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Chockstone Forum - Crag & Route Beta

Crag & Route Beta

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VIC Arapiles (General) (General) (General) [ Arapiles Guide | Arapiles Images ] 

Author
Campfire under Comic Relief
access t cliffcare
18-Sep-2015
3:00:06 PM
Words absolutely fail me. Although I will have a go. This photo which has just been sent to me,shows a campfire which has been built underneath Comic Relief at Mt Arapiles.

You really have to hope that it wasn't a climber. Regardless of the fact that campfires are not allowed in the park unless in the official fireplaces in the campground, the absolute stupidity to build one up against the rock??
There are so many choice words I would like to use here but stupidity was about the strongest I thought I should go. I'm sure you will all have your own strong words to throw around. If you do happen to be the person who did this - shameful. If you know the person - give them a serve.




And as I am writing this post, I have just been informed that last week there was a campfire built in front of Pebbles and Bam. So maybe it is a climber. Sad.

mattwho
18-Sep-2015
3:16:13 PM
I've seen this kind of mindlessness occur in the the Blue Mountains too. Boggles the mind how anyone could think it was a good idea.
widewetandslippery
18-Sep-2015
5:04:49 PM
The cliff makes a good backing for the BBQ plate. To misquote Gullich on coffee "BBQ is climbing".

Sabu
18-Sep-2015
5:17:39 PM
Disgraceful.
Jayford4321
18-Sep-2015
6:32:40 PM
On 18/09/2015 widewetandslippery wrote:
>The cliff makes a good backing for the BBQ plate. To misquote Gullich on coffee "BBQ is climbing".

I'm with widedude.
It is obvious none of you has ever bivyed at the base of a climb for an early start next morning, especially in winter.
The rock reflects the fire heat back at ya.
Believe it or not this is actually environmentally friendly because it means you only use half the firewood you would otherwise use to keep warm while bivying.
kieranl
18-Sep-2015
10:15:07 PM
Some people just don't have a clue.
bentobox
19-Sep-2015
5:16:13 AM
Far out, if ya can't handle the "cold" - pack an extra layer or a gas canister or something.
BBSR
21-Sep-2015
1:06:21 PM
Horrible. I'd like to think it wasn't climbers, who generally have a good amount of respect for this special place.

phillipivan
21-Sep-2015
1:53:00 PM
On 21/09/2015 BBSR wrote:
>I'd like to think it wasn't climbers, who generally have a good amount of respect for this special place.


I've become less and less convinced of this over time. We are not that much more special than the rest of the population.

The good Dr
21-Sep-2015
3:59:57 PM
Some kindly folks conducted some cleaning works up there on sunday to remove some of the soot marks. Their comments indicated that it may not have been climbers as a lean-to was also constructed there. There is also a fire pit in the rocky platform on the S side of Castle crag as well which has appeared more recently.
BBSR
22-Sep-2015
12:39:10 PM
Well done to those who helped with the clean up.

IdratherbeclimbingM9
22-Sep-2015
2:10:04 PM
Warning: Possible thread hijack ahead.

On 18/09/2015 gnaguts wrote:
>The rock reflects the fire heat back at ya.

This may not always be a good thing.

There is a property just outside of Eugowra NSW that (long ago), I asked the owner of for access to the many boulders located on it.
He was happy for me and my daughters to climb there and in fact showed us the best 'tracks' to access certain areas, as it is a large property. During this process we passed by a large boulder that had a significant portion of it freshly cleaved off clearly showing the scar where it came from, above where it landed on the ground, and I asked of him as to what had happened there.
He told me that friends/family had camped there and lit a fire at the base of the boulder to keep themselves warm one night, with the overhang above the fire nicely reflecting the heat back at them.
During the night the granite cracked like a gunshot and the overhanging portion (about the size of a Volkswagen) fell off...
Fortunately no-one was hurt, but it could have turned out quite differently.

Some other trivia about rocks that I learnt at Eugowra.

There are a great number of quite large granite panels that are part of the building facade at Parliament House Canberra that were quarried at Eugowra, during construction of that new edifice.
After initial installation, many of those panels had to be removed because although they had been cut 'true' at site, they subsequently warped once the 'stress' was taken off them by removing them from their original site.
We don't tend to think of granite as being 'plastic' in nature...
~> Little wonder that with a bit of provocation they can go bang in the night.

Long after Parliament House construction and before I left that area, Eugowra experienced a swarm of very localised earthquakes of up to magnitude 3.4 on the Richter Scale.
The seismologists who attended with sophisticated instrumentation at the time said to me that never before in Australia had they recorded such high rates of ground acceleration, which meant (to them) that the earthquakes source originated quite shallowly ie about 3 km (determined by triangulation of their instruments), beneath the earth surface. I worked in a water related area at the time and found data within our own records supporting the rapidness of the events, but no prescient indicators which was what I was looking for.

So gnaguts, be careful how you treat rocks as they may have quite a bit of pent up frustration...

End of possible hijack.



Oh, and setting fires at rock base of Arapiles is not cool as well as illegal, so (I doubt they read this), DON'T do it.

shortman
22-Sep-2015
4:34:21 PM
Thanks M9.
grangrump
23-Sep-2015
1:12:49 PM
On 22/09/2015 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>During the night the granite cracked like a gunshot and the overhanging
>portion (about the size of a Volkswagen) fell off...
Yep. Fire is a much more significant cause of granite erosion in Australia than freeze-thaw cracking (which is in all the Northern hemisphere oriented textbooks).
Not sure about Arapiles.
kieranl
23-Sep-2015
10:09:32 PM
On 23/09/2015 grangrump wrote:
>On 22/09/2015 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:
>>During the night the granite cracked like a gunshot and the overhanging
>>portion (about the size of a Volkswagen) fell off...
>Yep. Fire is a much more significant cause of granite erosion in Australia
>than freeze-thaw cracking (which is in all the Northern hemisphere oriented
>textbooks).
>Not sure about Arapiles.
Are you sure that's true in the arid regions of Australia (most of the country)? I'm not saying you're wrong, just curious. In winter it can easily vary 30 degrees between day and night in the desert.
lacto
24-Sep-2015
10:34:46 AM
Variation in temp each 24 hours probably doesn't do much . With water present and temps dropping below freezing for many hours forms ice from the water which expands and exerts huge forces on the rock causing fracturing
grangrump
24-Sep-2015
12:26:14 PM
Around here it definitely gets wet and freezes overnight in winter. But having explored a lot of granite hereabouts, the amount of rock exfoliation caused by a big bushfire is orders of magnitude more than winter freezing.

There are 17 messages in this topic.

 

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