A Christmas tale from another era.... Published in The Observer Saturday December 11, 1926 "Look, Liechardt! Look!" cried big George Conwell, "there is something like a mountain floating in that distant mirage. Buck up, man, keep your legs for a few miles; there's water there! Cheer up! Hang on for a few more hours, and we are through." But the explorer was down, in the terrible test of endurance which left in its wake dying horses, perishing goats, dead cattle, and the dray which had long been abandoned in the great spinifex desert. As the horses dropped from sheer exhaustion and thirst, so did the men one by one. The blackmen looked on in wonder, too mystified to understand who were these white-skinned strangers who rode on four-legged monsters and penetrated into their territory, utterly ignorant of its terrible void and scarcity of water. True, the blacks had not attacked the party, and the whites had not shot a savage. The blackmen knew the desert...
Our mountains belong to all of us. The Right to Climb them and bask in their views that inspire awe and wonder is as old as the human genome. This long-established cultural tradition is under threat by a small group of bureaucrats determined to impose their way on the rest of the world. It is right to Climb because we have the Right to climb. If you don’t exercise your rights you lose them. Don't let petty nanny state bureaucrats take them away.