[moose]

A word of warning for those thinking of visiting Newcastle's temple of finger power: all of the crash-mats have been removed.  Supposedly an inspection felt they created an ankle twisting risk and that the safest thing to do would be to replace them with lots of posters advising climbers not to fall off!  

Bouldering there now has an exciting trad-soloing feel to it, made especially thrilling by the dim lighting and the filthy holds (it's an old-skool Bendcrete walls - no jugs - just have to down-climb on greasy crimps).   Hopefully the staff will take my recommendations on board and encourage even more careful climbing practice by strategically littering the base of the wall with broken glass and dog-shit... sorted

[dave]

wicked - i bet falling off one of them airy highball dynos, or that barndoor arete is pretty special now. do you have to take your own mats or summert?

best thing they could do now with that place is dig out the running-track flooring and put in a foot of good matting.

(i recon doing the concave wall break-to-bar dyno would be a bit tasty sans mats).

[moose]

A member of staff claimed that they will eventually get a proper padded floor put in (not holding my breath).  But in the meantime they feel having absolutely no matting is the safest option because "it encourages people to climb more carefully"!  

Dyno's.... are not really an option now.... climbing everything in a very static, strenuous fashion is the new rock'n'roll!  Still had a few hairy moments yesterday though.  Hot as hell and morbidly hungover, feeling sweaty hands slipping whilst almost upside down on the "wave" section...

[dave]

sounds like traversing will be the order of the day now then. form an orderly que behind the little guy with the discman in his back pocket.

[Bonjoy]

Surely they are putting themselves in a much greater position of liability!

[moose]

one would imagine so - I wouldn't have thought disclaimers and posters were  worth 'owt where negligance is concerned. The old system of scattered pads that had to be dragged around was pretty crap but at least you didn't feel that there was a real risk of being crippled.  Being less likely to trip-up doesn't strike me as adequate compensation!

[dave]

in the 3 years i was going saw at least 3 or 4 people badly fuck their ankles on the edges of the mats. However with no mats whatsoever with those falls would have seen many more injuries over that period! at least with the mats you had to take responsibility for your own safety, instead of just assuming it was 100% safe like people do with most walls. biggest problem at berghaus was with people dragging the mats away while you were fighting to on stay high up.