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General Climbing Discussion

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Grampians Access 2019 14-Mar-2019 At 8:26:42 PM The good Dr

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>What we can influence is the situation right now. What is disheartening
>is the deathly silence of the “community developers”. No mea culpa.....nothing.
>

There is an interesting nexus here as development of significant areas now under focus occurred prior to the 2003 Management Plan. Many of the developers created routes at a time when the current SPAs were not defined or even considered. The release of the 2003 management plan was poorly communicated to climbers by PV (or whoever they were at the time). At that point, there were opportunities to inform guidebook authors, the few that there were, and start the climber education process. This obviously was not considered important at the time. The growth of bouldering was also a bit out of left field as well. This is not to say that some pre, and particularly post 2003 developments were idiotic, short-sighted and driven by ego, rather than careful consideration.

Another difficulty is that the 2003 MP is filled with considerable inconsistencies and interpretation problems (like the current defined SPAs). The devil is in the detail. The current maps being issued by parks do not align with the written detail in the MP. The maps provided are 'not to scale' and as such should be considered representative only. The MP states that the SPAs occupy <<1% of the park. The representative maps indicate vastly greater areas. There is no reference to the source of the defined areas in the MP and where these accurately mapped documents are available.

With the current escalated situation, please respect the current bans. If fined, fight the fine. An experienced barrister noted to me that they would have a fun filled field day with PV in court due to the 2003 MP vagaries, current documents in circulation, the PV assistance to climbers and past documents provided by PV indicating areas open to climbing within the SPAs (at a minimum).