We’ve all been to those crags that seem to be set for giants; the bolts are several meters apart and it seems like you have to make a million moves between them. You might love the place, or maybe it’s just convenient, but what do you do if you still want to climb there? You want to stay safe, yet it seems like an impossibility given the bolting situation.
The obvious answer is to rebolt the crag, but who has the money or time for that?
The other way to make lemonade from these lemons is to learn trad at the crag! Obviously, this won’t work everywhere (e.g., flat slab), but in many cases it can! If you treat the routes as mixed climbs, you get the experience of a trad route with the protection of a run out sport route. Alternatively, you can think of it as a better protected sport route. In any case, you get to climb the routes you want, learn a (potentially) new skill, and stay somewhat well protected!
Many new trad climbers stay new trad climbers because they can’t get experience setting gear. In order to get experience, you have to climb trad, but in order to climb trad safely, you should have experience. It’s a tough cycle to break. When you have a few bolts along the way, you can trust at least some of your gear, and hence you can practice setting gear more safely.
One of the hardest things about climbing trad is trusting gear, and even though you logically know that a piece should hold you, that doesn’t mean you fully believe it will. Plus, you’re not going to take practice falls on it…who wants to find out it actually won’t hold, and then fall to the ground? However, you could place a piece right above a bolt. Best case, your piece holds and you gain some trust in your gear. Worst case, it pops out, and you are still protected by the bolt. You win either way!
Lastly, cost is a massive obstacle to trad climbing. A full rack costs hundreds of dollars, and even so, it’s usually helpful to have a double rack in case you need the same size piece twice. That adds up to an insane amount of money. If you were to slowly build your rack, you’d really never have enough gear to climb until the end. Alternatively, if you’d climb the bolted route anyway, you can just bring whatever gear you have to practice placements. The gear you have helps protect you, but if you’re missing a size, you still have the bolts to protect you as before. No new risk, really!
So, the next time you think about running it out at the crag, maybe bring a few nuts and cams for extra flavor!
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