Who Decides Whether a Line Gets Bolted: From Clean Climbing to Rock Ethics at Long Dong

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Say you have climbed at Long Dong for a few years. You spot a beautiful crack with a blank face beside it, and you think: a few bolts on that face would make a great sport route. You own a drill, you know how to place bolts, and nobody owns the cliff.

So who decides whether that line gets bolted?

This is the last article in the Sport and Trad Climbing series. The earlier ones taught you how to use bolts and how to place your own protection. This one looks at where those bolts came from, and why at Long Dong the answer is not "you". By the end, you should be able to explain why you should not bolt on your own at Long Dong, and who to talk to if you want a route changed.

Start with the root of every argument: a bolt needs a drilled hole, and a hole cannot be undone. The basic difference between sport and trad (who places the protection, and when) is in the series overview, so it is not repeated here.

The 1970s: from pitons to "climb clean"

Before bolts were the argument, pitons were.

American climbers in the 1960s protected climbs with steel pitons, hammered into cracks and knocked out afterwards. Popular routes were hammered again and again until the cracks became rows of piton holes. The 1972 Chouinard Equipment catalog opens with a short essay signed by Yvon Chouinard and Tom Frost, "a word...". It describes popular routes in Yosemite where the cracks "are degenerating into series of piton holes", and flakes are pried loose and broken by repeated placement and removal of hard pitons.

Their fixes were concrete: stay off climbs you do not intend to finish; start using chocks, which do not damage the rock; do not use pitons on established clean routes. The essay also called "mad bolters" among the worst offenders of the alpine environment, and said bolting is done "as a substitute for climbing". It ends:

Remember the rock, the other climber — climb clean.

The same catalog carried Doug Robinson's long essay on pitonless climbing, "The Whole Natural Art of Protection". According to Wikipedia's Clean climbing article, John Stannard coined the term "clean climbing" in an East Coast newsletter in 1971. Within two years North American climbers had largely switched to nuts, and pitons stopped being the main form of protection.

That history is the foundation of trad climbing today: protection should come out completely, and the rock should be left as you found it for the next person.

Something you can do tonight: take out your nuts or cams and ask yourself: if they did not exist, how would you have protected the last trad route you climbed? That was the choice climbers faced in the 1960s.

The 1980s: sport climbing puts bolts at the center

In the early 1980s, leading French climbers wanted to climb blank faces with no cracks. Those faces take no nuts, and the only protection is a bolt drilled in advance. Wikipedia's Sport climbing article dates sport climbing from this period, and notes that bolting natural rock was controversial from the start and remains a focus of debate in climbing ethics.

A few landmarks:

• Verdon, France: the multi-pitch sport route Surveiller et punir (7a+) was first climbed by Jean Marc Troussier in 1981. Planetmountain calls it one of the most photographed routes in the Verdon.
• Frankenjura, Germany: in 1975 Kurt Albert started painting a red dot (Rotpunkt) at the base of routes to show they had been climbed all free, with no aid (Planetmountain tribute). That is where the word "redpoint" comes from, and it became the standard for a sport climbing ascent.
• The ceiling: in September 1991 Wolfgang Güllich redpointed Action Directe in the Frankenjura (Planetmountain), the first 9a (5.14d).

Sport climbing shifted the risk from "will this piece hold" to "can I trust this bolt", and difficulty climbed fast. The cost is more holes in the rock, and every bolt needs someone to maintain it. Britain was more reluctant, and many of its crags still have no bolts at all.

Something you can do tonight: open the guide entry for a sport route you climb often and find the first ascensionist and the year. Who placed those bolts, and when, is the route's birth certificate.

Three shapes of the argument: new bolts, retro-bolts, chipping

Bolt disputes at natural crags fall into roughly three kinds:

Britain: decide at open meetings

The British Mountaineering Council's 2014 bolting policy spells out who decides:

• Site and regional bolting agreements, and any changes to them, must be debated and agreed by climbers at open meetings arranged by the BMC.
• No proposal to change a crag's status may be voted on at the meeting where it is first proposed. Retro-bolting proposals must be widely publicised before discussion and agreed on a consensus basis.
• The discussion must weigh seven factors, including the crag's established climbing ethics, the views of the first ascensionists, the nature of the rock and the availability of natural protection, and the aspirations of current and future climbers.

The BMC names the Pembrokeshire and Cornish sea cliffs, the mountain crags of Snowdonia and the gritstone edges as places where bolt-free traditional climbing is the accepted norm.

Chipping: almost nobody defends it

Chipping has less grey area than bolting. In 2019, three long-time developers in Ten Sleep Canyon, Wyoming, published an open letter (Gripped). It said whole walls in the canyon had been chipped, drilled and glued to manufacture holds, asked for it to stop, and called for those routes to be removed.

