RRC Archives

captain static, I agree, the closure could have an affect on the rest of the gorge, guess we just need to develop more cliffs in the Big Sinking.

The routes at Roadside are worth the crowds!

Like pigsteak said, nothing we can do, it's the future land owner's right to remove all the bolts and close climbing on their cliff, so no worries we'll just go somewhere else and forget all about Roadside.

This is private land we are talking about, I could be wrong but documents are not an option on private land

No, I don't know of any "secret crags", because every place I've been so far has been under the mentoring of SikMonkey.

A couple of things i would like to make clear 1)the big sinkin' is worthless land.Its only good for four(4)things and only three of those are legal.
(A)oil,which we have all seen in its beauty and splendor
(B)timber,now I know it just galds y'all's ass but someday soon they're gonna come through there and log all those pristine old growth(25-50 yr old)trees and make themselves a pot load of money.
(c)recreation;i.e. horseback riding,four wheeling,camping and last but not least rock climbing.
(d)growing Kentuckys' finest herb

Now what you've got to realize is that the land owners are not worried about anything that goes on at the big sinkin' as long as it doesn't interfere with (A) and (B). You could bolt your happy heart out,make approach trails every three feet and paint the whole place pink with paisleys and they (the 32 owners)wouldn't give a whip stitch!

Yo J.H. How do you know all this? Have you talked with the land owners?

The profit margin for the timber there almost makes it not worthwhile.

The profit margin for logging would be more than 600$ an acre.
What is tree friendly paint anyway?

Lynne wrote:[snip]I also believe very strongly in adhering to accepted ethics. Each area has their own, and ours does not allow for signs.

It was suggested to me that even though the accepted ethic does not allow for signs, I might be surprised at the number of people who do support them. This poll is not intended to try to change the limits of what is acceptable or to justify what was already done (and undone) - I am simply curious.[snip]

I think I know how you're using the word 'ethics' - in the way that it's commonly used in climbing. But the use of the word 'ethics' in climbing seems to me to be a bit of an exaggeration or even an abuse of the word. I'm not saying that you are intentionally doing any of this, I just want to point out something about how we use this word.

I do think that the word 'ethics' is applicable when we're talking about stuff like chipping - that's something that can't fully be undone - we're taking something away from future generations of climbers permanently. But it seems like we're taking the word too far when we use it to talk about wether or not to have clear signs directing new visitors to the area to particular crags. Nothing is being taken away permanently. I guess I'm saying that it isn't a question of 'ethics', it's more a question of 'style'.

Lynne, (I don't mean to pick on you!) you mentioned that you're concerned that if there were clear signs to the various crags, that it might increase the odds of cars being broken into. What you're talking about is called 'security through obscurity' - and it usually doesn't work very well. My thought is that it's obvious that there are lots of 'rich strangers' driving down that road towards the Lode - once Billy the crankhead and his buddies start driving around after the "rich folks," they'll find our cars no matter what. By having no signs, it's perfectly reasonable for someone to just be driving around endlessly ("gosh, they must be lost") For car break-in types, this is perfect. They can drive around, spot the cars and continue driving around until they're sure that they have a set of cars that are unattended to break into, then split. With clear sings, there's no excuse to be 'cruising' for break-in opportunities.

Pigsteak: Of course we want it both ways. Your posts fail to recognize several things.
1) Some private land owners don't like climbers because they don't like outsiders and fear personal liability because they aren't familiar with the law;
2) We are banned from all Kentucky State Parks. This is not because they want to protect Native American archeological sites, but they claim that bolting and climbing has a negative ecological impact on the cliff and the surrounding areas, which science is tenuous at best.
3) How do you know that climbing isn't a God-given right? Depends on which God your asking huh?

I have to let everyone know because I've held it on for too long.
Pigsteak is actually a Forum Bot. It recognizes bits and pieces of people's posts and does it's best at responding with a human-like response. It's pretty cool. Some dude out of Texas wrote it and gave me a beta of the code.

I'm suprised nobody noticed because it seems to say the same thing over and over but just in different ways! I hope to get more responses put into it's database so eventually it will say something different. It's getting to be a bit boring.