UKC

Rob Greenwood continues the #respecttherock series by examining how the ill-disciplined behaviour of one person can be a catalyst for drastic consequences for both the environment and other climbers...

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Absolutely shocking behaviour by some climbers.  I have to say I've seen many well-known locals and UKC users disregarding the Kilnsey rules, parking on the soft verge over and over again. Just pure laziness and total disregard for access. Hopefully everyone learns the lesson pretty quickly and we can keep crags open for the future.

It finally came up. 

Good article. 

Approaching other climbers who are misbehaving is a risky business, however polite you are. I have had responses ranging from thanks (for pointing out someone had accidentally dropped a sandwich wrapper) to very aggressive abuse for pointing out that a vehicle was blocking access to an obviously well used farm track. (They were climbers, obviously because of the gear they were carrying and they said it was the only place nearby to park! With several expletives!)

I think as climbers in a rapidly growing sport we are going to have poor behaviour, as does any section of the community. I can only hope that the poor behaviour does not affect access to more crags. 

The access team and their work at the BMC are becoming more and more important and for this reason everyone should be supporting the BMC and ensuring that it stays in a position to carry out this important work. Many places would be inaccessible to climbers if not for this work, so if you climb, or walk join the BMC and support this important part of their remit!

Timely article - you get a sense of growing momentum for both better behaviour to be promoted and also landowner's patience being tested more - invariably as sport continues to grow in popularity.

I think effort on an education campaign (online, posters etc.) would be worthwhile. 

Despite a familiarity with how not to piss-off farmers when I started climbing, some of the nuances of sport were learnt as I went, generally through mis-adventures and copying others.  Things like not making an effort to remove chalk thinking natural wash off is ok, camping wild in Font or infringing  other local crag customs that weren't well publicised and climbing on less than completely dry rock (took a while to understand this one as I came from a background of Lakes scrambling where damp could be the norm).  Being pulled up on these was a crucial part of this so would echo the need for people to stick their necks in.

Minor point - the Whitehouse logbook entry still recommends it as an 'evening' venue in the introduction - less relevant now of course - RIP.

It can be, but I think it's always worth it whatever the outcome. If anti-social behaviour goes unchallenged, then it just continues escalating to the point where it becomes criminal. I'd bet that the more aggressive responses come from people who've never had their behaviour challenged before

I agree. Fortunately I am a pretty confident and fairly big person who is not easily intimidated and actually quite likes challenging anti-social behaviour. Most people do not like to challenge others. When I pointed out the sandwich wrapper I was in a group who all said nothing and looked at me as if I was trying to start world war III! 

We need to protect out access to crags and countryside and we need to challenge those who are abusing it! The BMC can only do so much. It is up to the climbing community to police our own!

Quality work here Rob.

Although very popular and growing, the climbing community is still relatively small.  There should be a thread on here where you can post up a picture of a car with its reg number showing or even a persons picture and report bad behaviour.

If someone is big enough to tell a stranger face to face to eff off then lets see them have their mates/fellow climbers point out what a knob head they are and drop them like a stone.

A lot of this kind of thing happened when the boom in mtbs came about.  Its still a problem but I would suggest its not as bad as it was.  We have indoor walls, they have cycle tracks like glentress.  Its when they get out onto bridleways etc that bad behaviour and unwritten rules come in.  Sites like STW and bikemagic were excellent for raising awareness and downright public thrashings when the people were identified.

Having read this article the one thing I took away from it is 99% is common sense and common courtesy.  Its not rocket science so whoever is doing it is doing it through choice, not ignorance

Good article, thanks Rob.

I've found that the right body language and tone of voice - ie a general air of humility in pointing out an error can go a long way towards stopping a confrontational atmosphere from developed.

'Excuse me, I don't know if you know, but doing this can mean xyz, I just thought I'd mention it just in case...' 

Yes we should all respect the crags more, well said. Regarding the BMC sign by the road that must have taken time to produce... again!, with a little more care the correct spelling of Almscliff could have been used, minus the "e".  I think that as the crag diagram further up the field uses the correct spelling, a little continuity should have been considered. White paint now ordered.

Good point about Almscliff and the parallels which could be drawn there. Would be a really sad situation if any such destruction should ever happen there. 

I was born and brought up within sight of Almscliff(e) and have climbed there for 50 years and have always preferred the final 'e' but both spellings are used, The village hall, for example has a final 'e' as does the local tennis club etc

Spot on Rob. I now owe you a pint for putting things so very well.

It might have been suggested but could a poster campaign in local walls from the BMC help matters? It seems intuitive that people who haven't grown up in the countryside, and suddenly make the jump from city to country, would be less likely to understand the implications of their actions.  For instance posters in Leeds area walls could highlight issues at Almscliffe and Kilnsey in particular, as well as a more general set of rules. Might go some way to helping.

A sort of... "Thinking of going to Almscliffe? Well remember..." sort of deal. The more reinforcement the better I guess

I have to say I think the Whitehouses destruction arose simply because over the past few months too many people (myself included) were going too often, rather than a few people who may, or not, have been behaving inappropriately. 

Little bit of self examination. 

Maybe, I stress maybe, bouldering culture as often see is not very countrysidey. Boulders completely matted out and a mob of people. Generally young, a bit of attitude and noisy. Good fun but a real culture clash and very challenging for some people.

And

In the last 10 years bouldering has changed. Everywhere i go seems to be blathered in chalk and endlessly chipped, gobbed up with resin or holes dug in the ground or wire brushed.

I was at a local venue and a regular suddenly whipped out a chain saw and felled a tree!

It's like something has been lost.

It's not just a very few.

