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Fixed gear guidelines in the Grampians 16-May-2018 At 9:43:29 AM The Rock Robster

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On 16-May-2018 bigchris wrote:
>This thread is:
>
>10 people v 1 person.
>
>It's also 10 people talking about what they think is best for the entirety
>of rock climbing in Australia. You're all trying to do the right thing
>and that's really good. But in 87 responses to the the original post, no-one
>has gotten any closer to sorting anything out. And even if you did magically
>sort anything out, you've probably reached less than 1% of the climbing
>community in Australia, let alone the rest of the world.
>
>I get that there is a thing called 'local ethics' that we all should adhere
>to, but as previously stated, its unlikely that this is always going to
>happen. If you see a line that you can climb that needs some bolts, who's
>going to be there to stop you from putting them in?
>
>Many people have boycotted this website because of threads like this.
>I, on the other hand, am finding it entertaining to watch everyone try
>and yell over the top of each other via a keyboard.
>
>Just in case you didn't know, you can buy yourself a sweet hammer drill
>from Bunnings for $200 and a handful of bolts for $30, which makes bolting
>more accessible than listening to people arguing about it.

It may be frustrating but at least it's being spoken about somewhere. Better to argue over the internet for your views than to villify those that are willing to do so.

I do agree however that the endless back and forth hardly helps. We should be agreeing on a point at a time. I think we can all agree that there needs to be some sort of guideline or something that stops people grid-bolting for no reason. Instead of arguing about PV getting involved, and whether slippery slopes exist, we should be discussing the sorts of things that could work. It seems to me that only Kieran and Wendy have made any attempt at that. I'd try but I don't think I'd do a good job.

As for actually responding to Wendy's guidelines, I agree that self-regulating climbers will never happen, so guidelines are essentially useless. I think it would bbetter to agree that bolts on go in where trad can't, except for certain specific cases. Outline some crags as purely sport, and some as purely trad and the rest have the mixed ethic. Makes it less crag-bycrag specific, but allows for the trad mentality or the sport mentality?