Reply To: Quarries- Access, Gates and Bookings

Quoting Chris “Maybe MQ should have climbing dedicated areas (with no climbing limits), and areas designated for other uses only, such as abseiling and other activities. That way we are not interacting, and climbers are left to manage their safety, and the abseiling groups can continue without posing a safety risk to climbers and visa versa.”

Dunno about that – the problem is that the abseilers often abseil on some of the good climbing areas (eg Sex, Cigs and Chardonnay, Urban Ethics etc at MQ; near the Penguin and Ant climbs at Stathams etc), and also the commercial groups and Scouts etc aren’t only limited to abseiling but they also do climbing sometimes. I don’t think having ‘recreational climbing’ and ‘commercial abseiling/climbing’ designated areas wuill work in places like the quarries.

Personally I have no objection to the 40 limit as such – rather my objections are that (1) some groups regularly overbook which then limits the number of other people that can go there; (2) DEC seems to either be unaware or don’t care about this; and (3) that DEC is totally inflexible on the 40 (booked) limit – so what if there is a total of 42 or even 45 booked?