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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User
Mt Arapiles development plans 28-Oct-2010 At 12:53:37 PM singersmith
Message
Camp 4 is indeed a nightmare to stay in these days; I've actually never actually spent a night there (have slept in a SAR tent though). Most of the modern lycra mob bivy outside the Valley now in the two private developments, akin to driving back to Nati. The C4 boulders don't host many permanent residents, mostly seasonals who are going to get busted and secretly crave the street cred. The Valley is a big place with a free shuttle bus and bikes paths, it's easy to find your own piece of solitude.

The Pines does have a charming sense of freedom and a great value to price ratio (vis-a-vis C4), but there are some issues that are unlikely to sort themselves out in an ideal fashion (water, sewage, impact, growth). I had a long chat with the one of the rangers recently about the problems they struggle with and the ones they can't even keep up with (men's bathroom disaster, festy sponge collection at wash block, ceaseless fire pit propagation). I loathe bureaucratic camping as much as the next guy, but I also think whether these suggestions (thanks for the summary, Wendy) arise from "over spill" or not is irrelevant as it is undeniably an area of high and growing use and a community solution would be great to see happen. As a new comer, I haven't gathered what exactly the climbing community is lobbying for here, just sticking to the staus quo?

The word "camping" currently covers quite a broad range of activity from sleeping on the back seat of your car to splaying out in a tarp city for five months complete with "GO PIES" banners and a 12v lava lamp. I think there should be a push to designate bivying from camping and have separate sites. When your have not just hard rubbish but the piles of abandoned trash in camp 100 metres from a row of trash cans it's time for someone to step in and do something. How do you force low-impact practices?

If I had the money and the authority, my solution would be to have a centralized community stone hut (octagonal, partitioned, stove/oven/fireplace in each segment) and make most of the current campground a day use public area. Obviously, this comes with a fire ban for campsites which would help self police the wood gathering problem and make it easier to collect/dispose of ash. Designated, marked bivy sites with body limits from 2-6 (can close singles sites and/or rotate them around mountain to revegetate). Doesn't have to mean allocated as far as booking goes- for bivy sites. I'd also designate a car camping (van people) lot and caravans/family campers/school groups would get their own special ghetto and booking system. With a centralized fire/cooking hut your campsite would be where you go for quiet and sleep. I know it's blasphemous, but the attachment to the actual "Pines" is starting to look quixotic; my understanding is that the natives are going to take decades to grow (probably why Noddy's grandmum planted what she did). There could be a multi-decade gap of shadeless oppression in which nobody is going to elbow for a spot there.

There's only going to be more climbers and tourists in the future. Without a sustainable solution what will happen is dirtbags/biviers getting priced out of the market and forced to go renegade or into town. Maybe there needs to be a climbers campground/club separate from tourists?

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