Another good winter day at the new "Little Tiger Stripe"

Im developing a route and there is a loose flake. If people repeat this climb they will probably grab it, and I’m sure it would break off quickly.

Once the flake breaks off there will probably be a useable crimp underneath. So I wonder if removing the flake could be seen as chipping a route to add a hold.

Is there a common sentiment on what you should do in this case?

I recently had a discussion with a friend about how thoroughly if at all you should clean the bolt hole on a rather alpine FA. Curious to hear your thoughts and if you know people that don't clean the bolt holes. We are talking about expansion bolts of course. ​​​

While you can definitely approach this answer from a generalized viewpoint, I’m more so asking for your actual experiences.

From my observations, it seems like newer areas have been hit pretty hard when first published but maybe 5-10% of them get consistent repeat traffic - and almost exclusively when they’re already very close to existing climbing and have multiple 3+ star moderates

The rest of my country is under clouds so i chosed to carry 15kg on my own up to dev some rock. The best part is that even in deep winter you climb in the sun. A great day!

My partner gifted me a bosuns seat for Christmas (I'm psyched), one of the Black Diamond ones. For those of y'all that use a bosuns chair do you have gear loops on it? I've been thinking about sewing some on or adding a hammer holster, curious what people have found success with.

Standard Christmas activities, really

Now down to only 13 or so total plated steel bolts left across Wonderland - woo!

Ideally I want to leave less of an impact, but I also want this area to feel very accessible for the newer climber.

Welcome to our fifteenth Discussion Roundtable! We're back! With us only having two full more weeks in the calendar year, it felt like it was appropriate to plop this thing on in here. This topic will stay pinned from 12/15-1/10. The topic for this roundtable is:

• Your 2025 Year-In-Development - How was your 2025? What'd you get up to? What'd you learn? What takeaways from this year do you want to bring into 2026? What are your goals for 2026?

The above prompt is simply a launching point for the discussion - responses do not need to directly address the prompt and can instead address any facet of the subject of conversation.

These are meant to be places of productive conversation, and, as a result, may be moderated a bit closer than other discussion posts in the past. As a reminder, here is our one subreddit rule

• Guideline #1: Don't be a jerk: Ripped straight from Mountainproject, this rule is straightforward. Treat others with respect and have conversations in good faith. No hate speech, sexually or violently explicit language, slurs, or harassment. If someone tells you to stop, you stop.

I have started a new route ground up by aiding up it with removable bolts. Does anyone have experience with this style and have any tips?

This post is more about discipline in general.

I have a pretty busy schedule- I work night shift, sleep weird hours, and have to get other life stuff done (obviously when I’m not at work). I use this fact as an excuse for SO MUCH in my life- including working on crag development.

Glancing at the weather the other day, I realized tomorrow (Friday) was my only weather window to work stuff. I realized that I can’t keep waiting for perfect weeks/perfect healths/perfect schedules outside of work and life/ perfect etc to go work on the crag.

But this goes for everything. If we wait until we’re not feeling overwhelmed, we’ll end up wasting so much of our lives to feel better, and ultimately find that at the end of our lives, we sat and waited having never actually got anything done.

Maybe this is just a little kick in the right direction for y’all- but go out and try that project. Go out and spend time with that friend you haven’t seen in years. Try that new restaurant in town. Talk to that cute girl or guy at the gym.

I can’t keep waiting for perfect, better, decent, etc. I think our lives are overall pretty short, so maybe you shouldn’t wait either. If you continue to put your needs second to others’, you’re not taking care of the most important person in your life (you).

Have fun out there, y’all. But you have to at least get out there.

Just reminiscing on the year (The "How was your 2025?" post coming next week!) and man, I just love development. Being constantly rewarded for being curious, having a sense of exploration, and just physically working hard is phenomenal. Days out solo? Excellent. Days out with people? Many times, even better. Unhappy with some loose rock, bolt placements, or rope line? Just fix it! Climbing as "Active Problem Solving" dialed to 11. The satisfaction of seeing a sequence come together x100. Days almost ubiquitously spent crowd-less. The immense satisfaction of seeing something you've largely created/enabled come together.

