Aaron Collins watches climbers clip into hangers he installed and calls it reward enough. A 49-year-old Iraq combat veteran and professional mountain guide based in Mesa, Collins is one of a few dozen route developers who have fashioned thousands of bolted climbing lines across Arizona’s rock. He spends a few thousand dollars a year on stainless-steel bolts and other hardware, traveling to crags and using drills and hammers to lay out vertical paths that other climbers will top‑rope, lead and — sometimes decades later — remember by name.
Shows: A route-setter in a helmet looks up at a canyon face while preparing to install climbing hardware during route‑setting work in Arizona.
Collins describes developers as people driven as much by the creation as by the climb itself. "Developers are kind of funny climbers, because we love climbing but we love putting up our routes," he said. "We don’t have time to other people’s routes. You know what I mean? Because I got too many projects." He calls himself an artist and says the work begins with a vision: "I see a wall, I say ‘that’ll go.’"
On a cool May day in the Christopher Creek area near Payson, Collins installed nine bolts into a quartzite crag to establish a new line. He had prepared by brushing lichen from the face, installing rappelling anchors at the top two weeks earlier and approaching the climb from an easier adjacent line with removable protection. While suspended on rappel, he chalked X marks where bolts should go and used a hammer to tap the rock; a ringing sound signaled solid stone, a hollow noise warned of brittle sections. He described aiming for a fairly straight, plumb line of bolts to minimize rope drag for future lead climbers.
Shows: A route‑setter hammers a bolt into the rock while suspended on a canyon wall, illustrating the hands‑on process of creating new climbing routes.
For drilling he relied on a battery-powered Busch drill to bore holes for four-inch-long, 3/8‑inch expansion bolts in the canyon’s hard quartzite; Collins said he would use longer, 1/2‑inch bolts in sandstone to ensure resistance to extreme lead falls. After drilling and clearing dust — he kept a small tube around his neck to blow debris from the hole — he seated each bolt with a bolt hanger and hammered the metal flush. Properly installed bolts, he noted, carry strength ratings in the thousands of pounds, far beyond the loads generated by a falling climber.
Collins’s first bolted line came when he was in his mid‑20s; a modest route featuring just three bolts called AAA remains, he says, "still one of the coolest lines I’ve put up." He learned route‑finding and development after meeting other first‑ascensionists and later while guiding in Utah. He joined the American Mountain Guides Association and in 2015 launched his own business, Arizona Mountain Guides. He balances those responsibilities with family life: he has three children from a prior marriage, and two weeks after spending time with a reporter in Christopher Creek he married his girlfriend and fellow climber, Sammy Leos, at the same canyon on May 16.
The bolting work Collins and his peers do reflects broader shifts in climbing. The sport has surged in popularity, becoming an Olympic discipline and drawing millions of occasional participants; industry estimates hold that up to 10 million Americans climb at least sometimes. Many newcomers get their start in indoor gyms where toprope techniques prevail. Outdoors, most named routes now include bolts and lend themselves to sport climbing, where a lead climber clips quickdraws into preplaced bolts. Toprope remains one of the safest ways to climb a taller route, with a harnessed climber tied to a rope that runs to an anchor at the top and back down to a belayer. Traditional, or "trad," climbing follows a different ethic: climbers place removable protection such as spring‑loaded camming devices in cracks instead of relying on permanent bolts.
Collins and other developers face ethical and regulatory questions about where and how to bolt. The U.S. Forest Service has rules limiting bolting in designated wilderness areas and bans new bolting in the Superstition Mountain Wilderness Area. In December 2024, the agency abandoned plans for new nationwide restrictions after protests from climbers. The canyon where Collins installs routes sits on Tonto National Forest land but is not inside a wilderness area. Collins said he knows some land managers "don’t like the land to change at all," but noted that without a ban he does not have to seek permission.
Route development carries both practical and reputational stakes. Developers often spend $100 or more on stainless‑steel bolts for a single line and may install hundreds of bolts across a career and a hundred or more routes overall. Collins said he usually installs bolt sequences — two or three routes in a session — because contributing multiple lines matters more than placing a single isolated route. He weighs spacing and safety when he bolts, typically placing protection every six feet or so and thinking about how the route will feel to a wide range of climbers. "I can’t control their comfortability," he said, acknowledging that some climbers will find certain lines too frightening while others welcome the challenge.
Longtime Arizona climber and route developer Manny Rangel, who at 73 is still building difficult outdoor routes, praised Collins’s approach. Rangel said Collins "can be a very bold climber," but that his routes "make people comfortable and safe." Rangel contrasted the modern sport‑climbing mindset with earlier attitudes that valorized danger: "Sport climbing isn’t ‘heroic,’" he said. "Why make it frightening?"
Beyond the bolts and hardware, developers leave cultural marks through the names they give first ascents. Tradition holds that the climber or team making a first ascent gets naming rights, and those names are recorded in guidebooks and online databases. Collins has used route names to remember fallen soldiers he served with in Iraq and to honor personal connections, including a nod to his late brother Nathan’s love of the Nutcracker ballet. Rangel has helped name climbs with memorial intent as well, including "Never Forget aka Katelyn Conrad," after an Arizona State University student who died in a 2019 rappelling accident. Many names are meant to be humorous or evocative of a route’s character — examples cited by local climbers include "Semper Gumby" and "Mogollon Monster." As a political joke, Collins recently named a new climb "TDS," an acronym for Trump Derangement Syndrome.
The work of bolting routes is technical, physical and controversial, and it is largely driven by volunteers and enthusiasts like Collins who invest time, money and imagination. He estimates that the community of developers in Arizona has built thousands of vertical trails of varying difficulty, and he says he gets satisfaction from watching people climb the lines he set. "If I was to come into here and put up one route, like so what? But if you, it’s like coming in and doing 10 or something, you’re contributing," he said. The legacy of that contribution is literal: metal hangers fixed to stone, names recorded in route guides and the ongoing use of those vertical corridors by climbers who follow the lines they find on the canyon faces.
Collins also volunteers with the American Safe Climbing Association and the Central Arizona Bolt Replacement Project to enhance safety on existing routes, partners with the Access Fund to restore climbing access in Arizona, and leads outdoor therapy programs for veterans, according to his Mountain Project profile.
The Central Arizona Bolt Replacement Program is actively running a project called “Rebolting The Pond”; its project materials say the effort will remove about 170 anchor bolts and replace roughly 550 route bolts across some 84 sport routes, install stainless‑steel glue‑in wave bolts where appropriate, provide volunteer training, and aim for about an 80% bolt‑for‑bolt extraction and replacement rate.
A Visit Mesa tourism page lists Collins as the owner of Arizona Mountain Guides and quotes local tips he gives to climbers, including a reminder that many climbing approaches accessed from Bush Highway require a parking permit.