Pride, Bolts, and Prejudice: Yosemite’s Holy War Over Snake Dike
Last summer in Yosemite, a “bolt war” broke out over Snake Dike, the legendary route on Half Dome. On one side, a veteran route developer who added sixteen bolts without asking anyone. On the other, a 30-year-old climber who chopped them in the name of ethics—and the dead. Beneath the technical dispute? A class struggle playing out on granite. Get ready for a fight.
On June 6, route developer and guidebook author Erik Sloan announced on the Mountain Project forums that he had begun retrobolting Snake Dike—adding new bolts to an existing route, not simply replacing old hardware. The roughly 820-foot route was first climbed in 1965 by Jim Bridwell, Chris Fredericks, and Eric Beck on Yosemite’s iconic Half Dome. Rated 5.7 (roughly French 5a/5b) and notoriously sparse on protection, if not downright runout, with long stretches between gear, the route had already been the scene of several serious accidents.
Eric Beck, one of the three first ascensionists, had himself called for the route to be rebolted, arguing that its level of commitment was wildly out of proportion to its grade. So why did Sloan’s work spark such an uproar? It comes down to numbers. The first ascent party had placed only two bolts beyond the belay anchors. At least one additional bolt was later added by Steve Roper, and the anchors were doubled. Sloan, by contrast, took it upon himself to add no fewer than sixteen bolts to the first three pitches.
“The climbing tribe’s voice on this is clear. Sloan’s bolting is anathema to the spirit of Snake Dike in particular and of trad climbing in general”
Darion Maltby, a young American climber.
But one of the foundations of Yosemite climbing ethics is that bolts should be used only when strictly necessary. Steve Roper was already making that case in his book Camp 4:
“I have no hesitation in siding with the ‘Valley Christians,’ as Warren Harding called those who wanted to impose an ethic and prevent the proliferation of expansion bolts and fixed ropes,” he writes in the foreword. He later defends the position this way: “If less-skilled climbers place bolts whenever the climbing starts to feel too hard for them, it only encourages unnecessary proliferation. But who gets to decide whether those bolts are really necessary?” (Nirvana, 1960–1961). Inevitably, the answer is the same: “Bolts should only be placed by the best climbers, because only they know when they are indispensable” (Yvon Chouinard, American Alpine Journal, 1963, author’s note).
Bourdieu Knows His Own
The argument over bolts—who gets to place them and under what circumstances—is hardly new. It pits two camps against each other. On one side are the “Valley Christians,” whom we might also call the “aristocrats,” since they claim to be not only purer but also “better” than everyone else. On the other are those who favor more closely spaced protection, making routes more accessible to ordinary mortals. Among the latter, Roper cites Gene Prater, who argued that those arrogant “experts,” such as Chouinard or Roper, could simply ignore the “unnecessary” bolts and leave them in place for weaker climbers. What Sloan did, then, runs directly against the ethic defended by Yosemite’s aristocracy—the “dominant fraction” of the group, to borrow Bourdieu’s language.
The reaction came quickly. During June, 30-year-old climber Darion Maltby chopped, or removed, every new bolt in an effort to restore the route to its original purity. Our self-appointed vigilante claimed he had acted “in accordance with the will of the community.” In a June 30 article, he told Climbing: “The climbing tribe’s voice on this is clear. Sloan’s bolting is anathema to the spirit of Snake Dike in particular and of trad climbing in general.”
The biblical language of “anathema” is no accident. It suggests that Maltby, following Roper and others before him, identifies with the “Valley Christians”—or at least that, through his actions, he is trying to join their ranks by defending their puritan ethic. His move, then, is not neutral. It says something about his own aspirations first: he wants recognition from a faction, and he is willing to prove his loyalty to get it. Maltby also claims to be acting “in accordance with the will of the community.” But what does “community” mean here? In this case, it can only mean the dominant faction—the people who get to define the “ethic,” and who do so in their own interest.
The tension between bolting and the ability of a small group to dominate everyone else is not some abstract intellectual exercise. It is a structural issue in climbing.
Le 24 juin, le grimpeur de passage Kenneth Babenco a grimpé Snake Dike et a été surpris de constater que les nouveaux spits avaient disparu. Toujours dans Climbing, il raconte : « Je suis même venu de Phoenix en voiture parce que je voulais que ma femme acquière de l’expérience en tête sur un terrain modéré. Mais tous les spits avaient été arrachés, alors c’est moi qui ai finalement grimpé la voie en tête ». La version aristocratique de l’éthique, on le voit, conduit à la reproduction de la domination interne au groupe. Faute d’un équipement suffisant, l’épouse de Kenneth Babenco ne peut pas partir en tête et se trouve reconduite à son statut d’éternelle seconde, condamnée à grimper une énième fois en moulinette. Maltby, tout à son désir d’être reconnu par l’aristocratie locale, prive les débutant·e·s et les personnes les moins expérimentées de la possibilité d’apprendre et de progresser.
On June 24, visiting climber Kenneth Babenco climbed Snake Dike and was surprised to find that the new bolts were gone. He told Climbing: “I actually drove there from Phoenix because I wanted my wife to get some experience leading moderate terrain. But all the bolts were chopped, so I ended up leading the climb.”
The aristocratic version of climbing ethics, as we can see, reproduces the group’s internal hierarchy. Without enough protection, Babenco’s wife does not get to lead and is pushed back into the role of perpetual follower, relegated to yet another lap on toprope. In his desire to win approval from the local aristocracy, Maltby denies beginners and less experienced climbers an opportunity to learn and progress.
