be closer to 70 meters apart. So I kind of pick places where I can break it up. While he does it, he's going to be on lead and I am going to be a top rope tough guy filming him like Jimmy Chin. Okay, so you have your first bolt in now. Why is it so close to the ground? So this might be some of the harder climbing on this route. So we want to make sure that you're not running out the truck section and that if you fall going upwards a little bit, this will catch you before you hit the ground. You can take bigger runouts the higher you are because you have more space before you hit the ground. Yeah. It's math. Yeah, so one of my guiding principles when I'm putting in routes is bolting them for the leader that's breaking into that grade. So I've found a lot of easy slab climbs, especially like in Tuolumne, are bolted by somebody who's climbing like 5'12 and they're super run out and a 5'7 run out is no big deal to them. But if that's your max, it's kind of a big deal. Cool. So for math and for everyone to enjoy. Yeah. Sick. So if you fell right now, you would be near a groundfall. Yeah. So it's good to not have to do a lot more. Yeah. Otherwise, why bring the rope? Yep. So what bolt size are you putting in? I'm putting in 3-8 bolts. Okay. This is a 3-8 bit. Cool. And that's strong enough. Yeah. We've tested it. Yep. Check out Bolt Busters, all our other videos in the bolting Bible to see it. For climbing routes, it's super good enough. So choosing where to place a bolt really depends on where you have a good stance. When you're going ground up, that's super important because if you can't hold the stance for a few minutes to install the bolt, you're gonna fall. And that works out really well. With a drill? With a drill. Oh, that's good. Yeah. And it works out really well for the climbers following you because they will have a stance clip because you had to have a stance to drill. Gotcha. So you have a giant ass backpack. So this is because I forgot my little bolt bags to hold stuff. And so I'm using these little pouches to hold my bolts, which they work really well because they're nice zippered pouches. I like how calm Bobby talks while he's literally looking at a ground fall right now. So Bobby's legs were getting a little sore. So we quickly, quickly brushed and blew that hole, tapped the bolt in so I can be safe now. So now we will tighten it up and set that wedge at the bottom. Do you usually clip in before tightening it? Depending on my stance. Gotcha. I mean, it makes sense to do it. So with the wedge bolt, after I've tapped it in, any force outward is just going to set the sleeve, the collar more. This is perfect Bobby torque right there. So you basically practice with, you just, you know what you can generate on a bolt with that wrench. So you don't have to carry a freaking torque wrench with you everywhere. All right. So now we just are going to go up. Okay. Does that spot need a bolt? Because if you've made it that far, you've made it this far. Yeah. So I'm not looking at a ground fall here. Might make me feel a little bit better here, but there's also, if you're really having trouble, there's a ramp three feet away that you could totally walk up. So I think we'll not put in a bolt here for now. Because if you put it in there 10 feet later, it's irrelevant. Yeah. Well, and our ground fault potential restarts right here. Yeah. That's very good point. So we're going to place a bolt here because we've restarted our ground fault potential here. One of the things I think about when placing a bolt is I'm 6'2", I can place a bolt way up here. But from my comfortable stance here, somebody, a climber who is 5'2", it's not going to be able to reach that. So kind of my measuring stick is, if I can reach it easily with the tip of my elbow, that's probably a good placement for somebody who's quite a bit shorter than me. So if you can lick the bolt, it's good. Yeah. Tall people problems. So I'm going to place a bolt here, which like we said, resets our ground fault potential. And it's also kind of protecting a potentially tricky move moving out onto this slab. And we're not going up this easy five nothing because there's either already a route here or one just to the side of it. As we can see some repel bolts up there. We do want to go up this and that's why we're going the way we are. I just, what's, you know what's neat is I never go up this stuff. Cause as a Yosemite climber, I always see this stuff and have to follow it. So a little bit about what kind of drill you want for lead bolting. When you're bolting on lead, very important to have light things because you don't want a drill that weighs 20 pounds with the battery hanging on your harness and throwing off your center of gravity while you're trying to do delicate moves. So this drill with the battery weighs a little less than five pounds. Yeah. That's a nice light. Cause your other one's giant. Yeah. So how many can you drill with this? So with this battery, 15 to 20, three eights holes. So you just, you would just do this pitch and switch the battery. So you just crush. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So we've talked about this on episodes before, but when you are drilling, the temptation is to want to try to force the drill into it. And that really defeats the piston here that's doing most of the work. So pretty light touch and the battery will last longer if it's not having to work against you as well as the rock. So I will quickly demonstrate the difference in drilling between me holding it lightly with me putting force on it. I don't know if you can actually see that in the film, but it actually slows down. It goes into the rock slower when I hold it down. And you know how deep to drill it because you know the bit and you know your bolts. Yeah. And these are getting over-drilled a bit. Ideally, if these need to be replaced, they'll be easily pulled. But if they're not, they can be tapped down and patched. While Bobby cleans that hole and places his bolt, I'd like to give him some kudos. After a year and a half, I just found out he owns a red shirt. This is the first time he actually wore something colorful to be next to gray rock. Go to slackline.com if you want to read the bolting Bible, which has all of this in it, plus a ton more. Bolt Busters is on the homepage of slackline.com and that has over 300 break tests of bolts. And please put a comment below if you like this style of video, if you want to see more climbing videos, the things that we teach in action like this. Your feedback, I read a lot of it and it really does guide what we do. So please leave a comment. The whole channel and the website is ran by donations. So if you can spot us 20 bucks, if you watch all the videos and read all of our books, we have textbooks on how to highline or how not to highline. Course 102 is pretty much done-ish and available on the website now. And we're starting to work on Highlining 103 and Tricklining 101 should be out about the time this video comes out. So we're doing stuff all the time and working on drop test towers and I could just ramble on and on. We've doing a lot of stuff and it's all donation driven. And we are also going to put the pin and or the Mountain Project page for this rock in the description below. And that way, if you wanted to come out here and get your feet wet, ideally you don't want to do this when it's wet, get your feet wet to sport climbing, you can- And multi-pitch climbing. So no, we're not in Little Rock, Arkansas. We are actually gonna give away the location of this rock. Can you lick that rock? Don't want to. But you could. Oh, you almost fell. I almost fell. Good thing I was clipped in. So- You have to have a very patient belayer apparently. That is key to roundup development. The most important thing. Or a belayer with good cell range and a Grigri. Looking at the ground, I might just get a stance above the bolt, have the bolt a body length, and then put in my next bolt. But once I get in that position, I'll have a better idea. So math. Math. You look like you're deciding something. Yeah, so that doesn't, if I fell here, I wouldn't be happy. I'd be a little sad. So I'm probably gonna put a bolt here pretty quickly. And since I do have such a good stance here, I think I'll put it in this range here. And then I'm sussing my other moves going up. This might be a good spot for my next bolt stance. So I'm taking a look at that. On the comments on this last video, we said something about ball nuts and there was five or six comments like, what, there's a ball nut video? Have I not released that yet? No. Surprise, we do 12 episodes at a time. So sometimes when I'm at a stance that's really insecure, like my feet are starting to slip as I'm trying to drill, I will take my personal and clip it around the drill bit. Because that's better than nothing. That's better than nothing. And you can weight it. No, no, no, don't weight it. Oh God. Yeah, you have them tight. Oh my God. So of course you want to keep it to the base where you're pulling against the full bit. Yeah. You do trust that. Damn. All right. It's not something I want to fall on, but for a body weight placement, it's a pretty good body weight placement. Oh my gosh. Okay. All right. And of course you've got to loosen it up a little bit when you start drilling, otherwise you're going to really chew up your carabiner. After a certain point, the bit really goes in quite a bit quicker. Why? I'm not totally sure. I think it might have to do with, it gets in enough that the drill bit is constructed that actually screws in a little bit. It's not just- Sometimes I've had the experience where it gets harder. Really? Taft was a unique situation. Oh God. Now I'm sport climbing again. So you're always taking in consideration math and how people are going to use it, good placements, because you don't want to place a bolt right here and then your carabiner would have to go over the edge or here where it'd be going over an edge and bending it. Loading it unfavorably. For example, if you put it on top of this, it would be pulling down on that carabiner and you don't want that. So what's your plan now? Going up. How many bolts do you plan on using on this route? Average for a 35 meter pitch, maybe 10. And is that drill dangerous? If you were to take a whipper with a drill? Yes. I have yet to take a whipper with a drill, but I've heard of friends that have had it jab them in the leg. It's not very sharp. Yeah. I think it did a lot of damage. It left a bruise. The other thing you have to be careful about, if you're wearing shorts, this can get pretty hot. Oh. And I've seen people that have branded their leg. Oh, that would actually be pretty cool. If you're like really into this. That red shirt looks so good on Bobby. Put in the comments below how much you like when Bobby wears colors you can see. You don't end up going very far before you have to place another one, do you? Yeah. I don't particularly like being scared. So I bolt routes that aren't scary. Wait, what do you do on your birthday every year? I don't want to talk about it. I'm not scared