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Ropes missing from Taipan

ben wiessner

4-Oct-2014
11:16:32 AM

My friend and I left a couple of ropes at Taipan on Wednesday evening. Early this morning we hiked up to the wall and found them gone :(

They were stashed in a horizontal break where the track first meets Taipan, roughly below the Sirocco region.

One rope was in a green rope bag, a 70m black/white Mammut, a month old. The other rope was a 50m blue fuzzy Mammut.

Further up the track at the standard "stash point" (near the start of the boulder traverse) we found a green/white rope belonging to someone else (so the owner of that rope need not fret). When I was at the crag on Wed I saw a red/black ? softshell jacket stashed there, which was not there today (so hopefully it had been picked up by its owner and not the rope thief).

I guess I'll be stashing my ropes out of sight at Taipan in the future, in the boulders.

Jayford4321

4-Oct-2014
12:14:34 PM

That's a shit act, and I hope you get the ropes back.
In the meantime I will be on the lookout for them for you, as I don't want Taipan to take over nowra's reputation.

johny

5-Oct-2014
9:17:34 AM

thanks for the heads up, ben. If I see anyone with your ropes/bag, or find out who stole them, I will recover them for you with extreme prejudice. It sickens me to think that douchebag climbers are screwing people over like this and thinking they are somehow ethically "bootying" gear. I guess it could have been a really keen non-climbing bogan thief that hiked all the way up to taipan, but that seems unlikely.

ademmert

8-Oct-2014
7:36:33 AM

Jo has had some draws go missing from the Gallery

"BD nitron solid gate, with a small wild country wire gate on the other end. (most of them that is!) also marked with orange nail polish at the hinge." They were on Chain of Fools.

Looks Like there might be a thief in our midst.

jdb

8-Oct-2014
8:46:40 AM

At the risk of 'pouring petrol' onto this topic, as well as putting a simplistic spin on it, but if you don't leave gear lying about it won't get stolen. Having said that, I share your exasperation in the fact that fellow climbers are knowingly stealing equipment.

martym

8-Oct-2014
9:24:23 AM

People leave their ropes lying around in the bush?
That's your umbilical cord... why would you risk it?

Jayford4321

8-Oct-2014
9:28:08 AM


ajfclark

8-Oct-2014
9:41:47 AM

On 8/10/2014 gnaguts wrote:
>They are not stealing. They are community minded people cleaning up litter.

If they they then use it, it's not really picking up rubbish, it's taking gear.

Wendy

8-Oct-2014
10:19:58 AM

On 8/10/2014 jdb wrote:
>At the risk of 'pouring petrol' onto this topic, as well as putting a simplistic
>spin on it, but if you don't leave gear lying about it won't get stolen.
>Having said that, I share your exasperation in the fact that fellow climbers
>are knowingly stealing equipment.

this is all on the same slippery slope as "if women did go out at night/wear revealing clothing etc they wouldn't get raped". The problem in both cases with the perpetrator, not the victim.

We leave a whole bunch of expensive gear in tents all the time. In rucksacks at the base of climbs. In mountain huts. How awful would it be if we had to lock everything we possessed up out of sight at all times?


nmonteith

8-Oct-2014
11:17:21 AM

One thing to think about if you 'stash' gear at crags is the risk that an area will have a bushfire. Up in Queensland it seems common practice to stash climbing gear in plastic drums in the bush at the crag. Ropes, draws, drills, brushes that sort of thing. A recent fire up there managed to burn out all their drums - nothing left but melted together aluminum blobs!

kieranl

8-Oct-2014
11:25:20 AM

Unfortunately this sort of petty theft has always been with us but it's mostly fairly infrequent. But it's always a risk and stuff left out around the cliffs overnight or for days at a time offers a much easier target that gear in a campground. It's especially risky in holiday times and high traffic areas (e.g. stapylton, buandik).
It's still pretty horrible when it happens.

kieranl

8-Oct-2014
11:27:27 AM

On 8/10/2014 nmonteith wrote:
>One thing to think about if you 'stash' gear at crags is the risk that
>an area will have a bushfire.
There were some draws on a project at Weirs Creek that got burned in last year's bushfire.

martym

8-Oct-2014
11:33:41 AM

I think there's a difference between leaving your gear in your tent, zipped up - and someone just finding a rope lying around - probably forgotten.
Some dickhead might piss on it. Worse, they might think it funny to tie a knot in the middle of it. If they're really sick, they might run a knife through it...
In this case it's stolen. I'll leave it to the OP to declare which is worse.


