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| Bolt next to a cam-friendly crack, Cerro Torre. Photo: Rolando Garibotti |
The UIAA (trans. International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation), an affiliation most famous for safety-rating climbing equipment, has issued a position paper against excessive bolting and favoring a re-assertion of “the case for adventure climbing.” The paper asserts that in many climbing areas worldwide, current bolting practices now violate the ethic first championed by the UIAA in 1998 in its To Bolt or Not To Be paper. Throughout this contoversy, the UIAA has called for respecting original methods of protection on older lines, and refraining from bolting new lines wherever natural or removable protection could be used instead.