- 1. Keep to the established and often marked tracks. The good folks who care about the place are busy building small stone barriers around regenerating Kahikatea, Miro and Matai, please watch out for these. We don’t know where all these little beggars are so please keep your eyes open.
- 2. Minimize your impact at the bottom of the cliffs by keeping all your stuff in one compact place and not wandering back into the bush to see what the climbers doing or whatever. We’re hoping the undergrowth regenerates and there are heaps of orchids here that you’re trampling. This sort of impact is worst at the Creese and Little Lost Walls
- 3. Don’t walk to the tops of cliffs. In 1999 there was a very dry, hot summer and all the Hebes and Kowhai that lined the cliff tops died off. Little, wee ones are just starting to come away again and won’t benefit from little human feet trampling on top of them. Put top ropes up by leading routes or get some strong type to do it for you.
- 4. Clean tick marks and excess chalk off the cliff and holds. This stuff is visual litter and makes holds really greasy on hot days. Long may there be hot days.
- 5. No graffiti anywhere.
- 6. Please abseil from the top of cliffs rather than lower from the fixed anchors. This helps the hardware at the top last a lot longer. Running a top rope through the fixed anchors is about the worst thing you can do. Use a biner at the top instead.
- 7. The bolt fund and the folks who stick the stuff in the cliff can’t and don’t want to fix all your fixed anchor woes. Assessing whether bolts will stay put is your responsibility. You can help by carrying a spanner to do up loose bolts. Please don’t come sniveling to us if it all goes wrong.
- 8. Use the loo’s provided (DoC loos at Paynes, loo’s at the port of Tarakohe, public toilets behind the tennis club at Pohara, and the loo’s at Hangdog). No shitting in the woods, loo paper daisies or burning loo paper please.
- 9. Learn what banana passionfruit is and kill it by cutting the vine at its base.
- 10. Kill all possums and rats. If you’re new to this country, Possums aren’t cute, cuddly tree bears, they’re a noxious pest that consumes huge amounts of vegetation, young birds and eggs. The most effective way of killing them is by biting their nose off with your teeth! If you’re too spineless to do this then try pointing a small blond dog at the possum, she’ll do the biting for you.
- 11. There are some areas that local climbers have either agreed not to climb on or not develop to keep in harmony with the local non climbers. Check at Hangdog if you’ve spied some rock you want to be let loose at.
- 12. Give a little dosh to the bolt fund. It’s managed by an odd and only semi-organized but passionate bunch of volunteers who generally know what they’re doing.
26.8.08
Environmental stuff (2)
Many moons ago the nice climbers of Nelson never gave Paynes Ford a second look. The cracks of Cable Bay and the Takaka Quarry were all the rage. Paynes was too steep, had no cracks for pro, less holds and was covered in moss and ferns anyway.
Try to imagine what it was like back then. There were wekas in the reserve, lush, rare mosses were all over the cliffs and at their base, Supplejack wove the bush together, heaps of leaf litter was on the forest floor which each spring herbs and perennials would push through. Hippy girls used to swim naked at the swimming holes - they used to be so numerous that one could catch them with a butterfly net and have them poached on toast for breakfast. Alas, no more.
Now Golden Bay seems to be the ‘place to be’ and it’s more than just climbers who think so. While we all love Golden Bay for our own reasons the place is in danger of being loved to death. While we may love the slopers that’ll suffice for holds in loving them we’ve killed off the drip line mosses, the ferns and compacted the soil at the base of the cliffs in our efforts to get a Paynes pump. There’s less obvious stuff too. Everywhere we walk we destroy the leaf litter, destroying plants and invertebrates in our path. We’ve cut back supplejack in the name of access and killed not so small trees that were either in our way, or by lowering off into them.
So now it’s time for some truths. It doesn’t take much brain to work out that climbers can’t be serious environmentalists. Nylon ropes and all that fuel to get here, not to mention those flights overseas to climb. And what about all the fuel and energy that goes into making all that shiny gear that we love. So any efforts we put into keeping the crags of Golden Bay ‘nice’, green and native bushy, are, on the grand scale of things, trite nonsense!
But wait I, and I’m sure a lot of you, love or will love this place and love is a strange thing. Totally illogical it is. So I ask you, I implore you to do that totally illogical, human oddity. I ask you to help preserve, improve and conserve this place.
Here are some tips:
Environmental stuff (1)
Lets look after the place
Paynes Ford is a Scenic Reserve at which DoC tolerates our climbing. It is a privilege not a right to climb here. That privilege could be withdrawn.
This brings with it a responsibility to use and conserve the resource for others.
It is not the general public that wanders around the bottom of these cliffs it is climbers. If you are a recent visitor what “was” here might not be apparent.
Over the years there has been a lot of intentional and unintentional damage to native vegetation in particular, along with compaction of the soils around the base of the climbs and erosion on unofficial shortcut tracks. Drip-line mosses have almost all vanished. The bush is much more open now as our presence has forced back much of the native plants to meet our needs.
As numbers of climbers grows the pressure increases rapidly.
Thanks to all those climbers who are caring of our environment.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
DON”T even think about putting up a new climb if it means removing/cleaning moss or vegetation as has been done recently.
It won’t get you mentioned (favourably) in the Guidebooks!
If you are doing a new climb don’t SQUEEZE. Many lines have been looked at and left alone in the past as not being independent.
Be careful of trees when you lower/rap off climbs and swing out.
Stick to marked tracks
Don’t climb with dirty rockshoes. Mud/dirt acts as a grinding paste and holds become polished. Carry a bit of carpet to stand on and to clean your shoes on. Routes will become polished like those on the Slave wall.
Pick up that bit of litter even if it is not yours.
11.8.08
Pohara - Why Wall - Just Cause (26)
- Just Cause (26)
10.8.08
Wall of Thugs - New climbs
- Head Line***26
photos Mark Brignole
- Another night in the dogbox** 23
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