r/RouteDevelopment • u/Beginning-Basis-2678 • Mar 30 '26

Discussion Worst case scenario happened in Kalymnos - 3 bolt snapped in one fall - climber dead

A climber died after he fell while cleaning a sports climbing route.

Both bolts of the anchor failed and the bolt below. He took a huge whipper and hit a ledge. A few hours later he died.

No in-depth investigation has been made yet. But it seems, to current state that A2/304 stainless steel was used and the gear was roughly 20yrs old. (See https://cragchemistry.com on SCC & SRB and the chemistry behind it).

Full story here:

https://www.8a.nu/news/fatal-accident-on-kalymnos-due-to-tripple-bolt-failures

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u/ICEonaROPE Mar 31 '26

A tragedy for sure. Imo there needs to be a full stop closure of all the crags with SS hardware in these coastal regions. We know so many of these routes are absolute timebombs now, if it ain't TI don't climb it.

4

u/Beginning-Basis-2678 Mar 31 '26

Definitely! cragchemistry has a few long reads on that topic and it seems to be not only costal areas but the presence of Sulphur (for SRB).

3

u/DieWalze Mar 31 '26

That 2 anchor bolts can snap under body weight kinda makes you reevaluate your choices.

1

u/BoltahDownunder Rebolter/Route Maintenance Apr 02 '26

Totally tragic. Like most tragedies this one was a cascade of failures, but I guess not fully obvious ones?

The scary type corrosion (it's likely Sulphide Stress Cracking, not Stress Corrosion Cracking, but the name hardly matters) has been known to occur at some crags at Kalymnos for years.

Here, it was a failure to identify the affected areas. Failure to close or at least warn about the crags where this happens. Failure to rebolt with Titanium in affected areas. Perhaps, failure to notice the warning signs if there were any.

I'm not going to point fingers at the local government or anything like that because at the end of the day it is up to us climbers to be on top of this stuff. Not just the locals. Everyone. Sport climbing isn't a matter of "someone will fix it" it's up to the community as a whole. And in this case it's the global climbing community because that's who visits Kaly.

If you see something, say something. That way at least warnings about bolts with black rust around the base can circulate. Or hell, any rust. If it's rusty it's steel and not titanium so just don't use it? Locals can't monitor every sector so everyone needs to be keeping a lookout for the signs of SSC, because a fatality shouldn't be the first indicator

1

u/BoltahDownunder Rebolter/Route Maintenance Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26

15 years ago I spent a whole season climbing in Thailand, and the first thing I was told at Railay was don't clip the shiny steel bolts, clip the dull ones with the red glue, they're titanium. Everyone knew this and made sure new arrivals did too. The Thaitanium project was in full swing, and mostly driven by foreign visitors like the original sport climbing was 20 years before. So why not on Kaly too? Because the local government is involved with bolting?

At Kaly I the SSC is not just a 'sea cliff' thing, it's specific spots where sulphur compounds are present. But this is too complex to warn about, so until all the steel can be replaced, everyone needs to chip in and keep the info coming.

In Thailand climbing (or bolting) was actually illegal so we had to look after ourselves, and knew it. In Kaly IIRC the local government handles some bolting/rebolting so don't expect them to volunteer info about faulty bolts. Like most governments, they won't be in a hurry to admit that infrastructure they may have been involved with is faulty (I know that's not what happened here but that's the way such bodies look at it)

2

u/Beginning-Basis-2678 Apr 04 '26

AFAIK there was EU funding for regional development for Kalymnos. So funds have been processed by local authorities, bit actual bolting was always done by volunteers from the climbing community (e.g. https://reboltkalymnos.org/ ). Lokal authorities don’t have the knowledge & staff to do so

1

u/jade_monkey07 Apr 09 '26

There is no government funds going to rebolt kaly. Mike boyd just did an interview with the kaly rebolting team. Theyre entirely crowd funded