An Aristocratic Climbing Ethic
The obvious response is that those climbers can always learn to lead somewhere else. Fine. But the debate over bolting—and the way bolting can reproduce hierarchies and power dynamics within climbing—is hardly new, and it extends well beyond Yosemite. The same thinking, for example, sits at the heart of work done by the FSGT, the French Federation of Labor Sports and Gymnastics, when it properly bolts supposedly easy routes at Haute-Roche. The goal is for everyone to become self-sufficient, in keeping with its motto: “I climb on lead and lead the outings I take part in.”
The tension between bolting and the ability of a small group to dominate everyone else is not some abstract intellectual exercise. It is a structural issue in climbing. And it is probably part of what Maltby sees as the “anathema” in Sloan’s actions. Bolting Snake Dike more heavily means opening the route to more people. That inevitably dilutes some of the prestige certain climbers derive from having repeated an intimidating, runout route. The curse Sloan has unleashed is democratization—or at least the mass expansion of climbing, along with the problems that come with it. Maltby more or less says so himself. “Each day, more people were climbing the route using the extra bolts,” Maltby told Climbing. “I didn’t want to have Sloan’s sport bolting of Snake Dike to become normalized. So I acted.”
But Maltby does not stop there. He goes further, invoking the dead themselves:
“Beck didn’t climb Snake Dike alone.” Maltby referenced a Facebook post from a friend of Jim Bridwell, who helped Beck establish the route but died in 2018. According to Maltby, the friend claimed that Bridwell would have opposed any new bolts. “I’d side with Bridwell, as his vision preserves both the rock as well as the adventure and challenge the route presents as it has for the past 60 years,” Maltby said. The weakness of an argument based on hearsay—a friend speaking for a dead man—is obvious.
“The aristocratic ideology of sport as a disinterested and gratuitous activity helps conceal the truth of the profits of distinction”
Pierre Bourdieu, sociologist.
The claim, then, is that all of this is being done selflessly, a value central to the aristocratic view of sport. But Bourdieu exposed the illusion behind that idea in Questions de sociologie: “The aristocratic ideology of sport as a disinterested and gratuitous activity helps conceal the truth of the profits of distinction” that sport makes possible. And it is not hard to see the advantage some climbers gain from keeping Snake Dike exactly as it is. By limiting other people’s access, they preserve their position within the group and keep for themselves the prestige that comes with repeating a serious, runout route.
But the spotlight can just as easily swing the other way. Sloan is hardly innocent either.
According to Climbing, he has “replaced more than 2,000 bolts on Yosemite’s big walls.” He is also the “author of the three most popular, non-bouldering Yosemite guidebooks […], and serves as the unofficial recordkeeper for Yosemite’s speed records.” Sloan is, in other words, practically an institution unto himself. He knows the storm he is about to unleash when he acts on his own, without consulting anyone, and then asks the “community” merely to help fund a project he has already decided to carry out. One can reasonably assume he does this because his position makes him feel, in some sense, above the rules and above the ethic—above even Yosemite’s local aristocracy.
Hubris and Fury
In that respect, Sloan and Maltby bring to mind an old myth. After Antigone’s two brothers kill each other, power passes to their uncle Creon. He decrees that one brother, Eteocles, will be honored by the city as a hero, while the other, Polynices, will be left to rot and be eaten by scavengers. Anyone who dares bury him will be executed. Antigone, sister to both men and niece to Creon, is caught after symbolically throwing a little dirt over the body of her disgraced brother.
Both, in other words, refuse the limits placed on every human being in Greek thought. Both display hubris.
According to philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis in Figures of the Thinkable, Antigone and Creon are two sides of the same coin. Both claim the right to exceed the limits imposed by the human condition, without consulting anyone else about what is right and good.
Because of the authority vested in him, Creon believes he can legislate over the dead. But the dead lie beyond his jurisdiction: by virtue of being dead, they now belong to the gods. Antigone, meanwhile, believes she can place herself above the laws of her city and speak in the name of those gods. Both, in other words, refuse the limits placed on every human being in Greek thought. Both display hubris.
The parallel with our little bolt war is hard to miss. On one side stands a veteran guidebook author whose status borders on that of an institution. Like Creon, he believes he can decide on his own not merely to replace aging bolts but to redesign the protection on an entire route, as though the route belonged to him. That is exactly what can be seen in this video.
On the other side is a young climber who invokes higher laws—and even the dead themselves—to resist the dictates of a man with an autocratic streak.
Like Antigone and Creon, both lack restraint. More importantly, as Castoriadis argues, both are simultaneously right and wrong. They are right that Snake Dike clearly needs some degree of rebolting, but wrong to act alone. They are right to reject one person’s unilateral decision, but wrong to claim authority to act on behalf of a “community” that they have reduced to its dominant faction.
That is an antinomy: both positions can be right and wrong at the same time. But beyond that contradiction, Castoriadis argues that the real problem is the isolation of the people involved. In Greek thought, no one—not even the person who is right—can be right alone and against everyone else. Political reason must always be collective. Otherwise, by tearing human communities apart and driving them toward destruction, reason itself becomes the worst kind of error.
The best argument in the world is never enough to justify acting alone. Isolated, reason turns into its opposite and pushes the community toward anomie. Sloan-as-Creon and Maltby-as-Antigone are therefore right and wrong at once. More than that, each is wrong precisely because each is right alone: each acts on his own authority, and each helps tear the community apart and turn disagreement into war.
That is the Greek lesson for climbing: better to be wrong together than right alone. Better to leave a route poorly protected than start a “bolt war.” Better to leave the bolts in place than butcher the route by ripping them out any which way.
