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Fixed gear guidelines in the Grampians 28-May-2018 At 11:31:13 AM jacksonclimbs

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On 28-May-2018 FatBoy wrote:
>On 28-May-2018 johnpitcairn wrote:
>>My 2c worth as an international visitor:
>>
>>Easy sport climbing is called a climbing gym. As we start to see more
>>and more new climbers (Olympic sport, remember), there will be more pressure
>>for exactly that. Let it be catered for indoors.
>>
>>The Gramps are a national park FFS. Bolting, track expansion, gumbies
>>shitting beside the track ... nah. Not attractive to me as a visitor
>at
>>all.
>I wish Chockstone had a +1 feature

+1 - that would be a great feature - adding to the feedback mechanism that I have discussed in another post.

With regards to this. I met KP - the Climbing Category Director at Black Diamond that you see in all those April Fools videos on YouTube, at a crag near SLC. I asked him his thoughts on the issue with the fast growing climbing community and the impact on the outdoors. He noted that their market research suggests that many of the new incoming climbers will never climb outdoors, and that they are only interested in climbing indoors. For every 10 sets of harness/belay device they sell, they only sell a set or two of quick-draws. It is the reason why they have decided to go into climbing shoes.

Not to say that it is not an issue - certainly in the US the access fund are responding with campaigns to educate new climbers on LNT principles etc. The above point may also mask the growth of bouldering, which would not be evident in harness sales.

I'd be interested to see some data breaking down the chosen disciplines of new climbers. My personal observation is that many of the new climbers in the Gramps are boulderers - How do you manage that? The impact of bouldering can be rapid, and is the most accessible of the disciplines. You can chop bolts, but you can't chop boulders unless you decide to chip holds - which would be a very extreme measure. I guess that raises the point that PV concerns may not necessarily be dealt with in a bolting policy alone. Perhaps as a group we need to also adopt a practice of closing off sectors for routine block periods to allow for re-vegetation. - I know they do that at Hueco Tanks as a compromise with other stakeholders.