UKH

Just noticed a comment in the logbooks that there’s a brand new cemented in peg on the crux of Citadel (E5 6b)

Why?! Since when have cemented in pegs been acceptable on Main Cliff? It’s not Wintour’s Leap! The crux of Citadel is perfectly safe even with the old peg gone - there’s good gear on the face which can be placed from the rest before the crux and you’d be falling into space anyway.

Come on people, let’s observe some standards...

Incidentally, the rusty peg just before the horizontal flake on P2 of Citadel is no more. I was hanging off the flake belaying on Trunk Line yesterday, put my foot on it and it just crumbled. Somehow it didn’t completely break but it’s pretty caput. Not that you need it as there’s more gear than you can shake a quickdraw at, if you can hang on to place it!

May be it’s one in, one out...

I heard about this a month or so ago and wondered when it would reach here. 

The beer is in the fridge and the popcorn in the pan. 

How is this even done? Do you bring some cement you prepared earlier at home in Tupperware or something?

I might ab in and have a go at removing it as a rest day activity one day... 

Hardware-carrying drones. The way of the future

As a clueless climber of a more modern generation, can someone explain to me exactly why you'd need to cement in a piton other than to make it very obviously fixed? Is it actually any more secure - in a good placement - than piton sans cement?

If it’s anything like the cemented-in pegs on Verbal Abuse at Raven Tor, it will be a nightmare to get out. You will need an angle grinder if that’s the case. Does it fill up a placement? 

Would it be your standard epoxy resin like you get with glue-ins? I've seen them before at Wintours but never paid much attention to the material. Is it drilled in or in a pre-existing crack?

Don’t know, just going by the comment in the log books. When I did it a couple of years back, there was just a rust stain where the peg used to be but there was good gear lower down to protect the crux. Seem to recall the old peg was downward pointing so presumably someone decided to cement in the new one due to the placement being poor. 

You mean this hullabaloo is about something which you haven't actually seen for yourself yet? Could this be Eroicagate 2?

I have the original peg. The fall that broke it was stopped by other gear so I'd always assumed it wasn't really necessary, just one of those relics to try to make something a little more onsightable. I didn't take a look myself, maybe I'll finally hear back this year.

To stop people nicking them

Or possibly stop people removing them in a rush of anti-peg righteousness

The high pH of the cement will also prolong the life of the Peg and help prevent nasty rust stains. 

Eroicagate, that classic thread... I have no reason to doubt the log book entry and it would appear that one of the posters above has heard about it separately. Let’s hope you’re right though and it’s all a myth.

Thing is, it’s just bizarre. Why go to all that effort when it’s fundamentally unnecessary? You’d take a bit of a flyer but nothing out of the ordinary for an E5 and it’s fine without the peg, as a Will attests. 

As the person responsible for breaking the original peg I feel I've got some skin in the game. Seems a little strange that someone would go to the effort of cementing in a peg, especially as it's superfluous. I think it would either involve climbing the first pitch without the peg then lowering off to cement a peg in, or a ~100m ab from the top. Have you tried contacting the ukc user yo confirm the existence of the cemented peg?