then. So this type of route is more of an active creation than a trad line because you're kind of picking where you want the line to go on pretty blank face. Whereas with a trad line, you're following the natural protection. With that, with the active creation, you want to keep in mind rope drag. So you can see this is pretty straight up and down. I'm not creating rope drag when I'm clipping when the climber will be clipping into these bolts. Because if you go back and forth and just like a zigzag, you could have bad drag. Yeah. And I'm also trying to keep it away from any cracks. You see down below, if I had a bolt that was further over this way, it might be going into that crack there. What bolts are these? So these are the DeWalt power studs in three eights. They are 304 stainless. So I'm looking for a belay ledge up here somewhere, somewhere you can stand if you're belaying your second up to you. That's about 35 meters from the ground. Yeah, climbing and highlining are very different cultures when it comes to bolting. Some of that might be, this is a single use area. If you're not a climber, you're not going to be up here. How much money does it cost you to put in a route Bobby? Or per pitch? Per pitch. So with these bolts, I'm, with my bulk prices, I'm looking at about $3 per bolt. When I'm using glue-ins, I'm looking at more like five or $6 per bolt with the glue. And that of course doesn't count the wear on your drill, buying new drill bits all the time. Or the gas. Or the gas getting up there. Or all the other, yeah, okay. Yeah. And you're going to put in what, 12-ish? So 50 bucks for this pitch? Yeah, something like that. And of course the anchors are more expensive than the $3 because you have to have hardware on them. So anywhere from 70 to 100 bucks for soft costs included per pitch. Per pitch. Wow, that comes out of your pocket. It does. Thankfully I've had a couple friends who have been very generous and helped support the costs. If you know a developer near you that's putting in routes, I'm sure they would appreciate you helping to defray the costs or just to thank you when you see them. Yeah. That is pretty important to realize a lot of people do this out of their own pocket. The Access Fund or the ASCA replaces bolts and it's good to donate to them so they can have the money to do that. And they support, they don't even pay labor, I believe, right? Yeah, they just pay for the bolts for people like Bobby to volunteer to put them in. So you can see this is a pretty expensive little hobby. So yeah, at least give a shout out, positive shout outs to people who do this and especially if they do it well. What's the process, Bobby, of becoming a route developer should anybody just be able to go out and do this? So a lot of it has to do with your motivations. Like one, I really enjoy putting in routes. I get a sense of accomplishment from doing that. But also it's community service for me. I like to be able to add something to the community that I have gained so much from, from climbing other people's routes and just from the sense of community, the friends that I've made in the community. So I would like to think that's my primary motivation for putting in new routes. What you want to avoid is just being doing it to like do it just for yourself. So putting in routes that aren't very repeatable and just say, oh, I put in that route. I've changed this rock. When we're putting in a route, we are changing the rock and the way that people interact with it. So one, you want to do that in a way that is as low impact as you can. So we're using bolts that won't need to be replaced very often that will blend in fairly well with the rock, especially when the chalk dust gets or the rock dust gets washed away. And so when you're picking a line for development, you want to make sure it's a good thing that you're actually adding something to the area. So you want to avoid squeezing routes in too close together. So when you're choosing a route, you want to make sure it makes sense. You don't want to force your project onto the rock. You want to try to follow the natural line as much as possible or a natural line. And you don't want to be too close to other routes. That's good. Basically don't act like a graffiti artist and do it because you want to piss all over nature. Make sure you have the right motivations, make sure the area could use it and make sure you're doing it right. So it's okay if you put in bolts, if you're doing it for the right reasons. So we're just trying to alleviate some of the more crowded areas and Bobby's put in a lot of time and money into some of these places that are more out of the way in order for newbies to have a little bit more freedom to not feel pressured to rush or anything. So let's finish up this route. All right, why'd you stop here, Bobby? So I have a good ledge here and I have been talking to my patient belayer and she says I'm about at the middle mark. So this is a good spot to put in an anchor that will allow you to repel with two ropes back down to the ground. Single rope. Yes. I mean, you have two strands, a two strand. A single rope folded in half. Yeah. Two strands. To avoid using two separate ropes. Yes. And then you're taking into consideration your next pitch Yeah. And you're gonna go to the right of this roof up here. Yeah. Okay. That's the goal. Otherwise you could come here, but that takes you more to the left and you don't really wanna go there. And I'm heading into another fold line there. Oh yeah. You see that? