Following on from our previous article, a broader article appeared in The Australian on the weekend (subscribers only). The article by John Ferguson covers a lot more than climbing – as now hiking and swimming are in the firing line – and that’s plenty for regular folk to get upset about… and didn’t they just (see twitter, R).
Where are we at? It’s been a bit quiet over here at SGC as the dust settles from the big Plan of Management reveal and the “players” work away from the public eye to implement it. Plenty of people are burnt out from the whole affair and are just going climbing and forgetting the last three years ever happened.
Tiger Wall, Castle Crag, Fang Buttress and Black Ians Rocks latest areas to close to all visitors
Greater Gariwerd Landscape Management Plan draft has been completed
Parks Victoria confirms SPA & no climbing rule near Roses Gap Recreation Centre
Parks Victoria forced to reprint signage after admitting errors
We are going to just start with an update on statistics so everyone is on the same page when it comes to understanding the extent of the current climbing closures in the Grampians and Arapiles region. We have included this weeks Arapiles and Black Ians Rocks closure announcements.
On the weekend there was a fairly positive article about the Grampians bans in Murdoch Press. The Australian (Free), and Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun (Subscription). The original headline (see the hardcopy below) is a shocker*, but the article itself is actually well researched and without any PV zingers.
It has been a huge 24 hours for Grampians climbing ban news with several mainstream media sources publishing stories in print, online, radio and even national TV. It certainly wasn’t all positive puff pieces for rock-climbing – but we did get a chance to air some of our views and attempt to refute some of the wilder claims made by Parks Victoria – including their continued insistence on the 10x growth figures that we have proved false on this blog previously. We have seen zero evidence of their claims of 80,000 climbers a year in the Grampians (a crazy 220 people a day!) and their entirely false claim of a 3x expansion of new routes in the Grampians since 2003 (that figure is more like 20%, not 300%).