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Thanks for taking the time to reply Steve,
As you mention, none of us are experts and we’re all still learning. My own crop of new bolted routes is limited to about 50, but for the last 37 years I’ve hung out with people who have put up thousands of bolted routes and many of them are close friends. I’ve have been around the block long enough to see all sorts of good and bad practice. My opinion is based on what I have observed and on discussions with climbers who regularly bolt new routes.
I don’t agree with mountain instructor advice on several issues, so it doesn’t surprise me that I’m at odds on this one. Mountain instructors have got things dangerously wrong in the past with several bad accidents and fatalities. The BMC gives advice on lowering down off a sport anchor, but I’m not aware that they take an opinion on whether or not this is the better method. If you lower down from routes at Bram Crag (especially on the right hand side) you can actually feel the rope grinding over edges. I’m not convinced the BMC would recommend lowering in this situation.
On the matter of wear and tear on the rub points of an anchor, this can happen surprisingly fast. In the distant past when I used one of the old figure of eight descenders I wore deep grooves in it during just one abseil. It was the days before rope mats and I had paid my rope out onto sand at Brean Down. The sand on the rope acted as an abrasive and took quite a layer of metal off. Also, back in the 1990s I bought one of the first Reverso belay plates. It wore down badly over just a couple of seasons at the point where the dead rope comes out, probably from doing lots of climbing on sea cliffs where you abseil a lot. The Reverso design changed to add more metal at this rub point.
I know that opinion on abseiling versus lowering is divided. Most climbers don’t even bother to consider the issues, so its good that you have. When I climbed a lot at Portland it came down to who owned the rope. Mostly, my mates were of the same opinion as me and we abseiled. If I climbed with my mate Frank, and used his rope, we lowered. The anchors at Portland were all marine grade stainless steel staples and now have to be replaced, not because they have corroded but because they have worn down.
On the matter of glue ins versus expansion bolts, I don’t have an opinion. My friends Gordon Jenkin and Francis Haden have done tests on both of these and not found any difference worth reporting. Gordon only uses expansion bolts while Francis uses both, but mostly expansions.