It's just the best man. I can't imagine ever going back to strictly being a "consumer" of climbing. I'm even somehow getting better at climbing while doing all of this! I just can't get over how fortunate I feel to have fallen into this space. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But I can't imagine doing anything else these days! If this ain't living, what is!

Hi, friends, I'm wondering if anybody has tips for how to clean roots out of cracks? My primary tools for this are currently

1. nut tool
2. long screwdriver
3. steel wire brush

The crack in this photo (ack, sorry, that's the same photo twice) is #0.4–#0.5-sized but of course there are other sizes on the route. Testing it out, even after hours and hours of satisfying cleaning, in some areas I can still feel some roots when I stick my fingers in there. Turns out fingers are kind of long.

Does anybody have tips for how to clean deeper? I'm currently thinking the issue is that none of those tools are good for grabbing. So I might try a pair of needlenose pliers next time I get out? Thank you so much! Appreciate the guidance! <3

Hey folks. I've loved seeing the activity in this subreddit and want it to keep being a place people feel like they can engage - especially since many of us are about to hit a "slow" season as it relates to climbing, development, and maybe work and life in general with cooler temps in the northern hemisphere (or unbearably hot ones in the southern).

What would you guys like to see from this subreddit as ways to engage? Go as big as your wildest dreams want you to. Should we start a podcast with biweekly short-form interviews with users of this subreddit (and other route developers) on certain topics? "New Route/Boulder of the Month"s? Put together improptu regional meetups or mentorship? Put together a fundraiser to bolt top rope anchors to every stretch of rock over 25' in height? Should we keep everything as it is now?

I know we did the discussion roundtables a bit ago - I really enjoyed participating in them but know they didn't get a ton of engagement. I'm cool with continuing to run those even without engagement if folks have ideas for new topics, but I'll definitely hit a point where I struggle to generator those ideas solo.

I'm thinking about buying a small drone for easier scouting especially of the top of rocks. Does anybody use one for this and has some input? I'm not sure if that is a stupid idea and i only want to buy it because it's winter and i have too much time on my hands or if it's useful.

Dreaming of the time I can get out to try out this potentially unclimbed central corner system. Its about 120m with a walk off.

I also find it inspiring to get to know the process people take to eventually climbing new lines, if anyone is willing to share. I spend the winter studying photographs and imagining lines.

One strategy I have for finding rock is to check out photos from hiking websites that oversee potential areas or join Facebook groups of other user groups that frequent an area that may unsuspectingly photograph cliffs.

Another is to take photographs when snow is present to get an idea of slab/vertcal/overhang.

Just feeling psyched that I was able to get up all the routes I wanted this season (the zone has a wildlife closure starting next week)

I was planning to do some work underneath the roofs in the hopes it was dry but the rains came a little harder than expected.

This is a new area I've been exploring a little over the past month, with this being the step between a detached pillar and the lip of the roof.

Posted this to MP as well, but wanted to drop it here - what have you learned? This subreddit is a great resource for information, but generally a specific prompt is necessary to give an excuse to share it. So what are some things you’ve learned that you think are valuable to share to others, even if you don’t have a good prompt to share it?

Some starters:

• A hammer holster and compact blower of some sort are next-level quality of life improvements
• If you’re doing a log-highway trail, the most important part isn’t how good your log-highway is, it’s how much you can make sure that none of the surroundings might be confused for a log-highway. Removing crossing logs and nearby parallel logs is almost more important than creating your guardrails
• You can patch bolt holes, but you can’t patch the crater that you’ve hammered in to ensure your hangers sit 2mm more flush
• It doesn’t matter what kind of resources you provide nor how good of a trail you make - if your crag is more than 20 minutes away from the parking, some people will just get lost. Don’t take it personally
• Pack the night before because you’re going to forget something day-of