8. No glueing or hold stabilisation.
How could they be enforced?
5. Do not drop litter at the crag, and take home any that you find.
I doubt that blow torching does any damage.
Quote from: "yorkshiregrit"I doubt that blow torching does any damage. I saw a post on another forum about this, and some smarty-pants came out with the science that showed that it would damage the rock - something to do with the rapid expansion of the water molecules within the rock or something.
Here Simons 10 commandments1. No chipping whatsoever. 2. No blow torching, even at coastal venues. 3. No wire brushing. Use a nylon brush if you are cleaning a new line. 4. Use less chalk and brush/ wash away tick marks or excessive build up at the end of your session. 5. Do not drop litter at the crag, and take home any that you find. 6. Do not leave carpet patches at the crag.7. No use of resin (pof). 8. No glueing or hold stabilisation. 9. Use a bouldering pad to decrease the impact on the vegetation at the base of popular problems. 10. No gardening of indigenous vegetation.
Yeah, there's a lot of horseshit bandied about by people about the dangers of using blow torches. These tend to stem from their overuse on certain rock types - for example, the types of Carboniferous limestone in the peak and yorks (and pen trywn, dinbren etc) contain a high calcium carbonate content - this does decompose on strong heating to form calcium oxide and CO2 - that's how you make cement basically - and this did use to happen where persistent seepages were blow torched - eventually this will lead to degradation of the matrix and crumbling of the rock.There is also a problem where the rocks contain a lot of clay minerals in the matrix - i.e. gritstone, as these swell/shrink markedly with varying water contents.If a blowtorch is used just to dry off surface humidity then there is no reason why it should alter the rock significantly - it's no worse than using a hair dryer - the problem comes when they're used on the wrong types of rock and used to actually heat up the rock itself - this can cause problems.
Part of the problem obviously is that people don't know what are the "right" rock types to use a blow torch.I heard there was a hold lost in Portrane recently?
Several problems on the Wavelength hillside were recently damaged by wirebrushing. I'm dismayed at the short sighted arrogance and ignorance displayed by the YG and Andy Robinson. If you two think that indigenous vegetation doesn't matter or that a bouldering pad is just there to protect you then you are deluded. So, YG and Andy I urge you to tread lightly for all our sakes.Simon.
I'm dismayed at the short sighted arrogance and ignorance displayed by the YG and Andy Robinson.
Okay, so if you think that my 10 rules don't help at all, what do you suggest?What interests me is how agencies with power (like the CCW, the National Trust, National Park Authorities) percieve bouldering culture. I think we need to be careful how we present ourselves.Simon.
Given the damaage thats been done to existing problems, and problems with great bit orange mark all overthem it is really worth it just to save half an hours brushing with a stiff scrubbing brush?
indeed you probably won't be doing any physical damage, but the damage is done second or third hand by contributing to wirebrush culture.
Quote from: "dave"indeed you probably won't be doing any physical damage, but the damage is done second or third hand by contributing to wirebrush culture. Yes, you have a good point there Dave.
However, and I have to use the situation here in Ireland as an example, we (bit cheeky that as I'm english... - consider it the royal we!) have mostly granite bouldering, and a lot of this is untouched - so if I want to go out and develop a new boulder or problem, I have to use a wire brush to get loose weathered crystals off the surface and remove lichen etc - otherwise the problem will just be too dirty to climb.I can't 'harm' the rock, as the constituent minerals are too hard to be scratched by a wire brush
all those schist boulders being developed in scotland.