Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Crag & Route Beta

Crag & Route Beta

Area	Location	Sub Location	Crag	Links
VIC Grampians	(General)	(General)	(General)	[ Grampians Guide \| Images ]

Topic Date User

Best way to access Mt. Difficult 10-Jan-2018 At 1:44:07 PM Access T CliffCare

Message

On 10-Jan-2018 gfdonc wrote:
>Tracey,
>Has there been any discussion with Parks about climbers maintaining climber's
>tracks?
>
>Clearly Parks don't have the resources or inclination to maintain any
>of these (never have), so it's been back onto the climbing community.
>However this is a legal grey area (well, several shades darker than that)
>so I wonder if the issue has been brought up with them so that (for example)
>a climber clearing fallen logs from an established trail isn't going to
>be subject to prosecution?
>
>The climbers access to Rosea is a case in point - several fallen trees
>over the last few months could use attention with a chainsaw if someone
>can be bothered.
>regards
>

Yes, there has been discussion prompted by the work days we did at both Rosea and The Gallery. The idea behind the work that we did at both of these sites and unofficial tracks was that we would keep an eye on them and if required maintain them. And that is really how it already does happen. As long as climbers keep an eye out and let me know, we generally get a work day happening and do the repairs or maintenance. This is the first I have heard of the recent problem of trees over tracks at Rosea

So first up -

Regardless of whether it is a park employee or a climber clearing a climber's access track, that person must be ticketed to use a chainsaw in the park. This level of ticketing is dependant on the work required. Clearing a fallen tree wouldn't require the same high level ticketing required for felling a larger tree that was identified as a danger. And understandably so.

This doesn't mean though, that if a climber has the required tickets, that they can just head in there and do the job. If an area is identified, it is as simple as letting me know and I can run the situation by PV, and organize it as a work day as such.

In the case of Rosea and The Gallery, I looked for a climber who had such tickets. He has been a great help. Obviously the issue sometimes is availability from coming out from Melbourne to do the job. We also discussed at the time, of getting some training for a particular individual who was more local and could help out on jobs such as this. And then....more nature events came the parks way ie fires and it fell to the bottom of the list. I will pursue this and see if the training is something that is still a possibility.

This opens up a bigger discussion around tracks and the cutting of them, particulary new ones but I won't go into it too deeply on this thread as it will get lost. Might be good to start another thread at some time or at least I should put some info on the CliffCare site. What I will say though is that care should be taken when it comes to newer tracks. Marking an access in, or maintaining in a thoughtful manner is one thing, digging or disturbing soil is treading on very sensitive ground. Any track that PV want to create must go through a cultural heritage process with AV before they can proceed. So for park users to do so because they want a track there is not going to be look on favourably.

So if there are any areas on climber's access tracks that have issues, be it erosion, fallen trees, new multiple social tracks growing etc, drop me a line and we can go from there. It is up to us to try and prevent and manage issues before they become major but as they are generally in state and national parks, it is also about going about this in a more thoughtful way.
I shall mark Rosea on the noted list and get onto it and hopefully some further training for future works. Thanks!