The letter quoted Access Fund's stance: it opposes gluing or chipping to create or enhance holds. The reasons are three: it degrades the climbing resource, eliminates challenges for future climbers, and threatens access.

Something you can do tonight: pick a trad route you have climbed and ask: if someone wanted to add bolts, how would you answer using the BMC's factors? Who did the first ascent? Can they still be asked?

Long Dong: what happened over four decades

Long Dong has more than 2,000 bolts on nearly 600 routes (TOCC, "What future does Long Dong deserve"), developed and maintained by the climbing community itself. The table below draws on the TOCC chronicle of events, the TOCC Long Dong page and the Mountain Project Taiwan page, and lists only events about bolting and route ethics.

A few notes.

There are two discovery years. The TOCC chronicle and the Chinese text of the Long Dong page say 1978; the English text of that page says 1977. Mountain Project's community-written history says the most obvious lines fell quickly after the coastal highway opened in the mid-1980s and martial law was lifted in 1987. These may describe different stages: discovery versus heavy development.

No one recorded the first bolt. Early route information was passed on by word of mouth. Only the bounds are known:

• No earlier than the 1978 discovery.
• No later than 1995, when a route was already being rebolted.

Mountain Project adds that by the 1990s "many bolts had been placed" and that a 1998 guidebook documented over 100 routes.

The Long Dong Declaration's text is not public. The chronicle records only that it was published on 11 November 1989; the text itself is not online. To learn what it said, ask TOCC.

Commissary Crack: no lead bolts on trad routes

The history section of the Mountain Project Taiwan page is community-written, not an official record. It describes the early 2000s as Long Dong's busiest period: one climber brought the Yosemite trad ethic, two Germans bolted the first multi-pitch sport routes with glue-in bolts, and local climbers put up routes all over the Grand Auditorium, First Cave and Backdoor.

One of those was a retro-bolting of Commissary Crack (福利社). It pitted old-school ethics against the wish to make Long Dong more accessible, and caused a major controversy.

The outcome was a standard: no lead bolts added to established trad routes.

Changes without community discussion still happened on the same route later. TOCC's Long Dong route database notes under Commissary Crack that in September 2015, unknown people placed two new titanium-bolt anchors for a first and second pitch, on what had been a single-pitch route.

Sport back to trad: bolts can come out too

The same database has 16 entries (counted by pitch) that say "originally a sport route" and that, after the old bolts were cut, stayed or officially became trad. The dated entries fall between 2013 and 2018:

• The Wedding Route at Music Hall: 304 stainless bolts cut, kept as trad (2017).
• Several Golden Valley routes, including 瞞天過海: old bolts cut, officially trad (2018).

The lesson: when old bolts need replacing, "new bolts" is not the only option. If a crack takes gear, cutting the bolts means the wall does not get another round of holes. It goes the other way too: the database records two Golden Valley routes that were top-rope only until bolts were added in 2013. Changing a route is not wrong in itself; the question is whether the community discussed it.

Why the metal had to change, and why 304 fails by the sea, is covered in Bolts Fail.

Something you can do tonight: open the TOCC route database, find the sector you climb most, and read the route description column. Do any routes mention a change of type, added anchors, or "kept as trad for now"?

Long Dong today: who may touch the rock

TOCC's position

In October 2021 TOCC published a position statement about its draft process for route development and changes. Three points:

1. The association's position is to "protect the Long Dong rock and reduce unnecessary drilling and damage". Its maintenance work in recent years has been limited to replacing old or problem bolts, pull-testing 316 stainless bolts, and renewing top anchors on existing trad routes.
2. New holes still appear at Long Dong every year without community discussion, and the association "absolutely does not agree with private drilling and bolting". Such routes are often never reported or recorded, so the association cannot test or maintain them.
3. TOCC is currently commissioned by the Northeast and Yilan Coast National Scenic Area administration to patrol and maintain the crag. It says it has a responsibility to remove questionable unidentified fixtures after careful assessment.

The statement says the draft is meant to raise the bar for route changes and give people a public channel to discuss them, not to open the crag to new development.

Why every hole counts

A personal essay by a TOCC board member in 2021, "What future does Long Dong deserve" (the author states it is personal opinion, unrelated to the association), points out something easy to miss:

• With current techniques, old bolts cannot be fully extracted. They are cut off and a new hole is drilled nearby.
• A route's first bolts usually go in the best spots. The second round takes the next-best spots, and each later round settles for less.
• So a route can only be rebolted so many times, and every unplanned hole uses up the wall's lifespan.

The author also notes that some climbers still place 304 stainless bolts at Long Dong, a grade known to be unsuitable for tropical sea cliffs. A privately placed bolt is not in the database, so the next climber has no idea what it is made of or when it went in.

