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Fixed gear guidelines in the Grampians 24-May-2018 At 3:41:40 PM (removed)

Message

On 24-May-2018 gfdonc wrote:
>The visual thing was discussed at length in the pub last night. I'll
>repeat the salient points:
>- Once you're 8m up, bolts are hard to spot from ground so it's only other
>climbers who are going to get uptight about the 'visual impact'.
Nahh, 8m is bollocks, shiny hangers or rings are visible for 20-30m. Carrots, sure, 5-10m max.

> Besides, if visual impact of climbing was really an issue we'd all stop using chalk.
That's the #1 reason I hate the Gallery. And don't worry, I'm aware I'm a hyopcrite because I use chalk myself, but I've moved towards the liquid stuff which (once dry) stays more on your hands than loose chalk does. Regardless of levels of hypocrisy, chalk washes off on anything that sees water, so it's hardly the same. (And a line of chalked holds snaking its way up a cliff can be an elegant thing until it ends up as a human guano streak).

>- Have you taken a look around at the other man-made infrastructure in
>your average park? Sealed roads, paved tracks, picnic shelters, concrete
>steps, steel guard rails. Bolts have negligible visual impact by comparison.
We'll have to agree to disagree here: it's all about expectation - if I am on a road or a high traffic access path, I accept that it is a compromised environment. Once you get to the rock, it's au naturale. So for me a line of bolts in a cliff in an otherwise pristine environment does not equate to a line of bolts holding together an information shelter on the side of the road. We strategically give up on some areas in the hope that we can keep some others completely unchanged.