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Pioneers of Tassie's Best Climbs 14-Sep-2016 At 11:04:01 PM Wendy

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On 13/09/2016 Tastrad wrote:

... quite an essay. I seem to remember criticising Gerry's North Tasmania guidebook in a trip report some years ago and promptly getting called a whinging cow. Gerry appears to be a little sensitive to any negative feedback whether couched in ODH terms or not. I'm not sure exactly what this essay was meant to achieve though. So there is a select guide to Tasmania of routes predominantly pioneered by the selecting few of which only locals and first ascentionists are able to assess the route quality? But said first ascentionists are going to be less critical in assessing climbs and no one criticised the Tassie guide due to a charitable desire to see it succeed?

I'm also a little curious about the complete lack of women in any of the extensive lists in all of these posts. Do no women climb in Tasmania? Or no women climb with Gerry? I'm reminded of that article about Dude Grades, which basically said grading systems were developed by average sized men because that's who was climbing when the systems were developing, hence they reflected the experience of averaged sized men. Does this rather limited pool of people developing routes and assessing route quality in Tasmania suffer from a similar insularity?

It also reminds me of the developers of Frederick's Peak in Townsville. I really like Frederick's Peak. I was super impressed by the effort these guys had gone to in developing it and there was absolutely no questioning their enthusiasm. Plenty of their routes were really good. However, they pretty much only climb at Frederick's Peak. Hence despite being prolific first ascentionists, isn't there a lot of value in breadth of climbing experiences in developing route assessment skills? Or can they come to Tasmania and assess Gerry's routes with his blessing?

Anyone who has knocked up a range of climbing experiences and knows Launceston Gorge can make a realistic assessment of the potential quality of these routes. The Gorge is nice to have in your back yard but nothing to worth travelling to. If you find yourself in Launceston wanting to climb, there will be plenty of things worth doing before these new routes. If, on the other hand, you have done a heap of climbing in the Gorge and want something new, they are probably OK.