Ep 5 - Bomber Anchors or Ticking Time Bombs? - Jason Haas and Brady Robinson

the Sharp End Podcast

Sports

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2016

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We think of bolts as offering bomproof anchors and protection. But many of the bolts used by climbers today were placed at least 20 to 30 years ago, and they were never designed to be used by climbers in the first place. In 2015, a climber in California died when an old bolt failed under his body weight. In this episode, Ashley speaks with Jason Haas and Brady Robinson about bolt safety. Should climbers blindly trust bolts? And what are leaders in the climbing world doing about the problem of old bolts?

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Sharp End, a podcast from Accident to North American Mountaineering.
0:10.0	I'm Ashley Safi, your host for the show.
0:19.0	March 13th, Electric Laram, 510B.
0:25.0	Silent Pillar Wall, Owens River Gorge. Scott didn't make it home.
0:27.5	His fiance was worried and drove to the Lower Gorge parking lot,
0:31.0	where she found his van and his dog. Search and rescue began in the morning. In about an hour
0:37.3	into it, a family friend found Scott's body on the base of the climb.
0:44.0	Scott was on the ground.
0:45.9	He had a stick clip attached to his harness and an 8 foot loop of slack between the tie
0:49.5	and point on his harness and Grigree attached to his blay loop. A quick draw was on the rope within the loop with a bolt hanger missing its bolt.
0:56.8	Clipped to the other end of the quick draw. This evidence suggests that Scott was using the stick clip to go bolt to bolt, unclipping the bolt below as he went and using the greggy to ascend his short loop of rope to the bolt above him.
1:10.0	But then, the third bolt on this climb failed.
1:14.0	Scott fell 25 to 30 feet to the ground.
1:18.0	The bolt in question was a 516 inch button head bolt which snapped about a half an inch into its
1:26.9	hole. We think that this bolt was placed probably on the first ascent over 20 years ago.
1:35.0	So we all think about Bolt being bomber, but are they?
1:40.0	To learn more about Bolt's, what you can trust and what you can't, and what people are doing
1:44.9	about it, I track down Jason Haas.
1:49.5	Bolt climbing guru, and he has quite a few really incredible things to say about Bolts.
1:55.0	Welcome to the show, Jason.
1:57.0	Go ahead and introduce yourself.
1:59.0	My name is Jason Haas.
	...

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