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General Climbing Discussion

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The Arapiles we Love... 7-Oct-2006 At 11:10:28 AM oweng

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I would be interested to know if anyone who is a part of the local rescue services can say whether there has been an increase in the number of injuries occuring at arapiles.

I suspect that the rise of sites like chockstone in the last 4 or 5 years has lead to everyone reading this site being made aware of pretty much every serious accident that occurs there. In the past accidents may have happened just as often, but we just didnt hear about them.

A second consideration is exposure. There are probably more trad routes climbed in a month at My Araplies than are climbed in the entire rest of Victoria for the rest of the year. Stands to reason many accidents are going to happen there.

I dont think there is any practical way of reducing the accident rate short of retrobolting everything, or introducing some sort of licensing system where climbers competency must be proven. Neither of these would be acceptable or practical I would have thought.

All that could really be done is to make sure the post accident care is as good as it can be. Maybe some emergency first aid boxes could be stashed at the more poular cliffs. Dunno.