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Safer Cliffs Victoria...Members Only? 2-Jan-2006 At 10:37:20 PM kieranl

Message

On 31/12/2005 Eduardo Slabofvic wrote:
>Mike, thanks for your input. To give you an alternative view of the safer
>cliffs Victoria protected forum is that its where the pro-bolting fraternity
>discuss their issues.

Gross generalisation and incorrect IMHO. Posters tend to run the gamut from sport-climb bolters to adventure climbers. Some of them have even been known to chop bolts. Anyhow, it's your opinion and will suit people who like simple answers.

>There are many climbers out here who are concerned
>with the way bolts are being introduced at Araps that do not post on the
>web at all, so therefore decisions on bolting eminating from the SCV forums
>are skewed from the beginning.

Fair enough, it's just a forum and doesn't claim to be THE forum (so far as I've seen). It's certainly not my sole source of information. It's also worth noting that, as far as I know, the people responsible for most of the bolting at Arapiles over the last few years also do not post to the SCV forums and concern about bolting at Arapiles is not a monopoly of Eduardo and his friends.

>
>I recently spent a couple of days at the beach with some long term climbers
>from Nati, and although we were all of the opinion that the current bolting
>attitudes at araps is poor, we could not all agree on a single position.
> Here lies the same old problem, no 2 people agree.

Jeez, and you had the cheek to say that SCV forums provide a skewed viewpoint. I would have thought Natimuk would have been the place to get a group of long term climbers from Nati together. Despite that you found, as the SCV forums usually demonstrate, that there are rarely simple answers even among people you would consider well-intentioned

>
>The advancement in battery technology has meant that any monkey can get
>a cordless hammer drill and start unilaterally wacking in bolts.

They used to do that even when we had hand-drills

> I will
>not be surprised when some of those bolts start “unilaterally” disappearing.

Presumably well thought out consensus decisions made on the beach. Before people start doing that perhaps they could explain why the bolt on Bygone has been allowed to remain?

> All that is certain is that the rock will be in a worse state when we
>leave it than when we found it.
>
too true.