Toilet Project Updates

The YAI finally got its crag sanitation projects kicked-off, mostly using funds left over from last year's climbing festival. We have begun building permanent toilet facilities at the most popular crags and construction is now underway at White Mountain and the Egg. Structures should be done in time for this year's festival, Nov 13th-15th, and I am looking for people to help paint murals on the outside so they blend in with the environment.

These are some of the first projects we have done with local villagers and in addition to cleaning up the area around the crags, it has open a dialogue between villagers and climbers I hope we can build on. Just meeting with them we are able to discuss the possibilities of them opening up small food stands and even offering meals and accommodations in the villages. We will have to keep working in this direction if we want continued free access. Our next step will be to negotiate a contract with villagers to maintain and clean the toilets as well as cut back the brush along the path up to as well as at the base of the crags. You can join the YAI to help these efforts.

On another note, the weather has been great for climbing; unfortunately, I have been too busy with furnishing my apartment in Yangshuo, preparation for the climbing festival, getting the YAI up and running and handling these toilet projects to get much time in on the rocks.

The weather is cool in the early mornings and the sun warms thing nicely so conditions are perfect at White Mountain. Bring some warm clothes if you come down to climb for the rest of the year.

Where's the Money?

Intrigue comes to Yangshuo. Ex-Climber's brother has bought the lease to the land at the base of Wine Bottle and maybe also part of White Mountain. He plans to put up some tourist type climbs and a rope traverse to the forest floor below and sell it to non-climber tourists. QQ has done the same thing with Golden Cat Cave. Even more worrying is farmers around White Mountain have been asking climbers for money and recently used ladders to chop bolts from routes. Police were called in recently when violence was threatened but the police simply told the climbers to leave.

I guess you could have to call this move 'enterprising' and I hope they can make enough money to buy a house and a Mercedes Benz. This being China, the land of desperate entrepreneurs, it had to happen sooner or later. It's the next act in an ongoing saga of trying to make money off climbing.

The size of the 'guided climbing' pie is not big enough to feed all the local climbing shops and any effort to increase the size of the pie should benefit everyone. On the other hand, if the pie does not increase measurably and this just serves to re-allocate the existing pieces, then we could be in for a full-scale guiding war. If the farmers are thinking 'Gravy Train', no one is going to eat very much.

And this just after it looked like the Yangshuo Climbing Association was getting its act together as a representative body for the interests of all climbers (or was it just in the interest of a few climbing shops?).

The logical next step is to turn climbing into a cash cow to pay for the house, car, vacations abroad, the whole Peiking Duck! With a little ingenuity, maybe some underhanded dealing and a lot of pluck, they could control all climbing access.

Dirt-bags vs Deng Xiaoping and getting rich is 'glorious'. More in a few days once I'm in Yangshuo and can better judge just where this all might be going.