To climb or not to climb

The question of the morning. It is quite clear from the aboriginal custodians that they would prefer you not to climb Uluru. There is signage at the bottom of the climb, in many languages, asking you to respect their traditional laws and to not climb. All of the official documentation of the park also asks you not to climb, and the climb is not marked on the map.

The reality is somewhat more obscure. The reasons, as much as they are spelt out, is that traditional laws deny them the opportunity to climb, and that they feel responsible for my safety, pointing out that 35 people have died climbing the rock. They also ask what possible reason could there be for climbing the rock? They also point out, that in sharing they require to be able to enjoy the land as they always have, and that our visitors will appreciate the park in their own ways. They express dismay that many visitors come to climb and watch the sunset, and that the rock is so much more than that.

So that is the ground rules all laid out. We should all enjoy the park in our own ways, but our laws prevent us and we ask you to respect our laws. I get all of that, loud and clear. For me it came down to this. There is a question about why you would want to climb and the answer to that is not simple, as it could equally be asked of any mountain. There is any number of mountains we climb, and an even greater number we don’t. The selection is based on some level of desirability, the parameters of this are complicated. Then there is the safety aspect. 35 people have died, sure. I’d suspect 100000 people climb a year currently, and have been climbing (albeit not at that rate) since the 1940s. I’d wager more people have died on the roads getting there in that time. In practice, we all take risks every day. In my case, it was a good climbing day, light winds, clear skies, coolish temperatures. We are fit enough, and not without experience.

The decision for all of us came down the same way as for Kings Canyon. The boys went up, the girls went around the base. I suspect we all had different reasons. We had plenty of company up there. There was a range of ages, from probably about 4, to well into 60s. There were some big people up there as well, although thankfully the largest I met on the chain going up, panting like a steam train, thought better of it and beat me down again.

The view was clear from the top. Mountains 200km away were visible, including Mt Woodroffe, the tallest mountain in South Australia. The way down was no quicker than the way up, and we took around 3.5 hours.

That gave us time to drive around the ring road, and do the walk into one of the waterholes and to look at some of the local zebra finches. At the end of the day it was off to the visitor centre, but after the exercise of the morning, we eventually all collapsed into the theatrette. With sunset approaching, I had to wrangle them all back into the car to join the waiting throng at the designated sunset viewing area for the obligatory colour change photos.

I chose to wait for most of the traffic to depart. It somehow didn’t feel right to end the almost perfect day in bumper-to-bumper traffic in the wilds of central Australia.