I’m a trad climber and laugh at all these sports guys believing in the safety of bolts. Improperly placed or not, rock becomes loose as well as bolts do. Check what you’re doing. Back up the stuff you do.
Some things you won’t find out until to late. That’s life.

A stone can be bomber for the 2 guys in front of you and rip off size of a truck engine in your hands. Why? Doesn’t matter, generally that is how erosion works. Sent me flying 4m head first following, being a near miss of a definetely fatal neck breaking grounder. Was hard to cope with.

Inspection by the climbers would have shown these bolts to be loose.

In most areas the first bolters have been locals.
That’s history of climbing. Many new routes are opened by visitors, because they try things the locals never thought of.

Leave a warning sign on the bolts? Impossible.
In that sense every bolt outside of a gym has such a sign leaving the factory. They get no regular technical inspections. Acctually it depends on the gym how much they are required to inspect them and how they care for actually doing it.

It’s shiny new? My girl waitnessed a guy in Italy hearing a loud crack, being to late to 3 bolts tying him to a large piece of rock coming of dragging him to death. The bolts didn’t fail.

Don’t look for safety were there is none.
That’s what my sailing teacher taught me.
Good lesson, but people of believing themselves being civilized don’t understand natural life and death responsibility any more.
Go and change views that prove wrong or suffer their consequences.

Storys about improper bolts are frequent.
Sad fact is somebodys got to get hurt before people find out.

In the end that won’t stop people from climbing.
The ones that quit their dangerous addiction to it are the lucky ones.

This will never be safe, no matter what you do.
In the end you’re dying for that adrenaline rush in your dull life,
trying ever more challenging tours. Taking up Trad is a live saving attitude compared to believing in bolts. What keeps you from living it?
Leave the illusions behind.

Then you’ll have the means to at least back up questionable things, instead of having to go direct and use a stick to clip to something you can’t even see and inspect, trust your life on a single bolt belay on uninspected bolts…

This is a list of things leading to death. The guy coming home from that cut rope didn’t deserve it, he got incredibly lucky. The leader was as stupid as the bolter.

Someday I’ll die due to my own share of stupidity.
That’s human.

it is also weird, because, for instance, where I used to live until few months ago (an area with two different rock types) it’s quite common knowledge in the community that some kind of bolts are ok no matter what the rock type, some others on the contrary are bomber only on some formations (in that case it is short stem bolts being ok on granite but not on limestone).

This is a big reminder for visiting climbers to respect and understand local ethics (ie. bolting ethics) as they have usually evolved that way for a reason. Nick was well known and liked, and he is missed by the entire Australian Climbing community.

We dont know the people who put in the bolts, but they would have definatly known they were against the ethics of the area, and that they were crap, (being able to be pulled out with less than body weight) as aparanty the nuts wouldnt tighten.

As angered as I am by the incident, I feel sad for the people who bolted it, as they will have Nicks death on their concience for the rest of their lives.

We have to watch out for each others’ backs out there folks.

Another instance of bad bolting in Red Rocks:
http://www.mountainproject.com/v/nevada/red_rock/calico_basin/105938048

Pretty tragic accident. Having both a “new” shiny bolt pull out and having the rope cut in once accident is out of this world. Those are two things that I generally deem impossible.