Reasons for not climbing Uluru

If I am recalling correctly, on my visit a few years back, there were actually organized tours going up on the rock, and ropes and things set up to climb -- situated right by signs mentioning that the traditional owners preferred you not to climb. (I opted not to climb, by the way.)

There are no such tours for St. Peter's Basilica, and many tend to treat a natural feature differently from a man-made construction.

Me, I don't feel the need to climb every object in sight, so if I know it will disturb someone if I do, I am glad to refrain. There are plenty of other things to climb.

IMO, Uluru is best appreciated from the ground anyway.

Samsonet said:

Why do people do this, despite all the warnings? Is it because they don't realize how bad it can be? Is it a part of some Tough Hiker act? What?

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Anyone who plans to summit Everest knows there are bodies that have been there for years. Some of them serve as landmarks.

There's a certain type of mindset of the people who climb dangerous places. I don't know what it is, but for some of them, the more warnings, the more they want to do it.

George Mallory summed it up best in "Because it's there", which clearly demonstrates that you can't reason with such people.

draosz said:

George Mallory summed it up best in "Because it's there", which clearly demonstrates that you can't reason with such people.

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Such a reason doesn't really make sense when it is surrounded on all sides by thousands of kilometres of desert. You don't just find yourself there and say "oh well may as well climb it". You've gotta try pretty hard to get there.

AW Admin said:

I do want to see it, but from a distance against the horizon, with the mountains in the background.

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At dawn.

It's bizarre to me.

It's their sacred ground! I wouldn't go climbing the Taj Mahal or the Cathedral of Notre Dame just because they're there, even if I loved parkour. I'm an atheist, but I also like to think that I'm not...a...tool.

I think anyone who tries to climb Uluru should get kicked in the fucking shins.

Zoombie said:

It's bizarre to me.

It's their sacred ground! I wouldn't go climbing the Taj Mahal or the Cathedral of Notre Dame just because they're there, even if I loved parkour. I'm an atheist, but I also like to think that I'm not...a...tool.

I think anyone who tries to climb Uluru should get kicked in the fucking shins.

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Post Of The Day for me. They are absolute dickheads who climb. Really.

draosz said:

George Mallory summed it up best in "Because it's there", which clearly demonstrates that you can't reason with such people.

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George Mallory is still there. They found him a few years ago.

caw

Daintree gets the worst arses.

Helix said:

Anecdote alert: I've been to Central Australia quite a few times, mostly on field work. On a day off, I went for a walk at Kata Tjuta (the Olgas). As I was heading in, an overseas tourist who was heading out warned me, 'It's just another bunch of rocks'. So that's how some people view things.

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We in the U.S. have had a couple of incidents recently (one just this week) of people knocking over rock formations in national parks, just because . . . they could. And another of drunken vandals despoiling a pool in Death Valley which contains the only habitat of an extremely rare fish. I'm beginning to think Kim Jong-Un's concept of re-education camps might be a good idea.

caw

In 2004 hunters shot three endangered whooping cranes at Quivira, a wildlife preserve in my county. The hunters got off more easily than you would think, because they claimed they were hunting snow geese and were confused. (By drink --rumor has it.) They should not have had guns in a nature preserve at all. Out here we have a strong "small government" movement. Even my late father used to rail and rant that the government forbid hunting at the local salt marsh preserves--places where he often hunted ducks until the government "took over" by setting acreage apart as a refuge. I think this anti-sign attitude is universal. It seems to go far beyond salt marshes and monuments. Signs seem to bring out the worst in some people.

Try as we might, we could never convince my father that Cheyenne Bottoms and Quivira were better places because everyone could enjoy them, not just hunters. It was so ironic because my father was always so careful about camping. We could never leave a campsite messy or littered. He thought people should be naturally inclined to preserve the outdoors without all the signs, regulations and game wardens. I think all thinking adults can agree that the signs and regulations are necessary because so many irresponsible people consider themselves clear thinking and responsible if invulnerable. --s6

PS-- side trip: one of my first confessional experiences was explaining to the priest how I lied to a game warden by telling him that my friends and I --all 8-10 years old-- had found this neat net thing in some bushes and wanted to play with it. Actually it was a seine, my father's, and we had been instructed by our dads to seine the river for bait and coached with the phony story in case a man in a brown uniform stopped us. Dad lost the seine on that one, and this might just be memory playing tricks on me, but I think the priest laughed.

Last month I went for a walk up Knocknarea in Ireland(http://www.megalithicireland.com/Knocknarea.htm ). At the top is a neolithic passage grave known locally as Queen Maeve's Cairn. It's not a religious site (at least not to anyone living) but it is a monument of great archaeological significance and there are signs on all sides of it telling people not to climb. This includes handy diagrams so lack of English skills are not an excuse. Of course, on that lovely summer's evening tourists were crawling all over the cairn and picking up stones on their way.

And then there's Justin Beiber's utter disregard for the fragile ecosystem of Iceland: https://grapevine.is/news/2016/09/19/justin-bieber-in-hot-water-again-over-new-music-video/