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General Climbing Discussion

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Three Sisters declared an Aboriginal Place 26-Jan-2014 At 1:23:52 PM simey

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On 26/01/2014 Wendy wrote:

>I think a lot of these are off limits because of parks paranoia about
>climbing rather than aboriginal requests. Like the 3 sisters. If it was
>actually about respecting a traditional owner request to not climb on something,
>then parks would prevent any access to the 3 sisters and close the tourist
>route up uluru.

From what I understand the tourist route up Uluru has long been contentious. Despite Uluru being handed back to the Aboriginal people a number of years ago, a condition of the handover was that visitors were still allowed to climb to the top.

>I don't think the west wall was a great climb either. It
>was in a good location to a cute summit, for which you paid the price of
>dealing with a ton of tourists, then it was 50m of climbing in 300m of
>bushbashing and scrambling.

You tell me of all the other fantastic grade 12 and below routes in NSW. The West Wall might of had its faults but was still a great adventure in a spectacular part of the world. And 50m of climbing is still 50m of climbing. There are plenty of routes that require far more faffing to do a lot less climbing. And what do tourists have to do with anything? Yosemite has a stack of tourists too, but I don't see how that affects the climbing on its cliffs.

>In all my wandering up north, I have mostly found the cliffs to be complete
>rubbish, and certianly Lou's exploration of the cliffs around the Pentecost
>found lots of rubbish. Winjana gorge was the only exception, it is sizable
>limestone cliffs that could have good climbing and I don't think anyone
>has every discussed climbing with the local people, but I would guess that
>as it is a busy tourist area, parks would ban climbing for that.

There is a lot of rubbish rock (just like the Blue Mountains) but there are a handful of very spectacular cliffs that I have visited that would offer spectacular routes. Having established routes in the MacDonnell Ranges and walked in Kakadu, I know of some of the great climbing to be had and that could be had.

>
>And it isn't just aboriginal people leaving rubbish around the country.
>I'd say it was a distressing amount of the people who go out there by the
>amount of crap at camping areas, picnic areas, roadsides, riverbanks, beaches
>and yes, even climbing areas which are probably not accessed by people
>who aren't climbing.
>>
I don't dispute that plenty of other people litter our country with rubbish. But I have been amazed at the sheer scale of crap and broken beer bottles lying around some of the incredibly pretty waterholes surrounding Alice Springs.