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Crag & Route Beta

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

Topic Date User

Iskra Crag update 9-Aug-2017 At 1:01:19 PM Dave J

Message

On 9/08/2017 BA wrote:
>Hmmm, history eh? History tells all sorts of things. How climbing has
>changed. How climbing styles, ethics and equipment has evolved. Any attempt
>to rewrite history destroys the past. I thought Steve's use of Sheffield
>Steel (Steal?) instead of Pegasus was a great route name but he wasn't
>the first to climb the line was he?

Speaking of re-writing history, It was andy pollit who established Sheffield Steal not steve.

>After talking with Steve he accepted that, although renaming routes when
>they were freed in the UK was acceptable, it wasn't the case in Oz.

Ive honsetly never heard that changing the names of old aid lines when you freed them was unaccaptable. The various aid lines I've freed I've always left the name because I liked the history that it came with that. But I was lways under the impression that I had chosen to do that...In never realised there was a rule. Other historical interactions with the rock that have been acknowledged by the first free ascentionist include vandals carving their name athe the bottom of the rock (Madge McDonald etc). As far as Im aware there's no rule in australia that says you need to do this either but it is another nice way to add a sense of hirstory to a route.

>A 6m aid route doesn't have many points of aid in it, does it?

Are you suggesting it was nearly done free then....or just that it wasnt very significant as an aid route.

> Did Steve rename Ozy after he freed it?

He didn't but he could have and I think that would have been accepted.

I started climbing after you but I've always considered the moment that someone gets up a bit of rock "using just their hands and feet" (a phrase thats become popular in mainstream media in recent times), that this was the defining moment of a climb. I see aiding a line as being a definite step up from walking around the back and rapping down to see if it will go but still just a step towards the actual free climbing of the thing. I think in australia it's been that way since Henry Barber came out and just stormed up everything and re-defined what people considered to be climbable. Probably whether you started climbing before or after that trip of Henry's might effect how you think about things. Not long after that people stopped claiing things they were unable to free clim, the term project was adopted for something that people had got up without having managed to do it cleanly.

>Use the original names, explain what has happened since and let the climbers
>of the future decide if they want to read about the the history of that
>particular climb.

As boulder problems they are a significant contribution to grampians climbing and something that people are aspiring to do. I would vote for listing the boulder problems that have been established on this wall (thats what people wil be going there for) and add the aid climbing history as an interesting footnote.