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Looks like the Aboriginal tribes will have their wishes respected:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/ju ... g-ban-plan

If you want to hike the peak and haven't, looks like you have eighteen months to do it.

This is no new news. They have been trying to close the climb for the past 10yrs or so.

Even now i wouldn't bother travelling far to climb it. 4/5 times the climb is closed (especially during summer) due to heat/cold/high winds and whatever they can come up with to deter people from climbing it.

A few mates and I were there earlier this year and had to climb it illegally. Be prepared to cop a $5500 fine though. We climbed it before sunrise but walking down a big rock in the middle of nowhere with hundreds of overseas tourists walking around the base meant that we could not get away without being caught. I had a local (Northern Territory) license so was able to talk my way out of it with simply a 72hr ban from the National Park. Was all worth it though!! (got a couple of good pics on my profile)

Like a lot of people, I suppose, I have mixed feelings about this kind of thing.

On the one hand, I am not in any way religious, but on the other hand, I respect people's feelings enough not to trash cathedrals if you know what I mean.

I'd like to climb Uluru, I've climbed Wollumbin (Mt Warning, NSW) but I'd find it very difficult to proceed if an aborigine looked me in the eye and asked me not to. (Wollumbin now has a sign, I'm told. asking people to respect the aboriginal cultural significance of the mountain and not to climb).

I think they've lost enough and maybe a bit of respect for the threads they have left is in order.

dadndave wrote:On the one hand, I am not in any way religious, but on the other hand, I respect people's feelings enough not to trash cathedrals if you know what I mean...
I think they've lost enough and maybe a bit of respect for the threads they have left is in order.

Well put. I did hike it in the early 90s. The pros/cons of climbing it are similar to Devil's Tower in Wyoming. In both cases some native people care if you do others don't. It's a tough choice. Cheers!

Do they also want to ban climbing in the Olgas? (about 200 meters higher)
I hope they dont try to ban bottled water

You gotta get with the times, Cy. Hopefully the insane bottled water craze is heading into the trash can of history, and not a moment too soon if yarsk me.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25754710-5019059,00.html

D&D - The bottled water craze has got out of hand here in California. They charge between one and two dollars a gallon
I also think it should be discouraged.

Cy Kaicener wrote:Do they also want to ban climbing in the Olgas? (about 200 meters higher)
I hope they dont try to ban bottled water

The Olgas are already off-limits, and always have been as far as I know.. They look very tempting though ....

I feel the same as dadndave, I'm not religious at all, but to some people it means much so I didn't climb it when I was there. There is an important difference with cathedrals though: these have been built purposefully by people.. You'd be climbing on somebody's creation. Uluru is simply there and nobody can claim that it's theirs in the same sense as they can claim a cathedral. I guess this is why you see people climbing Uluru, but not cathedrals / temples / etc.. ?

Btw, I think the Uluru page should have a section on this topic.

(I think it should have more sections anyway. Have suggested this to the owner, he didn't care, people still vote tons of tens simply because the rock is famous... This was the final push for me to stop caring about the voting system at all .. I don't vote anymore)

dadndave wrote:I'd like to climb Uluru, I've climbed Wollumbin (Mt Warning, NSW) but I'd find it very difficult to proceed if an aborigine looked me in the eye and asked me not to.

As a bloke who was born in Alice Springs (nearest township to Uluru) and lived there for the first 19 years of my life, this will most likely not happen. In fact you'll find it very hard pressed to come across any aboriginals near Uluru at all. The Mutitjulu People (local tribe) are supposedly joint managers of the National Park but its really run by the white people. Sorry to be blunt but its really a money making business now days.

By the way I have also climbed Mt Warning and it was excellent - highly recomended........

dadndave wrote:Like a lot of people, I suppose, I have mixed feelings about this kind of thing.

On the one hand, I am not in any way religious, but on the other hand, I respect people's feelings enough not to trash cathedrals if you know what I mean.

I'd like to climb Uluru, I've climbed Wollumbin (Mt Warning, NSW) but I'd find it very difficult to proceed if an aborigine looked me in the eye and asked me not to. (Wollumbin now has a sign, I'm told. asking people to respect the aboriginal cultural significance of the mountain and not to climb).

I think they've lost enough and maybe a bit of respect for the threads they have left is in order.

Well said. Respect it and leave it alone. If one can do that with some Himalayan peaks........

Latest on this subject ...

Ban on ... Climbing Uluru Ruled Out

--mark d.

I'm not sure of the indigenous / native situation with Devil's Tower, but in the case of Uluru it all depends who you listen to. There's a lot of white people telling other white people that it is sacred to the indigenous Australians and nobody should climb it. There's some indigenous Australians agreeing with them. There's other indigenous Australians saying it's not a big deal - Uluru is no more sacred than other bits of the area and even if it is, climbing it is not necessarily showing disrespect. They know they have far more serious things to worry about.

As ever, there are vested interests on both sides, and particularly the financial draw of tourists wanting to climb it, which is mostly white business. I also think, as is the case with some off-limits Himalayan peaks, that it is not so much an issue of climbing offending some particular aspect of the locals' spirituality, but that it is a way for local native people to get a little back at outsiders, and gain a little control and respect by saying 'no' to something, standing up for themselves. Given the history of indigenous Australians, native Americans, Tibetans, Naxi (Yunnan) and similar peoples, I can't really blame them. I'd probably do the same thing.

There is also a strain of thought that making such a feature off-limits to climbing for spiritual reasons actually increases its attractiveness to white tourists, entranced by the aura of either impregnability or taboo - even more so if the peak is unclimbed, like KawaKarpo in Yunnan or Kailas in Tibet. With those peaks it seems to be working - their virginity is all part of the attraction. Unfortunately Uluru is long past that.

I climbed Mt Warning when I was 13 and Uluru when I was 14. In those years (1983 & 1984) there was no real issue (at least publicly) with climbing either feature. In fact Uluru was still officially 'Ayres Rock' when I climbed it but it was changed shortly after. Also, in 2002, I approached an unclimbed 6000m peak in the range south of KawaKarpo but acquiesced to the villagers requests not to climb it - as they would get in trouble with the monks nearby. The locals themselves could not have cared less.

D

Thanks for that informative post! Actually, many cities are now banning bottled water, do you think it is a good thing or not? Apparently, the area of Concord, Mass., approved a bottled water ban this past year, which banned sale of single-servings of bottled water. It's the first city in the United States to do so, though not the first ban on bottled water per so, as the town wants to reduce Dasani bottles in landfills.