That stood out to me... I understand that rock climbing is Serious Business to its practitioners and people on internet forums, but these two guys actually got arrested for removing those bolts, which is a whole new level of serious.
Was it really some kind of crime to do that? What happened to those guys after that?
The local climbing community chose to take care of this quietly without media or internet drama.
Also, the local community can make whatever decisions it wants, not decisions that satisfy 'whoever' else.
No serious legal consequences to them from this climb, though, and the route remains clean. There was a wonderful film in this year’s Mountains On Stage film tour called Patagonian Chimeras, about a team of women who climbed the new variation by fair means.
https://web.archive.org/web/201 90530021810/http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web10x/newswire-lama-speaks-comp...
This couldn't happen in my climbing area, the Saechsische Schweiz, famous for creating the first Climbing regulations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxon_Switzerland_climbing_reg... Police will arrest you for putting bolts in there for sure.