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Climbing on borrowed time |
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17-May-2009 10:42:02 PM
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A particularly famous example would be the massive rockfall on the Petit Dru (Mont Blanc) in 2001. As I recall the West Face and South-West (Bonatti) Pillar routes were all totalled by it!
http://www.rockclimbing.com/photos/Misc/Petit_Dru_after_the_rockfall_2001__51286.html
This sort of geological mishap affects British sea-cliffs al the time. A couple of well-known ones were the Johnny Dawes & Paul Pritchard horror show Come to Mother (E7 6a) which fell into the sea a couple of years after they did it back in the 80s. Another high-profile one was Nick White's Earth Rim Roamer in North Devon which climbed a spectacular arete that subsequently fell down so Nick went back and climbed it again - Earth Rim Roamer II.
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18-May-2009 7:28:37 AM
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On 17/05/2009 Organ Pipe wrote:
>but I was a bit spooked about a year ago when I racked up at the base of
>Phoenix. Large freshly deposited blocks all along the base of the wall
>there.
This wasn't an act of nature, someone, let's just call them Chuck Norris, had been doing some route cleaning on the Eighth.
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18-May-2009 10:11:07 AM
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Does this kind of activity occur overnight mostly?
I've heard that ice crystals expanding (as water does when freezing) in little fissures in the rock is a prominent force in the decay of stone.
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18-May-2009 10:17:08 AM
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On 18/05/2009 Wendy wrote:
>This wasn't an act of nature, someone, let's just call them Chuck Norris,
>had been doing some route cleaning on the Eighth.
Really? Crikey! There was a fiar bit of material there.
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18-May-2009 10:24:06 AM
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When you wander right past the road sign, you used to climb over and up a pinnaclly blocky thing where there is now a corner that you climb the right side of. Chuck thought it was an accident waiting to happen and gave it a helping hand to it's destiny a few years ago. It would have been 2m high maybe?
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18-May-2009 10:32:20 AM
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A couple of weeks ago i dislodged a large rock at least 100kg off a well trodden sports route in Townsville (Swinging in a sunday sea breeze). We were lucky my belayer didn't wear it as a hat, climbed the route again yesterday and found that it had changed that part of the climb to a very fun barndoor problem. Morale to the story i guess is as long as we are lucky enough not to get hurt, changing climbs can provide new challenges to old favourites.
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18-May-2009 11:06:22 AM
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>I've heard that ice crystals expanding (as water does when freezing) in
>little fissures in the rock is a prominent force in the decay of stone.
After the Canberra fires (in an area which does get freezing temperature) it was clear that bushfire heating was a more significant erosive force here than ice.
I'll be interested to look at the Cathedral Range after the Victorian fires.
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18-May-2009 1:43:07 PM
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On 17/05/2009 Eduardo Slabofvic wrote:
> Everyone must put in the same small wire and you can now see how the
>rock around the slot is smoothed out and has slightly rounded sandblasted
>look to it.
Aunty Jack at Mt York would have to be the best example I've ever seen of this phenomenon - numerous perfect wire placements that stick out like a sore thumb from the surrounding terrain.
The best example I can think of of a "will it, won't it" piece of rock is the pillar that makes up the first pitch of Fuddy Duddy at Narrowneck. The thing must be at least 30m high by 10m wide, and has already slid once since the first ascent (the first pitch used to go up a crack on the right hand side of the pillar, which is now a wide bomb bay chimney!).
Still, compared to some of the other examples that have been mentioned, if it goes it probably won't be overly spectacular - it appears to be sliding down the hill base-first, rather than toppling over so it'll probably be more of a slump / slide / shatter scenario than a topple / massive-destruction-in-fall-zone scenario.
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18-May-2009 2:31:08 PM
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Everytime I see this topic on the front page, I always think its like a Bucket List... Like a "oh well, I have just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, might as well give Shai-Halud a crack!"
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18-May-2009 2:39:18 PM
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I noticed that a large 4m x 1m section of the roof of the small cave you walk through to get to the top of Date with Density at Perrys Lookdown seems to have fallen off. It now offers a handy dry walking path instead of the usual mud. I wouldn't want to be under it when it fell off though!
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22-May-2009 4:36:57 AM
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A huge block (maybe 4m x 3m x 1.5m) recently detached from the top of the Ascension, just before the 3rd belay. Super scary to A) see the massive destruction below and B) climb past the large hole/scar/neighbouring blocks that are now loose on the route.
I think it came down after the recent rain.
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