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General Climbing Discussion

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Trad routes as projects? 5-Feb-2008 At 3:50:46 PM tmarsh

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On 5/02/2008 nmonteith wrote:
>This actually reminds me of a route we eventually got Malcolm to do down
>near Red Rocks - called Grand Oral Disseminator (27). I can't remember
>if it was me or Tim Marsh who found it first - but it was both found it
>independently around the same time.

I found it first. it's mine MINE MINE!!! Sorry, I got carried away there.
wouldn't

>have considered it! Anyway - it took him a few days work but he eventually
>did it. Anyway - similar line, similar situation - I was happy to see it
>done. For me it would have taken much longer. Not sure what the point of
>that little story was... this route still stands un-repeated. One of the
>finest natural lines in the Grampians in my opinion.

I rapped it a couple of times and realised that it was a lot wider than I was comfortable with at the top and the wall under the crack was glassy smooth. I was climbing less and less at the time and knew that it was unrealistic to think I was even in with a shot at doing it. Neil emailed me photos of Malcolm on it and I was happy to think that someone was going to do it in a good style with a minimum of bolts.

This whole debate about projects and stealing projects has to be kept in perspective by both sides. Ultimately, we should be encouraging people to put the work into putting up great routes. It's not helpful to have people pi55ing and moaning about people nicking their projects when they haven't been on the route for 5 years and are 10 kilos fatter than last time they clipped the third last bolt and lowered off. You should know when to move on and let someone else have a go. Equally, having no respect for projects - trad or otherwise - leads to the whole secret crag syndrome, where people will keep any new routing secret in the hope that they will pick all the plums before word leaks out. A little bit of common sense keeps this all in check.