UKC

It's bad enough that some people climb on the south side of Cheddar during the banned period. Some are also logging those ascents on UKC.

I would suggest that
- UKC removes any logs of ascents during banned periods (e.g. Smooth Operator)
- the Cheddar South crag moderator writes to those people explaining why the log of their ascent is being removed and add a statement to the description of that particular route drawing attention to the restrictions and the possible consequences of ignoring them.

If these ascents don't stop we will get banned from Cheddar Gorge South.

In reply to ericinbristol:

Name and shame please.

In reply to The Pylon King:

Easy to do - go to the routes and see the names

In reply to ericinbristol:

isn't there 600 odd routes? That's quite a fair bit of detective work.

Can only hope it's people's ignorance to the access agreement but it's still a poor excuse.

In reply to Kemics:
It's not hard at all. Just look at the obvious places like low grade routes on Horseshoe Bend Buttress.

The Cheddar South restrictions for 2014 can be found here
file:///C:/Users/erich/Downloads/2014%20Cheddar%20Access%20Calendar%20-%20update.pdf

So, any Cheddar South ascents on the following dates were during the total ban:
18-21 April
3-5 May
24 May-1 June
1 July-31 August

In reply to ericinbristol:

thats a link to a file on your computer eric

In reply to MaranaF:

Oops - I meant https://www.thebmc.co.uk/modules/RAD/viewcrag.aspx?id=930 for general info and www.thebmc.co.uk/Download.aspx?id=807 to download the access calendar.

In reply to ericinbristol:

It really isn't for UKC to police the climbs people choose to do. I doubt they would be arsed, tbh.

In reply to ericinbristol:

Noticed this one the other day,Space Tourist climbed on 29th July. Must keep an eye out for Coronation Street!

In reply to Removed User:

Well as an individual I quite like climbing at Cheddar and everything I can do to protect and maintain the current access is in my interests. So people like this in my opinion need some advice at least

In reply to Removed User:

If UKC is to be a responsible part of the climbing community, that I would argue includes removing logged ascents of climbs done during banned periods. UKC gets money from the BMC for advertising, so it is also in its financial interest not to antagonise the BMC. Anyway, everything I have seen leads me to conclude that UKC is a responsible company and would do the right thing. Whatever they decide would not be on the basis of not being bothered: they are better than that. Furthermore, the line between UKC and Cheddar climbers is not a strict one. The Cheddar South crag moderator is Paul Robertson, a respected local activist of many years' standing. If he thought it was the right thing to do, I think he would be happy to communicate with climbers who have logged banned ascents. It's not like there are vast numbers of such ascents logged.

Overall, we as a climbing community have to regulate ourselves or we will just get banned from Cheddar South.

In reply to ericinbristol:

Why don't you contact the climbers concerned, rather than leaving it for the Moderator to do? If they're Hidden then you can't of course, but nor can the moderator.

In reply to all:

The UKC Logbooks have thousands of routes, and are growing week on week (2405 routes ticked in the last 24hours!).

It is impossible for the team of 3 people here at UKC to monitor ticks of banned routes during banned times, especially so when places like Cheddar have complex restrictions.

The crag page for Cheddar South does clearly state the access situation and; I agree a note could be added to all the route descriptions, I shall see if there is a way can do it quickly through the back end.

Jack

In reply to ericinbristol:
I've added a pretty obvious link to this years Access Calendar on the Cheddar Gorge South page.

We were looking at adding the facility for crag moderators to add a date range for access restrictions but the it would be tricky to do for restrictions that change as frequently as Cheddar does.

In reply to Jack Geldard - UKC Chief Editor:

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I didn't mean that UKC staff should monitor ticks of banned routes at banned times. I meant that local climbers could keep an eye on them (not that hard as in fact the ban-violating ascents logged are generally a small number focused on popular routes).

What I was asking UKC to do was to remove ban-violating ascents from the logs if we draw them to your attention. Would UKC be willing to do that?

Yes, the crag page is clear. If you could a note to all route descriptions too that would hopefully help in some cases at least and help further raise awareness.

In reply to Paul Phillips - UKC and UKH:

Yes, thanks for adding the link. The thing is that people who search for a route name to log their route won't go via the

If the crag moderator or Cheddar South could add the full closure dates that would be great - only has to be once a year.

In reply to Simon Caldwell:

Yes, I could do that and am willing to do it, just as I am willing to (and actually do) go and explain to people at the crag itself when I see them heading to or climbing on banned routes.

The reason I suggested that the crag moderator do it is because they might see it as a useful bit of their role and I want to go about things in a properly agreed collective way. Equally, if what we agree is that it should be up to individuals to do that is fine by me.

In reply to ericinbristol:


I don't have any objection to doing this, but if you are going to contact the climbers then you could ask them to remove the logged ascent themselves?

Jack

In reply to Jack Geldard - UKC Chief Editor:

Sure. I will be happy to contact them and ask them very politely. If they refuse, would you then be willing to remove the logged ascents?

In reply to ericinbristol:

No matter how foolish the deeds, why do you want to change history?

Seems a very Google-style privacy thing to me.

In reply to Mike Highbury:

I assume it's more to avoid the "Someone's climbed these routes recently so it must be OK to do so" mentality despite all the signs about the climbing restrictions stating otherwise. It's a bit like a driver blindly following the instructions from their sat-nav rather than noting the road sign saying "Dead End Road"!!

