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Chockstone Forum - Crag & Route Beta

Crag & Route Beta

Area	Location	Sub Location	Crag	Links
VIC Arapiles	The Northern Group	(General)	Echo Crag	[ Arapiles Guide \| Arapiles Images ]

Topic Date User

Eco Crag, Touch-Type? 23-Mar-2009 At 2:27:50 PM robertsonja

Message

Echo Crag
Touch-Type* 25m 19
A rap in and climb out affair which is effectively a direct finish to the second pitch of Touchstone. It offers pleasant wall climbing with the final tenuous moves being the crux. Rap to the ledge and follow the second pitch of Touchstone until it veers L. Continue directly up wall past two bolts.
Mark Wood, Allan McCulloch, Paul Deacon, Simon Mentz ’08.

Touchstone Right Hand Variant Finish (17) takes the thin seam to the right of Touch-Type.

Touchstone** 60m 14 provides 2 pitches of climbing at a fairly consistent grade - Lockwood, Dewhirst and Baxter in 1974.

Echo Crag can be considered a remote part of Arapiles and is sheer, beautiful and stands out from the surrounding area. Viewed from afar, Touchstone provides an obvious line of weakness up the face, provides a pure traditional climbing line, and required a great deal of effort for the approach/walk off adding to the atmosphere of the climb and climbing experience.

Touch-Type, the new addition to the face, has placed two new bolts on this face. Touch-Type follows pitch 2 of Touchstone for half its length (12m), then provides grade 14-17 climbing for 8m or so, then provides only a couple of body lengths of grade 19 climbing prior to the top out. The climb is well protected, besides the last 5m, with protection available just prior to the top out.

In my opinion, Touch-Type is a very contrived line (re-read the route description), at best provides 5m or so of climbing at the grade, and does not warrant the star. In my opinion, the addition of the two bolts diminishes the aesthetics of the older classic neighbouring traditional climb, diminishes the aesthetics of the entire face and traditional climbing experience. Protection may even be available to the far left or right. My climbing partner suggested that the first ascentionists could have stood on each others shoulders to place the bolts and top out, and they all should of given it star, but I’m not so sure.

The second issue that has been presented with this new addition are the two new raps stations (P1 and P2 of Touchstone), a further degradation to the traditional atmosphere. I understand the complicated issues such as erosion that are presented, but the area has well trodden paths and a rap station above the adjacent Mr Buffalo and Honeycomb. I’ll be the first to admit the access to this climb can be time consuming, but definitely not dangerous or out of reach.

So now we have the addition of 6 new bolts on this Touchstone face, which further adds to the increasing pressure in an area blessed with Traditional climbing values.

I do not want to ignite another debate regarding trad/mixed/sport climbing but what are others thoughts on this stella classic line and the associated issues?

What consultation with the climbing community was conducted prior to the placement of these two bolts on Touch-Type?

What consultation with the climbing community was conducted prior to the placement of these four bolts for the two rap anchors?

What is the preferred method of consultation?

Do we really want to go and bolt up all our unclimbable or unprotected faces and then provide easy access to all areas, or, can we leave it for others to look up and wonder?