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Am I an a**hole? - Bouldering ettiquite. 31-Jul-2013 At 7:17:52 PM EvDog

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I'm a boulderer, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that; 1. The recent fervour surrounding the closure of parts of the Rocklands. 2. Several discussions I've heard recently about how shit it is at Hueco, and 3. The growing loathing of a group of high profile persons who like to post pics of themselves climbing in closed areas, all stem the collective realisation that we in Aus have been blessed with amazingly unfettered access to whatever boulders we want, whenever we want it, and that this situation is by no means guaranteed, and indeed might be in jeopardy some time soon.

I have spent a lot of time bouldering in the north recently and its clear that the increased number of boulderers there is having a major impact. Andersons has become a maze of well worn tracks, half of them pointless tracks of laziness, tick marks abound, litter and forgotten belongings where not plentiful but they were there, trees and shrubs had been stomped on and bushes clearly squished by pads, obvious built landings have begun to crop up involving masses of tree branches and there was an alarming amount of toilet paper visible not far off the beaten track.

I'm not going to blame all this on Euros and Americans (though they probably are part of the problem), but rather suggest that times have changed and perhaps our bouldering ethics and practices should change with them.

In my time as a boulderer I've afforded myself a lot of local luxuries; I've put tick marks on rocks I forgot to brush off, passed up the car park toilets in favour of shitting in the bush, stashed my pads, draped pads over tree trunks and bushes, trundled rocks that pissed me off, bush bashed through km's of forest in search of the next Andersons and brushed and chalked up anything that looked like it might go from Buandik to The Tower to Crag X and beyond, without ever thinking too much about where I was or if anyone might not want me to do this. These acts might not be heinous in isolation, nor are they strictly forbidden, but if every clown who comes to the Grampians where to emulate my actions then I imagine shit would get messed up pretty quickly; this would hardly be sustainable.

So I put it to you all, am I an a**hole? Should I not do these things? Can we really question the actions of visitors given the example we currently set? As we grow in number do we need to set our selves higher standards and stronger rules to deal with the impact we have? VOTE NOW!