Alp

The other half is that the equipper is protecting against specific hazards, not maintaining a constant interval.

A good bolting job is not evenly spaced. It puts protection where a fall would be bad — before a ledge, at a crux, low on the route where hitting the ground is possible — and spaces out where the wall is steep, clean and a fall is simply air. On overhanging rock with nothing to hit, a longer runout is genuinely safe in a way that the same distance above a slab is not.

So what looks like inconsistent spacing usually encodes a hazard map that is invisible unless you know what to look for. On a steep clean section, wide spacing means the equipper judged that a longer fall there costs nothing.

There is also a real ethical tradition in some areas that a route should preserve some commitment, and that over-bolting removes something. That view is contested and it is not the main driver on modern sport routes, but it exists and it varies enormously by region and by crag.

The presence of others changes it, and the reason is that the risk is not entirely self-contained, which is where the personal-autonomy argument runs out.

What gets externalised:

• The people who would have to respond. A serious accident at a busy crag means bystanders performing first aid, and rescuers taking on real risk to reach the site. Neither group consented.
• The people who watched. Witnessing a severe accident is not a neutral event and it stays with people.
• Access. Serious incidents at popular venues have historically led to closures, restrictions and liability disputes for everybody who uses that crag.

None of that means the activity is illegitimate. It means "my risk, my choice" is an incomplete description of the situation, and the objection you heard was probably about the incompleteness rather than about the choice.

General guidance rather than anything specific to you — individual response varies a lot and anyone with a relevant medical history should ask a doctor rather than a forum.

The commonly cited threshold where altitude illness starts to appear at all is around 2500 metres, and your 2700 is just above it. At that height, in an ordinary healthy person arriving for a short time, symptoms are usually mild if they occur — headache, poor sleep, being out of breath more easily than expected, reduced appetite.

The standard acclimatisation rules — limiting the gain in sleeping altitude per day, building in rest days — are aimed at going considerably higher and staying there. For a day trip to 2700 they are not the relevant framework.

What matters far more at your altitude is where you sleep. Going up for the day and coming down to sleep low is a much smaller ask than sleeping at 2700 on your first night.

One practical note: rough water multiplies everything, exactly as you observed.

On a messy day a beginner spends far more time paddling against water, gets pushed back, duck-dives or gets rolled repeatedly, and rarely gets a clean ride. The session can be double the work for a fraction of the reward.

While you are building tolerance, choosing calmer days is not avoiding the challenge — it is choosing the sessions where you learn most per unit of fatigue.