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Fixed gear guidelines in the Grampians 20-May-2018 At 9:51:08 AM Access T CliffCare

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On 20-May-2018 Wendy wrote:
>Latest thoughts for the morning:
>
>I realise there is a demand for easy sport climbing. I don’t mind the
>concept in theory. The problem I have in practice is that easy sport climbing
>is actually rare. There just isn’t a lot of rock screaming out for it.
>If people find some decent rock with easy climbing and no gear that hasn’t
>been done before and the location is suitable to survive an onslaught of
>climbers with manageable environmental and cultural impacts, then I’m fine
>with people developing easy sport crags. However, there aren’t, and that
>is why I continue to state (somewhat more politely but within the same
>realm as Damo) that those people clamouring for easy sport climbing have
>2 choices – learn to place gear and open up a world of easy climbing, or
>get better, and open up a world of decent rock without gear that is suitable
>for sport climbing.
>
>
>Next thoughts are about the VCC bolting policy. It’s long. Most people
>aren’t going to read through 4 pages plus some references before they go
>develop something. So if we can’t convey a whole policy concisely, we need
>a “quick reference” summary to get out there for people to refer to. But
>I do think the policy is unnecessarily verbose and could be tightened up
>a lot.
>
>Some points on it sound as if participants in the discussion were getting
>caught up in a few personal bug bears. For example, bolts should be placed
>to ensure a safe fall, not to minimise fall. Sport climbing always involves
>more bolts than just ensuring a safe fall. Otherwise, you’d barely put
>any bolts in the top half of a route. We aren’t creating sport head points
>here. In fact, it sort of doesn’t really consider sport crags at all, eg
>not having lower offs at the top of every route, using trad anchors where
>possible. These are really only considerations at trad/mixed crags.
>
>Carrot equivalents! Argh! Can we not use best modern equipment for the
>job/rocktype? This applies to any reference to replacing gear or placing
>gear. EG, replacing fixed hanger with a fixed hanger is inappropriate on
>a lot of Grampians rock, where glue ins are the best equipment for the
>job/rocktype.
>
>I love point 5.10., can someone show that to Malcolm re the fixed thread
>on Monkey Puzzle? Jokes aside, I think it’s a perfectly reasonable example
>of replacing fixed gear with best equipment available. It also raises questions
>about what to do when the first ascensionist has not used best equipment
>available – this doesn’t just apply to older routes, there are some people
>using poor practices on new routes still. Do the choices of the first ascensionist
>have more weight than best practice recommendations?
>
>Also worth noting is this is a bolting policy, not a route/crag development
>policy. So there’s a lot of stuff discussed in this thread that is extra
>to this policy.
>
>Maybe we need several documents – say one of technical recommendations,
>one of principles of bolting at sport crags, one of principles of bolting
>at trad crags, one on crag development, one on rebolting/retrobolting.
>I’m not sure if that ends up being easier for people to digest than one
>long document covering all or not, but it does offer an opportunity for
>clear delineation.

Hi Wendy,
It would be great to keep the thread as closely on track as possible.

As noted on a couple of posts, the VCC Bolt Policy is currently being revised. And I think there is room for comment on that but possibly not on this thread. I understand they are linked but there is already enough information on the topic at hand to keep people busy. Those that have followed from the start may be a bit more on top of it but anyone that comes in new could very well head off down this tangent and then the main topic is lost. Whilst Fixed Protection and Development guidelines in the Grampians is on Chockstone it would be good to get as much info as possible as easily as possible to work into a draft form.

Cheers,
Tracey