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Pioneers of Tassie's Best Climbs 25-Sep-2016 At 10:30:06 PM tristosterone

Message

On 23/09/2016 Tastrad wrote:
>
>Its more about whose opinion I respect, the relationship I have with them
>and their reputation and pioneering efforts , than the actual issue of
>route quality. If you came up to me and said half my routes at Hillwood
>are shit, I would say go f..k yourself; I enjoyed establishing them.
>
>But if I got to know you a bit and shared a few beers around a campfire,
>and learnt about your climbing experiences, and realized you've got a few
>runs on the board in terms of cliff development, and that you'd travelled
>widely, and that you can put your case in a reasonable manner, then I might
>be more inclined to listen to your opinion.
>
>People with a few new routes to their name do have more credibility in
>my book, because they understand the effort that goes into a route. The
>people that annoy me are the pricks that come along and whinge and say
>`oh its a bit dirty, or the bolts in the wrong place, or the moves don't
>flow, or the access is shit', and you know they are locals who've made
>hardly any effort to develop the sport, or visitors like One Day Donkey
>Boy who just spray criticism. Their opinion lacks credibility in my eyes.
>
>So the pioneers of Tassie climbing I mentioned earlier, I know most of
>them personally or by reputation; and it is their opinion who I would
>respect more than others, because of my relationship with them, or their
>pioneering efforts which speak for themselves.

I understand what you are getting at Gerry. I can understand it being quite frustrating when some newbie, who doesn't understand the intricacies of new routing comes along and criticises your work without understanding the effort that was put in to put up the route.

I also understand that you respect the opinions of people you know more than people you don't know. That is just normal.

But, to disregard someones opinion simply because they choose not to put up new routes just doesn't seem logical. I choose generally not to put up new routes. However, I have no doubt, that, if you did get to know me a bit better, and had a constructive chat to me about why I have my opinion regarding certain climbs, you would value my opinion. Just because you weren't there having a beer with me when it went down doesn't mean this is my first rodeo.

I recon the reason you value the 'pioneers' opinion is not because they have put up so many routes, but because you know them so well.