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Climbers trashing Lake Huntley 24-Jan-2012 At 7:42:07 PM tas alex

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thanks for assuming the worst without knowing the full story.

Climbers (that i've been associated with, which is most that climb at the tyndalls) have generally been very environmentally conscious when at the tyndalls (read the guidelines on thesarvo.com for example). This summer and a couple of summers before there have been groups of base jumpers head up there (20 at a time this season), which has caused most of the problems.

I have lots of gear, ropes, food, cooking equipment etc up there stashed, but it is all in rafting barrels or dry bags hidden from public view and i doubt it would have been counted as rubbish and carried out. This is the same for all the climbers i know, each having a gear stash away from the cave and using the cave only for accommodation.

The base jumpers last year cut a track to the base of the wall, marching up there with saws etc and chopping down the vegetation over a couple of days. This was fiercely disputed by myself and other tasmanian climbers who were up there at the time (thread on thesarvo last year), but was to no avail. On that trip they left pink tags tied to trees at the base for a landing zone (which they were asked to remove, but did not), cut the track and toileted on the surface metres from the fresh drinking water source used when at the cave.

I have not been up there this season but climb with people that have, and a group of 20 base jumpers headed in there for a few days. Reports afterwards were that the tracks had significantly degraded with this much traffic and there was again no respect for the place. Parks were notified about their plans before they left, but as far as we know nothing was done at the time.

As for the firewood comment, i think if they looked closely they would realise that the wood is not actually used for fires, in fact im not even sure why its there. It was cut by someone years ago and for a guess is meant for emergency use, having not been touched in at least the 4 years ive been going up there. I could be wrong about this if it has been burnt this season, but i doubt it.

You only need to go to the Tyndalls once to see how amazing the place is, I and other climbers in Tas have no interest in trashing the place and its quite an insult to be labelled 'feral climbers' by someone who has no idea about the situation.

Alex Lewis