Eduardo Slabofvic

8-Oct-2014
12:28:54 PM

Yeah, how long do you leave stuff lying around before you pick it up?

I found a pale blue rope on top of Central gulley Left once. Picked it up and turned it over to discover it was a dark blue rope. Clearly that was garbage.

I've found camping gear, clothing, and climbing gear at various spots around the Gramps, and it looks like sh1t. A national park is not a storage facility for lazy people.

Matt Callaghan

8-Oct-2014
1:04:12 PM

Yeah, we really need to keep the Gramps clean, it is a world heritage listed place, and parks do not like people leaving there stuff around.
What you think is treasure is definitely trash to them, if we have the time to put it up you should have the time to take it back with you. If you choose to stash your gear near by that's fine just make sure it is truly stashed, find a rock/bush and hide it properly so no one will find it but you.
Its sad all these people saying its stolen.....there just cleaning up rubbish, I'd hate to think of more bans on climbing in the gramps because of a small bunch of climbers thinking its there right to leave gear there, in sight of all the other people enjoying the beauty of the gramps.
Climbers are just a small group of people, most people using it are hikers, bird watchers and nature lovers enjoying the pristine nature there
Lets keep it clean so all can see this beautiful place

Jayford4321

8-Oct-2014
1:53:15 PM

On 8/10/2014 Eduardo Slabofvic wrote:
>Yeah, how long do you leave stuff lying around before you pick it up?
>
>I found a pale blue rope on top of Central gulley Left once. Picked it
>up and turned it over to discover it was a dark blue rope. Clearly that
>was garbage.
>
>I've found camping gear, clothing, and climbing gear at various spots
>around the Gramps, and it looks like sh1t. A national park is not a storage
>facility for lazy people.

I found some loose leaf climbing guide pages in NP once and thought although lazy, it did have a sense of irony given the shit ringbolted climbs in the vicinity.

Some of my best nowra mates would disagree about NP not making a good storage facility. After dumping an old couch along with some other stuff, in the bush one time, one of them told me they happened to drive past it a couple of days later and felt all warm an fuzzy when they saw all the birds perched in a line on top of it, knowing how much they were enjoying it.


nmonteith

8-Oct-2014
2:03:11 PM

I've had all my food stolen from a box outside my tent at Stapylton campground.

Wendy

8-Oct-2014
4:44:53 PM

Now, Neil, if you didn't leave you food in a box outside your tent, no one could steal it ...

It's always a debate what is acceptable to leave out or not. When bush camping, is it rubbish if you leave your tent set up? What about those fixed ropes that used to be all over Taipan so people didn't need to climb the first pitches to get to their projects? Or those manky fixed slings that some people argue are better than bolts because they are theoretically removable even though in reality they sit there being a disintegrating eyesore? Gear on routes or stashed at crags is also temporary and will be removed by it's owner and probably before too long. With the exception of Wally's gear on Serpentine which did spend a whole year up there. Most gear left on routes or at the crag is out of the way of other user groups. How many bush walkers have you encountered at the Gallery or Weirs Creek? How many wander off the main walking track at Stapylton and come up to the base of Taipan? Leaving rubbish is leaving rubbish. It should be pretty obvious this is either packaging and scraps that some slack bastard has left or so weathered it has been lost or forgotten there. If you come back another time and something still seems untouched, maybe you should take it and leave a note or otherwise make reasonable efforts to find an owner in a manner that you might also appreciate if you had lost something.

On the good news front, I stashed my gear at the base of Frog almost every day for 6 weeks and no one took it. 2 rucksacks full of gear stored out of the rain look like someone has left it on purpose. And I've never had my gear stolen off a route, even though I've left it around fairly liberally over the years. Abandoned gear in the rock is pretty obvious because it's isolated as opposed to a whole route of gear.

Then the other day I was a bit of a numpty and threw my set up rope off the cliff and in my rush to get to work forgot to pick it up. So I would not have been at all surprised for someone to have taken it when I went back 2 days later. A spaghetti of rope all over the ground looks pretty much like someone has forgotten it. It's a retired 9mm so I wasn't really distressed, however, someone had nicely coiled it up and left in a sheltered spot at the base of the cliff. So if that someone is reading this, thank you for your thoughtfulness.


JamesMc

8-Oct-2014
10:21:48 PM

Always safer to leave stuff hidden.

l actually prefer to hide valuable gear in the bush rather than leave it in the car.

chickenclimber

15-Oct-2014
3:22:42 PM

Turns out despite the rants it was just a tourist who thought they were left behind by track workers n handed them in. Send me a private massage Ben n I'll let you know where you can pick em up.

There are 22 messages in this topic.