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Access article - Magic Wood. 29-Jul-2018 At 6:08:12 PM kieranl

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On 28-Jul-2018 Goshen wrote:

>
>there is so much bouldering in the Gramps, why people need to keep going
>back to the same, tired areas is beyond me.
>
>

I think we need to re-assess our idea that "there is so much" bouldering and climbing in the Grampians. It leads us to treat the area as a limitless resource and it's clearly not.

I also used to believe that we could reduce the impact on popular areas by sharing the load out. But I'm coming to understand that this actually tends to spread the damage rather than share the load. The numbers of people climbing/bouldering are such that all popular areas get hammered.

When I found Weirs Creek I knew it was good and thought it would be popular but I wasn't prepared for the actual numbers who came.The first time I returned shortly after it was opened I was staggered at the number of parties who came in during the day. It was a half-hour walk-in (before the fires destroyed the barrier) and I thought it might get one or two parties on a busy weekend.

The truth is that the grampians are relatively small; about 90km north-south and 40 km east-west. Good, readily accessible climbing/bouldering is already a limited resource. When we overlay that with indigenous and environmental issues the resource is yet more limited.