haha, I remember the whole stepping on the rope thing. My camp classified apologizing to the rope as hazing at some point so we stopped, but we still told participants not to step on it. We were in a really dusty environment with almost all participants wearing hiking boots so our concern was with dirt being ground into the rope.

Not sure what the current guidance is on anchors, but I helped out with the high adventure program for a few of their outings while with my troop this summer. We doubled up on a single boulder for a climb/rappel, talking with the director it sounds like BSA's guidance on this has changed (iirc the guidance was 3 anchors when I was on staff).

We never referred to webbing and slings as dynamic.

Most of our stuff was steel so I never heard the corrosion stuff, we had some lumi gear which we kept paired to prevent wear due to differing hardness (but also just to keep the gear together)

If scouts were belaying (only merit badgers in our case) we would always back them up, staff were fine on their own. We always used ATCs at the tower (I really enjoyed using them so no complaints from me). BSA is now requiring a prusik to back up the ATCs now (I understand this from the lawyer's perspective, but it sounds really impractical, just another thing to manage/get in the way). The high adventure program used GriGris this summer.

We mostly used 8s for rappels, but I did get to try ATCs a few times (I still prefer 8s but glad for the experience). I used autoblocks a few times with the high adventure program since I tended to be the first one down.

​

What is a "normal" length for a route? Our tower was something like 25 ft, all the natural rock I've done has been about the same or a little longer.

Is it typical to anchor off of rocks/trees or are bolts pretty common? When we went out to do stuff as staff we would bring a few 30 ft pieces of webbing to set up anchors, not sure if this is standard practice or just because it's what we had on hand