To Bolt or Not To Bolt Rocks: That Is the Climbers’ Debate

Reaching 8,000-meter summits might or might not be a thing of Reinhold Messner’s past, but he has much to say about bolting, a controversial subject among climbers and environmentalists.

Bolts are drilled into rock faces to help secure climbing ropes, and are a fact of life in today’s sport climbing ethic, which emphasizes short, steep, technical routes.

“I have never used a bolt in my life,” Messner said. “Up to 25, I was a rock climber and nothing else, but I always defend the wall. The (young climbers) are better than we were, but they look at a rock wall like we look at a postcard, and this is wrong.

”. . . If you use bolts, you destroy the impossible; the climbing is less challenging. Yet today everybody uses bolts.

“If it were not for bolts, El Capitan would still be impossible. The bolts are safe and bolts mean everybody can go. You know always there is a way. If there is not a way, you put in one more bolt and now there is a way.”

Messner’s way shuns most technological assistance and support.

“I only do adventures when there is a possibility to fail,” he said. “I failed at many walls as a rock climber. I found a situation I could not pass and I went down. I was not strong enough, or was not intelligent enough to see the beast was not possible to free-climb. But I never had a bolt or oxygen bottle in my rucksack.

“If human beings like adventure, they need to stop using certain equipment,” he advised. “(On the trek to the North Pole) I am using the same equipment (Adm. Robert) Peary had. Better clothes, yes, but not a Ski-Doo.”