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Chockstone Forum - Crag & Route Beta

Crag & Route Beta

Area	Location	Sub Location	Crag	Links
All NSW	(General)	(General)	(General)

Topic Date User

Shackles and the sheriff of Shipley 26-Apr-2011 At 5:54:45 PM Linze

Message

I like the fact that everyone who got really stuck in decided that I was always top roping through the anchors all the time. Not for the first time on chockstone the facts have been willingly ignored so that a few can bang on about how ethically enlightened they are....

I never top rope through fixed anchors, I can’t even remember the last time I top roped. I do however sometimes set up a top rope for my girl friend. The first time she climbed it was straight thru the fixed gear... I thought that climbing would be challenge enough, shortly after she came down i told her that it was best not to use the fixed anchors. She has now been climbing a bit over the past 2 years or so - about a third of the time she leads, the rest of the time she top ropes. She has probably climbed about a average of two routes a week this year and together we can remember 3 (three!!!!!) occasions where we used the anchors, it is usually when she wants to do the bottom third of a route or something similar, in the case last week I hadn’t put the rope up, nor belayed the climber who had and therefore hadn’t given it any thought.

Regardless, i still don’t think that it is worth our while blaming those that occasionally top rope through the anchors for creating all the wear. For eg RNMs double the wear stuff is too simplistic – on Sunday, I climbed with someone who climbs significantly different grades to me, we do different warm ups and climb different routes. We roped up a combined 12 times for a total of 8 lower offs thru fixed gear. The day in question at Shipley 8 times for a total of 5 lowers off through fixed gear (including the offending run up jack high)... so you can still create a large(r in this case) proportion of lower off through fixed gear while doing the ‘right’ thing. The people who create the wear at Shipley are the ones that are there every weekend doing a million laps of loop the loop. You can stamp your feet up and down all day about top roping beginners, but really regular climbers do heaps of damage... These people are creating heaps more wear than my girlfriend doing two routes a week, and very occasionally creating one more (of a third of one more) lower off than was necessary. In addition those that do the ‘wrong’ thing usually do less climbing, and the fact that they are usually doing it in a limited number of areas means that the (potentially) slightly higher wear is easy to predict and manage.

I almost never see people put draws on the fixed biners at the top of trix, and they never get stolen, and they are aluminium – why is it ok here??? i wonder tho... RMN et al probably don’t need to use anchors at all because they can just step off straight on to their high horse... ;)

For some ,the process of learning to climb is intimidating - if the process can be made a little easier by letting them do something that has a slightly higher impact than I am all for it. I would answer my own original question by saying “it is best avoided but it is not the end of world if it makes a particular situation much better” – those with the mallets etc are taking themselves way too seriously, maybe you should give up climbing if it makes you so stressed.