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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User
Bouldering in Victoria 1-Jun-2006 At 8:12:42 PM Peacey
Message
Well here goes… I have decided to start writing some of the situations I have been in bouldering in Victoria (not that I have been climbing/bouldering for long). I first started climbing out of pure boredom, being from the country and being shipped off to boarding school in Melbourne was the start of a beautiful relationship. I was sent to a supposedly prestigious school located near the botanical gardens in South Yarra, and had very few friends initially, so I had to find a hobby so I decided to buy a pair of shoes and a chalk bag and climb at Burnley. At first I was really frustrated about how bad I was at climbing. Physically I could not hang from the holds without my feet splaying and flailing everywhere, other climbers would laugh as I bumbled my way along the route. Burnley was a place that I could go and be by myself and at one with what I was doing, I felt at peace with what was around me and didn’t really think about things such as being homesick etc.

Moving along a little I decided to go for a climb at Victoria Ranges climbing centre, it was here that I would spend hours swearing at myself for falling off climbs. It was also the first indoor center that I had ever been to, the bouldering cave was amazing! After a few weeks of “playing” I decided to start trying some of the routes, at first the only climbs that I could tick were vertical traverses that had easy moves and were not all that hard to finish. It was not until the “fun box” in the center of the bouldering area that the real climbers started to come and train. Watching some of these climbers train was so frustrating as firstly they were way better than me, not only that they were strangers so I didn’t really have all that much to do with them. When Vic Ranges burnt down, I had nowhere to train so I would find bluestone walls to climb on in my spare time.

On my holidays I would drive out to Mt Hope and climb all day, it was while climbing at Mt Hope I first got into trouble for climbing. Being new to the sport of climbing I had no idea about where I could climb or not climb, so I took my trusty crash pad and threw lap after lap around a boulder aptly named “The Devils lost nut…’ (don’t ask me who named the boulder). A land owner near Mt Hope reported me to Parks, it was at this stage that I was approached by a Parks officer and asked a whole heap of questions about what I was doing. I won’t go into what happened, lets just say that the parks officer knew that I was not in the wrong and that the land owner had way to much time on his hands. The land on which I was climbing was crown land. The problem that I have with the whole “where to climb, where not to climb” situation is that there are never any signs saying “No rock climbing” in areas that a lot of my friends climb, but we are still hassled by land owners that don’t even own the land on which we are climbing. Has anyone else been in this situation? If so how did they fare, and what was done about it by the authorities?

Does anyone have any objections, comments about the future of rock climbing in Australia? From an ecological point of view there are a lot of positive things being done by highly respected clubs in Victoria, such as the VCC. What do clubs think about the authorities that maintain the areas that people climb in? I have seen a lot of climbers start new climbs by taking to rocks with wire brushes, what do people think about such practises. Is this even legal? I have started new bouldering routes at Mt Hope and at Mt Terriks, all the climbs that I tried and established were on granite faces. Most of the faces were devoid of any moss or other plant life, so I decided to climb on them. What if any are the do’s and don’ts of establishing new boulering routes?

Feel free to criticise or critique anything that I have put forward, as I’m trying to learn from people that have been climbing/bouldering for longer than me. I would like to learn more about the ethics of bouldering, so as to not make wrong decisions. I hope that my rantings have evoked positive thoughts and that I’m not flamed to death by people that don’t feel like being constructive.

Cheers

Tristan Peace

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