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A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

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Re: A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

#31

Post by brian_spiering »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #5

> police arrested them and confiscated 102 bolts That stood out to me... I understand that rock climbing is Serious Business to its practitioners and people on internet forums, but these two guys actually got arrested for removing those bolts, which is a whole new level of serious. Was it really some kind of crime to do that? What happened to those guys after that?

In the USA, there was a person who was traveling around removing bolts. The person showed up in our local area. A couple of members of the climbing community had a conversation with the local police. The police had a concern about him creating a potentially dangerous situation of people trying a climb and expecting to find bolts only to find the bolts missing. The police went out of their way to arrest him. They got him on probation violation and had him extradited to his home state. The climbing community replaced all the removed bolts, and people went back to enjoying the rock climbing.

The local climbing community chose to take care of this quietly without media or internet drama.

Re: A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

#32

Post by tclancy »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #5

> police arrested them and confiscated 102 bolts That stood out to me... I understand that rock climbing is Serious Business to its practitioners and people on internet forums, but these two guys actually got arrested for removing those bolts, which is a whole new level of serious. Was it really some kind of crime to do that? What happened to those guys after that?

I want to know why they left them with some.

Re: A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

#33

Post by NoboruWataya »

Curious to know the basis on which they were arrested. I guess it's something in the realm of criminal damage to public property. But that would imply that Maestri's bolts had become part of the public property that is the mountain. I assume Maestri was not arrested for inserting the bolts.

Not being a mountain climber at all I don't really have an opinion on this, but I do naturally sympathise with the anti-bolt guys because I am fond of the idea of leaving no trace.

Re: A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

#34

Post by RugnirViking »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #10

One of the things I appreciate about the Andes Mountains is that in this age of social media ruining everything most areas are still pretty wild. You don’t see long queues of people waiting to take selfies. You may not see other people at all. They are second in height to the Himalaya but in most other ways are more interesting. I feel like the governments there low-key try to keep it that way.

im sure that the Andes are far more remote and wild than anything I have experienced in my life as a European, and I would dearly like to be fortunate enough to see them some day, but I would note that "long queues of people waiting to take selfies" hasn't been my experience in nearly every mountain or hill ive been to save a couple extremely touristy spots in the height of summer (uk examples: snowdon peak, mam tor, stanage edge etc). Ive been able to go entire days without seeing another group of hikers many places in norway, sweden, uk, even while following hiking guide books

Re: A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

#35

Post by cjonas »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #33

Curious to know the basis on which they were arrested. I guess it's something in the realm of criminal damage to public property. But that would imply that Maestri's bolts had become part of the public property that is the mountain. I assume Maestri was not arrested for inserting the bolts. Not being a mountain climber at all I don't really have an opinion on this, but I do naturally sympathise with the anti-bolt guy…

They didn't remove the bolts for "leave no trace" reasons. They removed them because the style they were put up was considered "poor climbing ethics". They felt it could go "free" and on gear.

This would have made the summit unobtainable to all but the strongest climbers in the world... Which would have upset many people who had traveled far and spent a lot of money to attempt the summit.

Alex Honnolds "climbing gold" podcast has like a 3 part series on this history if your interested to learn more.

Re: A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

#36

Post by riffraff »

_vertigo wrote: post #28
rcpt wrote: post #4

Those two guys removed an established easement. Sure one can argue that it should never have been installed in the first place, but it was and apparently it became widely used. They had no business taking it down.

Rock climbing ethics is more complicated and dramatic than that. Applying this logic about easements doesn’t really capture the whole picture, because you’re considering people only, not considering the mountain. I think some people who support chopping those bolts would argue that this is like restoring the Mona Lisa after some random guy painted their own painting over it. Yes, removing that guy’s crappy painting i…

I think the point is they had no authority to do that.

Michaelangelo's Last Judgment had exposed genitals that were covered with draperies by Daniele da Volterra later.

Then at some point they were removed again to restore the original, but some remain.

It would not be reasonable for _me_ to step up and erase the remaining ones, even if it would be a restoration.

Re: A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

#37

Post by decimalenough »

rob74 wrote: post #19

My first reaction to the title was "how can a mountain be controversial?!", and, even after reading the article, the title still sounds wrong to me. I mean, a mountain is a mountain, it just... exists in a very undisputable way. What climbers did or didn't do on that mountain can be controversial, but not the mountain itself.

Yeah, I thought this would be about a border dispute or something.

Re: A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

#38

Post by rurban »

snowwrestler wrote: post #8
matheusmoreira wrote: post #5

> police arrested them and confiscated 102 bolts That stood out to me... I understand that rock climbing is Serious Business to its practitioners and people on internet forums, but these two guys actually got arrested for removing those bolts, which is a whole new level of serious. Was it really some kind of crime to do that? What happened to those guys after that?

I think you’ll be sad if you look up Hayden Kennedy. No serious legal consequences to them from this climb, though, and the route remains clean. There was a wonderful film in this year’s Mountains On Stage film tour called Patagonian Chimeras , about a team of women who climbed the new variation by fair means.

The route is not clean, the Red Bull film team added more bolts, when Lama did his climb there in 2010.

https://web.archive.org/web/201 90530021810/http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web10x/newswire-lama-speaks-comp...

This couldn't happen in my climbing area, the Saechsische Schweiz, famous for creating the first Climbing regulations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Switzerland_climbing_reg... Police will arrest you for putting bolts in there for sure.

Re: A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

#39

Post by riffraff »

tclancy wrote: post #32
matheusmoreira wrote: post #5

> police arrested them and confiscated 102 bolts That stood out to me... I understand that rock climbing is Serious Business to its practitioners and people on internet forums, but these two guys actually got arrested for removing those bolts, which is a whole new level of serious. Was it really some kind of crime to do that? What happened to those guys after that?

I want to know why they left them with some.

I imagined those just fell down while they were taking them out so they didn't took out 125, lost 20+, and got caught with 102.

Re: A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

#40

Post by alberto-m »

mellosouls wrote: post #20

Ofc we all know this but its nice to be reminded that gatekeeping and nerdery is not limited to tech forums.

Mountaneering nerdery is in some sense nobler, since people practising it put their health and lives at stake. Debates about C++ undefined behaviour would get a different flavour if every now and then some high-profile developer were killed by nasal demons.
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