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General Climbing Discussion

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What is an 12-Aug-2004 At 12:13:44 PM BA

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My guess would be as follows: Phillip Stranger (aka Sparrow) was one of the more active climbers around in the late '60s and in March 1968 went down to Tassie. Shortly after arriving there he took a fall (I started climbing one week before his fall, which made the news in Melbourne and had me doing some swift talking to the oldies so I could get away climbing again) whilst climbing up some 'access/descent' gully, in this fall he broke his back and became a paraplegic. In this case the name probably refers to fact the Phillip Stranger was "eliminated" from ever climbing again. Stranger's Eliminate was put up about 5 months after the accident.

In the more generally accepted sense of the term 'eliminate' as I understand it, it refers to an 'obvious' variant to an existing climb. ie a climb has two obvious ways to finish it but the one that is taken becomes the climb and the other (which is no more nor less direct than the original) is the eliminate and the word is used in the sense that the other possible option has been 'removed'. It could also mean "Variant" or "Direct Start/Finish" as well.

It's basically an English term so maybe there is a dictionary on one of the Pommy climbing websites that tells all.