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General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User

Grampians Access 2019 14-Mar-2019 At 8:36:48 PM IdratherbeclimbingM9

Message

On 14-Mar-2019 The good Dr wrote:
>>What we can influence is the situation right now. What is disheartening
>>is the deathly silence of the “community developers”. No mea culpa.....nothing.
>>
>
>There is an interesting nexus here as development of significant areas
>now under focus occurred prior to the 2003 Management Plan. Many of the
>developers created routes at a time when the current SPAs were not defined
>or even considered. The release of the 2003 management plan was poorly
>communicated to climbers by PV (or whoever they were at the time). At that
>point, there were opportunities to inform guidebook authors, the few that
>there were, and start the climber education process. This obviously was
>not considered important at the time. The growth of bouldering was also
>a bit out of left field as well. This is not to say that some pre, and
>particularly post 2003 developments were idiotic, short-sighted and driven
>by ego, rather than careful consideration.
>
>Another difficulty is that the 2003 MP is filled with considerable inconsistencies
>and interpretation problems (like the current defined SPAs). The devil
>is in the detail. The current maps being issued by parks do not align with
>the written detail in the MP. The maps provided are 'not to scale' and
>as such should be considered representative only. The MP states that the
>SPAs occupy <<1% of the park. The representative maps indicate vastly greater
>areas. There is no reference to the source of the defined areas in the
>MP and where these accurately mapped documents are available.
>
>With the current escalated situation, please respect the current bans.
>If fined, fight the fine. An experienced barrister noted to me that they
>would have a fun filled field day with PV in court due to the 2003 MP vagaries,
>current documents in circulation, the PV assistance to climbers and past
>documents provided by PV indicating areas open to climbing within the SPAs
>(at a minimum).

While I agree with your post, it’s sad that to instigate some common sense into the current situation we have to resort to ‘fighting any fines’...