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Booroomba accident 13-May-2016 At 4:13:04 PM One Day Hero

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On 23/04/2016 ithomas wrote:
>The sad and tired arguments
>that I refered to are different; that old trad climbers have had their
>turn, that old trad climbering ethics have held back progress, that knowing
>little more than a name, a grade and a general idea of a climbs character
>is somehow either dangerous or elitist. That's how I read the discusion
>and beta sections of the guide and I reckon that climbing on the slabs
>would be better served without that level of prior knowledge.
>Ian
>
Hi Ian, I share your view on guidebooks removing adventure to a certain degree. However, there are a couple of things which might be worth thinking about.
Booroomba is almost abandoned. Barely anyone climbs there apart from the middle aged devotees who have been climbing there for over twenty years. Most younger climbers in Canberra (even the ones who go to Piddington and Arapiles) don't go out there. The number one reason I've heard for this is that people get lost trying to find routes, then get runout and scared. Booroomba could use more traffic. The cracks are being reclaimed by vegetation, the slabs are overgrowing with lichen. I recently spent a day digging out Terminant Corner (one of the best gr15 pitches around) which was getting totally choked with veg.
Modern climbers don't like written descriptions, they prefer photo topos. There's no point going into the how and why, it's just like that now. There would be almost no reason to do a new Canberra guide unless it included photo topos. You could just reprint the excellent 1997 guide with the addition of 200 new routes. Everyone would hate it, no one new would visit Booroomba.
Although Brian has given us the ok to use his exhaustively researched Northern Slabs guide, there is no way we could fit all of that detail into a printed guidebook. We'll definitely be relying on his research, but presenting the information in less detail (and I'll try to slander a few people to provide comic relief). If some people want to dull their adventure by looking up the beta online, so what? It doesn't affect anyone elses experience, and I would bet money that the Northern Slabs will never suffer from overcrowding owing to....well, the slabbyness.