Anchor Maintenance: Rock Canyon

During the week of May 19th, the SLCA anchor crew spent five days in Rock Canyon updating fixed hardware at some of its most popular crags. The team focused on Black Rose, Red Slab, Ed and Tarry Wall, and the left side of the Jobsite.

Hardware Upgrades and Anchor Improvements

The crew replaced aging, rusty bolts with 1/2” glue-in bolts, upgraded anchors with stainless steel chain, quick links, and rappel rings, and added mussy hooks to popular sport climbs. Notable updated routes include The Paper Route (5.8), Mr. Cornflakes (5.7+), and Edge of the World (5.8+).

Challenges of Working in Rock Canyon

Rock Canyon presents unique challenges when it comes to anchor maintenance. The bullet-hard quartzite can make bolt removal extremely difficult. Many original bolts were either not drilled deep enough or were placed with dual bits—an understandable choice given the difficulty of hand-drilling on lead in such hard rock. In several cases, bolts snapped during extraction, forcing us to drill new holes.

Conversely, the rock at the Jobsite is soft and grainy. Bolt holes in this area are often oversized, especially where mechanical bolts have been repeatedly tightened. For these reasons, glue-ins are the ideal solution in this zone—they don’t rely on mechanical wedging and are more secure in softer rock.

Best Practices for Route Development

If you're putting up new routes, please match your hardware to the rock type. Use the right bolt for the job—mechanical bolts in hard, dense rock and glue-ins in soft or grainy stone.

Also, avoid mixing metals. Combining plated steel bolts with stainless steel hangers is one of the leading causes of corrosion. This type of metal mismatch leads to galvanic corrosion (also known as electrolysis), where the presence of an electrolyte (like water) causes one metal to corrode faster. Stainless and non-stainless steel interact in these conditions, with one becoming the sacrificial anode and degrading over time.