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Chockstone Forum - Gear Lust / Lost & Found

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Ropes missing from Taipan 8-Oct-2014 At 4:44:53 PM Wendy

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Now, Neil, if you didn't leave you food in a box outside your tent, no one could steal it ...

It's always a debate what is acceptable to leave out or not. When bush camping, is it rubbish if you leave your tent set up? What about those fixed ropes that used to be all over Taipan so people didn't need to climb the first pitches to get to their projects? Or those manky fixed slings that some people argue are better than bolts because they are theoretically removable even though in reality they sit there being a disintegrating eyesore? Gear on routes or stashed at crags is also temporary and will be removed by it's owner and probably before too long. With the exception of Wally's gear on Serpentine which did spend a whole year up there. Most gear left on routes or at the crag is out of the way of other user groups. How many bush walkers have you encountered at the Gallery or Weirs Creek? How many wander off the main walking track at Stapylton and come up to the base of Taipan? Leaving rubbish is leaving rubbish. It should be pretty obvious this is either packaging and scraps that some slack bastard has left or so weathered it has been lost or forgotten there. If you come back another time and something still seems untouched, maybe you should take it and leave a note or otherwise make reasonable efforts to find an owner in a manner that you might also appreciate if you had lost something.

On the good news front, I stashed my gear at the base of Frog almost every day for 6 weeks and no one took it. 2 rucksacks full of gear stored out of the rain look like someone has left it on purpose. And I've never had my gear stolen off a route, even though I've left it around fairly liberally over the years. Abandoned gear in the rock is pretty obvious because it's isolated as opposed to a whole route of gear.

Then the other day I was a bit of a numpty and threw my set up rope off the cliff and in my rush to get to work forgot to pick it up. So I would not have been at all surprised for someone to have taken it when I went back 2 days later. A spaghetti of rope all over the ground looks pretty much like someone has forgotten it. It's a retired 9mm so I wasn't really distressed, however, someone had nicely coiled it up and left in a sheltered spot at the base of the cliff. So if that someone is reading this, thank you for your thoughtfulness.