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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

Topic Date User
New anchors at Araps - What do you reckon? 9-Jan-2017 At 7:18:45 AM Wendy
Message
Simey, you could come over for coffee and we could have an extended rant about rap anchors. Maybe we should drive to Qld together again - it could fill in 20 hours or so easily.

The Penny Dreadful anchors are weird. I would never have imagined a need for one there until they turned up and actually, I still can't see a need for one there. I used to guide those routes a lot, there was never any issue with traffic jams up the last pitch and there are about 5 different ways you could go up that wall if there was, which also means you could do a different second pitch for each route up the bottom face if you wanted, but really, there are only 2 there that ever get done. Leather Bound just goes straight to the top. The descent is not dodgy and whilst it has potential for erosion, anchors off the summit servicing a range of routes would be more effective at addressing that.

Whilst I think there are more than a few cases where there are rap stations almost on top of each other, I can see some use for the Mari one, mostly around not belaying in the sun. People usually go to Mari in the summer because it's shady, but it did suck belaying in the sun up there. The other one is around getting in the way of parties on Megalomaniac using the other rap. The walk down descent has overgrown these days and it wouldn't be good for it to become a major thoroughfare again.

I think the rap down Tiger Wall and the new one down the right watchtower both suck. Flinder's Lane, the cave and Ali's were all coping with the traffic fine. On the other hand, both the halfway ledge and the base of that abseil rapidly became devegetated. The Kestrel rap starts and ends on rockier ground and does not have the same damage despite being there for many years. The lower one also goes over several climbs on the base of Tiger Wall. The right watchtower one has a station in the middle of Siren. Really, if you are doing a multi pitch, you have already committed to a certain degree of journey and where walking down is safe and doesn't trash the gullies, I think it's perfectly reasonable to do so. From RWS, you can easily access the Pharos gully track, just wait in line at the LWS if you really have to abseil. You could always walk off watchtower gully if you don't want to wait. Again, I have never had to wait more than a single group to get off LWS. The only times I have had a problem getting down Ali's is when groups were doing the "rock journey", which I have a bunch of issues with in itself.

I don't know that people are really at risk of loosing the skill of setting up natural anchors. Most easier routes, indeed most routes in general, still involve some setting up of gear anchors. I'm certainly in favour of placing appropriate rap anchors and am even responsible for some of them, but I do think there have been some strange decisions made about some. I haven't removed any but I do try and let the people responsible know why I think they are unnecessary, for whatever notice they take of that in future.

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