Early rebolting in Taiwan: individuals on their own

TOCC's Rebolting Project page says early bolt replacement at Long Dong was done voluntarily by a few senior climbers, and only became systematic and large-scale in 2010. There is a similar story in the south: a climber named Ron wrote on his English-language website that he replaced the bolts on a route in Kenting in December 2000; the original bolts were not stainless steel. With no association and no database back then, individual effort was the only way. Long Dong now has an association, a database and regular pull tests, and individual effort makes the system lose track.

National parks: the law decides

When a crag is inside a national park, there is another layer: the law. In January 2024, two people climbed on coral reef rock at Banana Bay in Kenting and hammered hooks into it. The park administration's initial view was that the spot is not one of the places where climbing is banned, but leaving hooks fixed in the reef may violate the National Park Act: NT$1,500 for a first offence and up to NT$3,000 for a second (CNA).

For which Taiwanese crags are open and where climbing is banned, see Taiwan's Crags.

Something you can do tonight: read the TOCC position statement once and remember one thing: if you see an unfamiliar new bolt at Long Dong, or a route you think should change, the next step is talking to TOCC, not picking up a drill.

The ethics you practise on every trip

Most climbers will never place a bolt, but every trip involves ethical choices. Two common checklists are useful here.

The Leave No Trace Seven Principles apply to all outdoor activity. The most relevant to climbing is principle four, "Leave What You Find": leave rocks, plants and artifacts where they are. Not bolting, not chipping and not leaving gear on the rock all follow from it.

Access Fund's Climber's Pact has twelve commitments written for climbers. Three map directly onto this article:

• Learn the local ethics for the places you climb.
• Respect regulations and closures.
• Use, install, and replace bolts responsibly.

A Long Dong example: in 2016 the Long Dong Rebolting Project asked climbers, for the first time, to stop climbing Freedom Crack in the Grand Auditorium and nearby routes because of nesting peregrine falcons (TOCC chronicle). Each year from February to June the community now checks breeding status with the Keelung Wild Bird Society and announces closures once breeding is confirmed. Respecting those closures is keeping the pact.

Something you can do tonight: for the next crag you visit, find one local rule (closure periods, how to descend, which routes not to top-rope) and learn it before you go.

Practice: four scenarios

Answers are below each question. Think first, then look.

1. At Long Dong you see a rarely climbed trad crack with a blank face beside it. You have a drill and titanium bolts, and you figure "good materials make it fine".

2. The database shows a few 304 stainless bolts on a sport route you climb often. A friend says, "Let's buy bolts and swap them ourselves."

3. A trad route's start is hard to protect, and someone has added a bolt where the first piece would go, "for safety".

4. On the coast in Kenting you find good-looking reef rock that is not in a no-climbing zone. You want to hammer in a few hooks for protection and take them out afterwards.

What's next

This is the last article in the series. To go back to the start, read the series overview and check which level you are at and what to practise next.

To judge whether you can trust the bolts you clip, read Bolts Fail: How to Judge Whether an Outdoor Bolt Can Be Trusted. To see which Taiwanese crags you can climb and their rules, read Taiwan's Crags. If you want to help, TOCC's pull testing, beach clean-ups and rescue training all need volunteers.

References

• Chouinard Equipment 1972 Catalog, "a word..." (Yvon Chouinard, Tom Frost; Frostworks scans)
• Clean climbing (Wikipedia)
• Sport climbing (Wikipedia)
• Surveiller et Punir, Gorges du Verdon (Planetmountain)
• Remembering Kurt Albert, father of the redpoint (Planetmountain)
• Action Directe, Wolfgang Güllich's Frankenjura masterpiece (Planetmountain)
• BMC: Bolts (including the BMC Bolting Policy agreed by National Council in 2014)
• Ten Sleep Climbers Say Chipping Has to Stop (Gripped, 2019)
• TOCC: Long Dong chronicle of events
• TOCC: Long Dong (history and guidebooks)
• TOCC: Rebolting Project
• TOCC: Long Dong route database (Google Sheet)
• TOCC: Position statement (October 2021, Chinese)
• TOCC: What future does Long Dong deserve (May 2021, personal essay, Chinese)
• Mountain Project: Taiwan (community-written history)
• Ron's Climbing Page: Taiwan Locations
• CNA: Hooks hammered into reef at Kenting's Banana Bay (2024-01-05, Chinese)
• Leave No Trace: The 7 Principles
• Access Fund: The Climber's Pact
• Bolts Fail: How to Judge Whether an Outdoor Bolt Can Be Trusted
• Taiwan's Crags: Rock Type and Rules
• Sport vs Trad Climbing: Who Places the Protection, and Why Long Dong's Easy Routes Are Mostly Trad