It's worth highlighting that the issues at Kilnsey are down to sport climbers, not boulderers*, and I don't think you could put as tight an age bracket on them as you might think - there's a good spread of ages from young through to old.

With regards to the arguments of youth misbehaving, I brought this up at a BMC Peak Area Meeting a while ago and was told by one of the access reps that the main infringements of the Ring Ouzel nesting restrictions weren't by younger and more inexperienced climbers - it was by the old guard. Their take on it was that "they'd been climbing on there for years" thus felt entitled to continue, even when they shouldn't have. As such, I don't completely buy that argument anymore: the young can be just as as bad as the old, the inexperienced just as bad as the experienced.

*I say this quite tentatively, as I'm aware that it's all too easy to pigeonhole groups of climbers into being distinct and separate groups, where many actually partake in a variety of categories; however, for the purposes of this argument you get where I'm coming from - I just thought I'd add a quick caveat in case anyone picks up on it!

I've seen no evidence in my 20 odd years of properly access informed climbing (mainly grit guidebook work following attendance at the BMC Peak area), in the Peak or Yorkshire, of young folk or folk moving outdoors for the first time, being the major serious problem. In all the worst behaviour I've challenged the climbers as far as I could tell looked like they should have known better.. fairly skilled, often older climbers, the worst being some Yorkshire group instructors. I guess I'm regarded as too old for bouldering, as I head towards 60... I wonder what my hero Big Ron thinks of this yoof idea.

Vybz might have a point though... a big increase of traffic, however polite, might have an effect on someone already wound up by some climbing morons. I don't wish to condone the damage with excuses..it would  just be good if articles like this would help climbers avoid triggering something like this in the future. Please read RAD when considering a venue on private land and follow access advice and if a place has access but this is sensitive, maybe don't publicise it in a way that increases traffic.

Whitehouses has always been (relatively) popular in periods of bad weather since its development, unless tens of people have been there each weekend recently I can't see that this has changed.

It's certainly been very popular on social media this winter and from the few times I visited, and from what my friends have said, you were hard-pressed to go there and not see another car (or three) at the weekend. Not to mention midweek visitors. 

I'm obviously speculating, but perhaps the farmer could tolerate seeing a car there every now and then, but if he was seemingly always seeing someone parked up maybe it was enough to make him decide to do something significant about it once and for all. 

Edit: Then again, you know the Yorkshire scene better than I do, so I might be talking nonsense 

Right on.

A little bit of loveliness goes a long way. There's a bit of my local crag that's practically in someone's back garden. Open access but fairly untravelled and overgrown apart from the occasional oddballs and freaks carrying half a mattress. I saw the bloke trimming his hedge one day and dropped into conversation. Turns out he was genuinely puzzled what was going on, didn't get bouldering, and worried his dogs would jump the fence and cause a mischief. We had a nice chat and he mentioned a couple of climbers he'd worked with. All good. #respecttherock #dontbeadick

I thought the problem at Kilnsey was the layby

Block it up!

You're well more on the scene than me these days, I'm just some old never was!

I've not been for some time because of the ongoing access muddiness, but sounds like it's got busier. Would be handy for future reference if whoever caused the damage owned up to it, and gave the truth behind their motivation so we can learn what the real issues were. At the moment we are still working off a lot of hearsay. 

Great to see some good discussion happening here and folk keen to do their bit to help keep access open. 

I'm putting together a series of Respect the Rock articles for the next BMC Handbook and each issue of Summit this year (all of which will end up on the website too) and am after photos to illustrate the problems were covering. So if anyone has any pics of the below problems that you are happy for us to publish, could you send them to me - robd@thebmc.co.uk - with an email title of 'respect the rock photos' and the name to credit the photo:

- Bad parking - especially vehicles blocking gates/the road/tracks/driveways/passing places etc
- Overuse of chalk / tick marks
- Climbing on wet holds
- Litter at the crag
- Chipped holds
- Climbing in dirty shoes
- Toilet paper in inappropriate places - ie in car parks/under the crag/on a path etc
- Any other bizarre and unacceptable behaviour like walking along dry stone walls

These can be new or old and we'll cover up people's faces/vehicle reg etc as this isn't meant to be a witch hunt, just a demonstration that these things are happening and need to be addressed before they cause major access problems. Thanks in advance for any help on this one!

Cheers,

Rob Dyer
BMC Access & Conservation Officer (England)

Good points. I made a suggestion on how to handle this kind of conversation here: https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/ukc/the_dorset_bolt_fund_-_fund_raising_r...

Unless they are actually walking on the Almscliff wall, it's usually best to start a conversation with some friendly small-talk before getting to the point. Intervening is usually more effective if you're not Mr Angry from the very start.

In reply to ian caton:

As a general observation, we should not underestimate how unfamiliar many people are with climbing. Talking with farmers in the west country it's quickly apparent that our completely normal behaviour - just climbing - is seem as alien, wrong, or threatening to others. This incomprehension may be a factor in some access issues. It's always good to stop and chat, if only to demonstrate that you don't have two heads.

You missed out; Outdoor groups blocking several routes with top ropes, abbing down fragile hard roures in dirty trainers, etc

"I'm putting together a series of Respect the Rock articles for the next BMC Handbook and each issue of Summit this year ...."

Might be worth adding to your list "don't tape off the main part of the most popular crag in a foreign country, and definitely don't leave it taped off over the weekend "because we're coming back on Monday" " as a UK military group did to my local venue a while back.

I like the idea that we should try to adhere to a social contract that respects the environment. I also think that given the increasing demand on outside recreational space we should consider the needs of others be they climber or not. To that end can we make it clear that broadcasting music is also antisocial and likely to negatively impact on the enjoyment of the locality by others as well as risking the ire of landowners?