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Okay, so what's different about your anchors than the rest of them? So one, if possible, I want a nice comfortable stance where I can belay my follower up to me. And as opposed to a hanging belay where I'm sitting in my harness the whole time. Yeah. That would suck to be sitting in your harness this whole time. And when I'm placing the bolts, I want them up higher which gives me more room to work as the belayer. I might even go a little bit higher than my elbow rule, especially here because there's a ledge here that you can step up even further and clip up higher if you needed to. Go down carefully. It'd be a ride otherwise. So while I wait for Bobby to put in that anchor, here is another one he placed on a previous trip. And what you have here in this case is a half inch bolt because that's what he had. Quick link, a big quick link here and a mussy hook. And mussy hooks are not stainless and they can easily be replaced because of the quick link. They oftentimes on popular routes can wear out here faster than they will rust and fail. What's nice about them is you can clip your rope directly to them and then repel without untying or threading ropes through. So that's a really nice thing about these, especially if you're only going to do one pitch and be lowered off. It is not ideal to top rope in fixed gear rather than use your own quick draws. So you don't wear out permanent anchors that everyone is sharing. So I've got in two bolts here. And what I'm doing here is I'm making an open system lower off. So you can just flip your rope through that and lower off. I've been doing that on the last few routes that I've put in here. The idea is if this is your first multi-pitch and you get up this high and you're terrified and just want to go home, it is really easy for you to just clip the rope in and go home. Or it starts raining. Now these aren't as big as your mussy hooks. No. But they're stainless. They're stainless. Okay. They will definitely wear quicker. I'm planning to climb this route at least once a year and check them. Or the next time I come out and I have mussy hooks in stock, I'll replace them with mussy hooks. Those are pretty good if people are not, I mean, it's not a trade route. Yeah, definitely not. Cool. So you just put two of those in? Yeah, I'm interested to see how much wear I'll get on this in the next year. Yeah. Yeah, all of that hardware is pretty easily replaceable. Do you wrench down your quick links? Yeah, I will in just a minute. So you do have to have tools in order to replace these things. Yeah. So you can't just have hook thieves. Yep. Can you believe people steal ----? Like hangers. It's like some people go through this much work to contribute. And then other people go through that much work to do the opposite. So you want your nuts to drop if you juggle them a lot. Screw down so you don't screw up. Mm, that's better. And you're done? Nope. So that's pitch one, and we will finish the other pitches on another day. But I have one pitch of completely climbing that anybody can jump on now. Man, I have such a bad hair day you can tell through the helmet. Let's talk about access issues real quick. If it's on private property, which this is not, make sure you have the landowner's permission. If it's on national forest land like this is, make sure you understand the rules and culture of how things are done around here. If you're in national parks, no power tools are allowed, and it's generally frowned upon to just be thrown in routes. This is like 515 new stuff, but pretty much everything that can be bolted in a national park has been bolted. One way to learn a lot is to check out the Bolting Bible that we wrote. Another way that is more fun than reading through all of that, if possible, find a local developer and offer to pay for bolts, for gear, in exchange for them showing you how to do stuff. And a lot of people that I've taken out have decided, oh, this is a lot of work. We're just gonna let other people do this. Give Bobby 12 bolts, he'll take you out. And instead of smashing your knuckles while tightening down your nuts, smash that like button. So it gives us a reason to come out of here and take twice as long to bolt a route as necessary. Cheers. Some bonus material. I'm gonna show you how to secure your phone from falling off a cliff. So I girth hitch, very distracting. You don't even have a goal, you just wanna be here. So I girth hitch it, and then I go around the back. And the trick to this, to keep this few strands going across all your stuff as possible, is you have to go around this thing like that. So I'm gonna pull up and then down, and then I come back up. And when I go through this loop, go like this, and then I can just secure it. I'm gonna secure it in the back so I have less crap in the back of my phone. And now you just tie it off. And this will not come off. And this is how I do all of my projects that are like way up high in film. Basically the whole YouTube channel is off of this. So, and then I attach it to my harness. So in case I drop it, it's not gonna fall to the ground. And you can see my cameras are not covered. And even if I put selfie mode on, that the front lens is also not covered. So I just build a little space net around it. You don't need more than this. More is not better. You just make sure you do it well. I've just done enough times that I know like this works. So now I'll just tie off little figure eight on this end and clip it to my harness. And now we're gonna film the episode you just finished watching. Cheers.