So like the blues itself, growing old takes its toll and it's
nothing to be shamed for, the legends can rock till their dead and
seeing a great while they're around is not unlike seeing a flashing bolt
from a far away distance.In early March, an unknown person or persons
went to Red Rock Canyon Open Space, a Colorado Springs' city park, and
stole over 25 bolt hangers and anchor material including Fixe ring
anchors and forged chain from a dozen routes. The thief obviously had
some climbing skills and equipment since many of the hangers were taken
high on routes and would be inaccessible except by rappelling down from
the cliff-top.But this past Saturday,led downlight
everything
came crashing down. Janis called me at 2am in a panic.I mean, who does
that? What climber goes to a public climbing area and steals bolt
hangers from existing routes? It is very discouraging that some lowlife
climbers would feel the need to steal the fixed protection used by
thousands of climbers on over 100 routes since the park opened in 2004.
The
good news is that there are more good people out there than evil
hanger-stealing thugs. Within a couple weeks of the thievery, an unknown
climber replaced about half of the missing hardware with new hangers,
undoubtedly bought with their own hard-earned cash. I give a hearty
shout-out and thank you to that unknown climber for stepping forward and
doing a good deed.Last week Collin Powers with the Pikes Peak Group of
the Colorado Mountain Club also messaged me that the club was willing to
buy the remainder of the replacement gear to restore the routes to
their original condition. Collin bought a dozen Metolius bolt hangers
from the Mountain Chalet and painted them to match the color of the
sandstone at Red Rock Canyon.A couple days ago, Collin and I went over
to Red Rocks on a windy morning and reinstalled ten of the hangers on
three routes at the Whale's Tail.
