Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Sport Climbing to be Prohibited in Tasmanian WHA 22-Jan-2015 At 2:56:45 PM shiltz

Message

On 22/01/2015 ambyeok wrote:
>I'll weigh in with some gripes. Firstly I think we should ban posters who
>do the whole copy a line of someones post, write a rebuttal, copy the next
>line, write a rebuttal. Seems like nit-picking and cheap shoot-downs. I'm
>looking at you Monteith.
Where's the fun in that ;-)

>Having said that, I haven't written anything on chockstone that was actually
>worth reading for years.
Doesn't mean we can't nit-pick

>Which brings my to my second point (a nit-pick and cheap shoot-down) which
>is that sport climbing doesn't make the climb safer nor easier, it just
>makes protecting it a bit easier and increases the chance the gear will
>hold should you fall off.
I disagree. Sure the upward progression is no harder whether it is solo, top-rope, redpoint, or "trad". But the process of climbing can be significantly harder, especially onsight. Finding stances to place wiggly gear, hanging around while you place it, carrying extra weight... it all makes a difference. On a remote multipitch route I'd say that is amplified even further. Locating a line of well placed ring bolts and clipping them up as you climb requires far less effort (and is safer) than finding and following a natural line with minimal information about where to find placements, how good they'll be, and what size/type of gear they'll take. It definitely raises the bar and as a result there are less people doing it.

>Just saying cause the sport climbing is safer mentality gets people hurt.
I totally agree that sport climbing is not safe and people who think it is get hurt. But I think we agree that a well installed bolt it more likely to hold a fall than a piece of natural gear... so long as you haven't done something really stupid.

>Is there any good fishing at Frenchmans?
Dunno about Frenchmans but the nearby rivers would be good for trout.

At the end of the day it seems that they are trying to avoid two things in WHA:
- Noisy drills
- Sport climbing crags that draw bigger crowds and the accompanying damage that brings
Seems reasonable to me, hopefully they can now focus on the much bigger issues that threaten these areas.