• Parks Victoria announces “re-opening” of 18 crags and “more than 500 routes” in the Grampians.
• Actual number of routes to be re-opened is 432 – 15% less than PV claim.
• The routes being open equate to less than 5% of the total climbing in the Grampians.
• Many of the “re-opened” crags are the lowest quality climbing areas in the Grampians – with some having had zero repeats in 40 years according to thecrag.com
• 9 crags failed this round of the assessments due to the presence, or potential presence, of Aboriginal cultural heritage.
• Major crags failed their assessment without a physical site assessment even happening.
• Closed crags include popular moderate sport crags Weirs Creek, Wave Wall and Red Rock Pinnacles.

UPDATE: This article has been majorly updated since first published on Thursday 29 May after additional information was published by PV and Climbing Victoria on Tuesday 3 June. What a surprise – they withheld the negatives of their announcement until after it hit the press.

Have you read the press release from Climbing Victoria and Parks Victoria about an additional 18 areas and “over 500 routes” being re-opened to climbers in the Grampians? Did you look at the list of climbing areas and not recognize most of them? You are not alone!

Re-opened climbing areas

Cave Cliff
The Sun Gate
Watchmen
Centurion Walls
Dreamtime Wall
New Era Wall
Labour Ward
Superbia
Barbican Rocks
Barbican Wall
Gallery Creek (no, not that Gallery!)
Pastoral Buttress
Blind Mans Bluff
Rural Rocks
HB Wall
Dead Explorers Slab
Back of Beyond
The Garrets

Let’s look at the stats of what has “reopened”

Let’s apply some Maths for Dummies to this… take a look at the Google spreadsheet we created with route numbers, grades, styles and ascents here. Screenshot below… The results should crush the joy out of most climbers.

It’s not “more than 500 routes”

According to the Australian online climbing logbook thecrag.com – the reopened crags contain only 432 routes – not “more than 500” as claimed by Parks Victoria. Even if we only use the figure of 500 routes that is a 15% inflation over the actual figure. What gives?

Mediocre crags in the Grampians “re-opened”

Only an experienced Grampians climber will immediately see why there isn’t great big whoops of joy on what has “re-opened”. The list of areas is far from an inspiring collection of classic crags containing iconic routes. There are around 6 middle of the road good crags listed – Dreamtime, Centurion, Cave Cliff, Barbican and Gallery Creek. The remaining deserve a special mention as they are so bad…

Three of these 18 “reopened” areas have received zero ascents in the last couple of decades according to thecrag.com. Another 7 of these areas have received less than 100 ascents. Five of these “areas” are tiny pimples of rock that contain less than ten routes. Five crags are mediocre at best and are situated in the heart of Halls Gap within walking distance of the Parks Victoria office (they can be back for lunch after spending the morning banning a bunch of crags!). We have it on good advice that PV threw in assessing these Halls Gap crags as a “bonus” for the climbing community – we’re sure they still filled in those timesheets at the end of the day. A couple of re-opened “areas” are simply one piece of cliff line with names for each sectors – they are not even unique climbing areas!

4.6% re-opened

This re-opening announcement has only added a minuscule 4.6% of total Grampians climbs to the already threadbare “open” list. These 18 newly “designated” areas equate to only 3.7% of total climber ascent activity in the Grampians according to the thecrag.com. These re-opened crags are not only small and obscure – they are generally really unpopular.

Sport climbers can rejoice – 13% more open!

Sorry for getting your hopes up. How did sport climbers fare? The majority of the original bans in the Grampians targeted the harder and spectacular caves and walls that made the region famous – such as Muline, Gallery, Taipan, Millennium (RIP) and many others. The best rock and routes on the planet. These “reopened” areas bring around 13% of additional sport routes into play – but if you look at the details you realize most of these are sub grade 20 routes on poor quality grey or blocky rock around Halls Gap – not the magic orange everyone wants to climb. A two bolt grade 10 slab route at the Labor Ward is hardly a replacement for Invisible Fist at Taipan Wall. It’s better than a rock to the head – but not exactly a time to celebrate. Even worse – we have confirmation that some of the best moderate sport crags in the Grampians – Weirs Creek, Wave Wall and Red Rock Pinnacles all “failed” their assessments – more about that later…

Wasting tax payers money assessing worthless crags

Did Parks Victoria and First Peoples State Relations really send a highly paid assessment team on a one hour bush bash up a big hill in deepest darkest Victoria Ranges to assess a cliff such as Dead Explorers Slab – which contains only 3 trad routes (all under grade 13) that have had exactly zero ascents in 20 years? At the same time we have heard zilch about any assessments of world class climbing areas such as Eureka Wall, Muline, Asses Ear and Mt Fox? These assessments continue to baffle logically minded climbers who want certainty on crags that climbers actually visit – and international climbers used to flock to.

