WHY BOLTING

Bolting is hard work. Bolting is discovering the right crag, imagining the possible lines and their difficulties.
Bolting is placing bolts, but, what is their right place? Do we want to bolt a mentally-challenging route,with long runouts and hard clips, or one resembling your favorite indoor climbing wall?
Bolting is imagine yourself as author and first climber. Repoint it. Receiving critics, suggestions,improvements, and maybe fame and honors one day!

Bolting is even more. Bolting is cleaning the route, removing insecure rocks, mud from holes and crags, cropping shrubs, on the cliff as well as its bottom. Making a trailing path, the steps, clearing the land and placing helping ropes to easy the access to the crag. The material is heavy as much as the backpack is; you feel like a mule, and probably without the extra rope meters that you left in the car, down in the valley.

On the top of the wall, looking for a solid tree or slab where building the anchor, drilling, screwing, wondering if you have it right and holding on it.
Rappelling down, slowly, cautiously, full of emotions, placing one extra bolt and finally passing the quickdraw. Rappelling again, imagining your route,difficulty, trying the movements, cleaning the rock and drilling the next protection. Again and again, til touching the
ground. Now you are free. It's over.

Bolting. We are often alone. We are anarchists, hermits, loners, maybe morons. Sometime we ask for help, but we want things done as we want.
If we make errors, it's our fault. We made a mistake. We caused it. No remorse, no regret to have listen somebody else's opinion.
When infected by this virus, we cannot live without. We become bolting addicted. We live in our own mind, in a world different from that one that regular climbers belong to. When near to rocks, we foment. Our sense of duty prevails.
What we do here, as one of the mass? It's time to go, to bolt, again. That's our virus.

This is bolting, for me, and likely for my friend Dinda. The difference? His 20+ years of experience, 900 routes, and a never ending passion for the Val Pennavaire.

Matteo Felanda
Translation of Marco Balda