In reply to Mike Highbury:

Good question. There are a few elements. The main one is that by allowing such ascents to remain in the UKC logbooks it suggests that at one level at least such things are okay when they are certainly not. Cheddar Caves and Gorge (unsurprisingly and reasonably) staff read UKC re Cheddar. In deciding whether or not to continue to allow us to continue to climb on the South side, they will I suspect take into account the extent to which we try to discourage climbing at banned times. Ensuring that banned ascents are not logged helps get the message out to the climbing community too.

In reply to Bob:

Yes.

In reply to ericinbristol:

It's not only in Cheddar where this is a problem. In Boulder Ruckle at Swanage, there are several ascents logged this year in the Behemoth / Old Faithful area in the months (February to July) when climbing is banned due to nesting birds.

In reply to Bob M:

Really? Seems a bit daft to me.

If I were you I'd give the herring gulls a nudge and let them deal with them.

In reply to Mike Highbury:

There have been other access issues where the landowner has been very interested in threads on UKC. Having a formal log of banned ascents isn't going to help access.

The 'Cheddar Gorge Climbs' guidebook is part of the problem. I don't know how big a part but it may contribute enough to warrant some change in the next edition if/when there is one.

For example, if you don't know the access restrictions at all or in detail, you might open the guidebook at say Space Tourist on Sunset Buttress on p. 64. In orange it says at the top of the page 'Summer Season' and you are liable to go 'Yippee, we can climb it in the Summer Season'. This is what the person who logged a recent ascent of Space Tourist says happened with them. I have no way of knowing if that is true or not but it is certainly plausible. At the very least the guidebook should say at the top of the page 'No climbing in the Summer Season'.

If you read the information on Access on that same page, it says:
'The summer season access regime applies to all routes described. See page 10'. Nothing to suggest no climbing in summer yet.

The crucial information is on p. 10 for those who check:
'climbing is prohibited on the South Side during the following periods:
* Easter Bank Holiday weekend
* May Bank Holiday weekend
* Spring Bank Holiday week including weekends either side
* The school and general summer holiday period covering the whole of July and August and the first week of September.'

So, on the one hand it doesn't take much checking to find out. On the other hand, the potential to be misled is there.

I have very politely emailed everyone with a Cheddar South ascent logged out of the permitted season asking them to remove the item.

One response so far: very positive and reasonable, logbook amended. Fingers crossed re the rest.

In reply to ericinbristol:

This is more unethical than climbing during a ban season is. It's depressing ukc staff would even consider going along with this.

In reply to Removed User:
Why is it unethical? I am genuinely interested because it's important that as far as possible climbers as a community work out together how to handle these issues.

In reply to ericinbristol:

Nice one. I'd hope/expect that all the others will have made similar mistakes. If you knew it was banned then why would you then add it to your logbook and announce your actions to the world!

On a different crag that I moderate, someone logged a banned route. When I emailed, he pointed at a different guide which said that it wasn't banned - so the BMC sorted it out and got the information consistent.

In reply to ericinbristol:

Because it's hiding evidence of the ascents rather than putting a stop to the ascents. Would a better approach be to direct the bmc to these ascents and allow a reasonable dialogue to take place as to why they should have not been climbing there?

In reply to Removed User:

It's not unethical for the individuals to remove the ascents themselves though, is it.

I've emailed several people who have logged ascents on bird banned routes when they shouldn't have and have had almost 100% apologetic responses, promises to remove these ascent records and also seemed to have been "educated" as a result.

Sometimes the excuse has been that they were using an old guide (with the previous version of the restrictions in it), sometimes they are a bit pathetic. But they were all sorry and I would hope they won't do it again.

As others have said, there are non-climbers who monitor the UKC logbooks and will use such logged ascents as evidence for stricter bans. I'd encourage BMC Access Reps to monitor the UKC logbooks for their areas in the same way I have...

In reply to Orgsm:
You are right that the priority should be to stop the ascents. What I have been doing is not either/or. By getting in touch with people and asking them to remove their logging of these ascents, it might (I can only guess) contribute to making such ascents less likely: if such ascents are logged, some people might thing 'Well I know there's a ban but others are doing it and logging their ascents so I might as well too - it's clearly not that big a deal'. As for reasonable dialogue, I have initiated that dialogue myself today. I was happy to leave it to others in a more authoritative position, but the response thus far has been that it's okay for me to do it. I wrote to everyone who logged such an ascent and explained my request. I am also encouraging other things such as more information on the specific webpages of the routes, clearer information in the next edition of the guidebook and helped recruit some volunteers willing to spread access information.

On the general issue of removing records of ascents, if the UKC logbook was regarded as the definitive record of ascents I would be concerned. But it isn't and no-one thinks it is. I would have bigger qualms about not recording a first ascent that occurred during a ban because that really was the first ascent but even then (especially in mountaineering circles) FAs that violate bans are quite often not recorded due to their negative access implications. And I think that last point is crucial: all other things being equal, by all means record ascents but in these are ascents that could result in no further (permitted) ascents for anyone.

In essence, continued permission to climb for those who abide by the access agreement re Cheddar South to me outweighs permission to record on UKC ascents made during bans (and there is no right to log those ascents on UKC - it is a private company).