Bad bolting on Wild Country, Telendos.

[Anonymous]

I have to say that although this climb is a very nice climb, the bolting is not good at all. I’d go so far as to say it’s pretty bad. It’s not the amount of them or the placements I am thinking about, but the bolts themselves. I don’t know the english names for the materials, but when you use a stainless steal hanger on a bolt that is of something else it causes a chemical reaction that really speeds up rust.

By looking at how young this climb is and the amount of rust these bolts already have on them, I will be surprised if this route is climbable in a year or two unless someone replaces them. On the very first pitch I noticed one bolt that was stainless steal just as the hanger. This bolt is in good condition as it should be, but almost all other bolts have a lot of rust, and some of them look pretty bad.

I took a picture of one of the bolts at the belay just before the crux pitch. I can email it if anyone is interested.

[Anonymous]

Hi Mike and thank you for bringing up this topic.

The bolts used on Wild Country are more than likely by manufacturer ‘Rockland’. The bolts of Rockland tend to present with a surface rust which is on the bolt but not on the hanger. This is a problem we had noticed and asked Rockland to discontinue these bolts, which they have done since. Also, in May 2009 we sent some Rockland bolts to be tested (from routes bolted in 2006) and the results came back OK — i.e. the bolts inside were undamaged. We made a post about it which you can read here: http://climbkalymnos.com/?p=2837

We don’t know how long these bolts will last in time and naturally we don’t want to ignore this issue. Please do email me your photo and I will do my best to check out the bolts of Wild Country as soon as possible.

Best

Aris

[Author]

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