I have to read between the
lines when a non-climbing local farmer who is known to have fished around
for a while for several different ideas on how to make money from visiting
climbers claims to be 'helping' the sport. He helped to finance Richard
Bull's 'retrobolting' effort which may have been something of an
improvement on some climbs, but was an obvious effort to lay the
groundwork for today's justification for 'charging' in order to gain a
return on his 'development' work. There are many who did not see Richard
Bull's efforts as being entirely necessary and saw it as being contrary to
the ethics associated with climbing and the setting of climbs.
This has been coming for a while and while
it is an unfortunate development and sets a dangerous precedent it will
also help the development of other crags. The more experienced climber
will now go elsewhere to develop other crags, leaving this area to the
bumblies who wish to pay. This will mean that the climbing
culture/atmosphere in the Wharpapa region will change (and believe me
people coming to NZ to climb will not want to come to a 'Commercial theme
park crag') and the amount of climbers our entrepreneurial friend sees
tricking in now will dwindle and his income from climbing will also drop
dramatically. I also hope that he has some great indemnity insurance etc..
as the expertise of the average climber using his facilities will also plummet.
But lets face it although this is the best crag closest to Auckland it is
not fantastic and developments such as this just give us more reason to
head to Mount Arapalies in Australia!