The Grampians have over 9200 recorded rock climbing routes and boulder problems – but Parks Victoria still believes they can keep climbers away from 80% of these. An additional 4.6% does nothing to allay the deep concerns that climbers have about the bans and the future of the climbing in Victoria.

Crags that failed assessment

One line from the glowing press-release is worth mentioning “Parks Victoria has assessed 27 climbing areas in the Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park and are reopening 18.” That means that there are 9 areas that were assessed – but didn’t “pass” and are now presumably closed to climbing. What are those areas? According to Climbing Victoria’s Facebook post on Tuesday...

The loss of super pocketed moderates at Weirs Creek and the insanely popular Wave Wall will put even more pressure on the already busy moderate sport crags of I Forget Walls and West Flank. Neither of these newly banned crags are caves so we have no idea what “cultural heritage” value is present and why it took until 2025 to notice it. Both crags are over 20 years old for climbing activity.

Eagles Head is a big loss as well as it is a massive area – similar to the geography of Arapiles it has multiple tiers, gullies and faces. Banning the entire area seems extreme – but we have seen similar attempts at Arapiles to close major areas due to the the very limited presence of cultural heritage right at the cliff base. Eagles Head has never been popular – but it’s always been a place to “get away” from the mainstream crags and have a proper 1980s style trad adventure. Tights camera action! Historical impact from climbers has always been negligible at Eagles Head. With the loss of so many similar areas at Arapiles this is a crippling blow to the future climbing community.

Failure to assess

We note the contradiction in public statements from Climbing Victoria that “Parks Victoria has assessed 27 climbing areas in the Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park and are reopening 18.”

They actually did not assess at least 5 areas of the 27. They just wrote them off on paper without actually checking them out in person.

The failure of Group 2 crags to even be individually assessed because they are simply located in huge Special Protection Areas (SPAs) is of greatest concern to us. These areas were popular and famous climbing areas for over 40 years – and featured in numerous print guidebooks. Now they are deemed so culturally “valuable” that even considering an assessment to continue a long utilized recreational activity is deemed impossible.

A complete ban on Mt Difficult for this reason is laughable – as PV hacked the massive Grampians Peak Trail straight through this area only a few years ago – including massive stone steps carved directly into the cliff. Yet a couple of bolts and a faint foot pad is criminal? Give us a break.

How are the crags being chosen?

Where did the list of areas to be assessed come from and when? It was actually a list of 50 priority areas that was presented to Parks Victoria back in May 2022 by the Victorian climbing community (through the now defunct CVAC – Climbing Victoria Advisory Council). According to this news report Parks Victoria accepted this list “and has agreed to assess them in the 2022/23 financial year. The aim is to complete the assessments and determine which sites will be designated as climbing areas or non-climbing areas by May 2023.” For those viewing this in a parallel universe without the bans – that deadline flew past us 2 years ago. Oops. So two years late and Parks Victoria have only attempted to assess less than half the 50 crags on the priority areas list.

We now have a generation of climbers who simply do not know about what the best Grampians climbing crags are because “assessment” of these areas has dragged on for more than half a decade (and multiple Parks Victoria CEOs). What ever happened about those climber permits? When will the general public be allowed back to Summerday Valley? When will PV put aside real funds to stabilize the bottom of Spurt Wall? Maybe it’s best we just leave PV and their cronies to play with paperwork while we just go climbing.

Thanks should go out to all the organizations and individuals that have lobbied hard to get areas reopened over many years. We have all done it slightly differently in our own unique way but the pressure has been immense and mostly unwavering. Keep it up all. This announcement claws back a tiny fraction of the overall losses but does give some hope that one day this will all be distant memory.