So I managed to make it to Lower River Terrace flood recovery project meeting, and I’ll try to summarise here.

The council have acknowledged the concerns of the climbing community that the replacement lights are not satisfactory for night climbing. According to the council, the most common complaint is regarding the almost complete lack of light in the lowest five metres or so of the cliff face. Their official line is that they believe they can address the major concerns of the community by expanding the existing two rows of LED lighting with a third row of LED lighting directed at this lowest portion. This third row would be slightly different than the existing LEDs in that they would be slightly wider angle, thus apparently increasing the lighting levels further up the cliff as well as the currently unlit bottom section.

There were about six climbing group representatives (Urban Crag/myself included) that spoke up during the meeting, I’ll talk about the climbers mostly as a group here, because despite small differences in opinion, it felt like we had a general consensus. As a general rule, the climbing groups believe that even with a third row of LEDs, the lighting levels will not be sufficient to restore the usability of the cliffs at night, particularly for introducing people to the sport. Furthermore, the light provided by the LEDs is far more directional and thus causes greater blinding problems when on the cliff, and the lighting is not as robust against shadowing because most of the light at any one location is derived from a single source. The council representatives made no claim to address this issue, except to say, when prompted in this direction, that the longer term strategy for the park may potentially involve denser LED lighting to partially mitigate these issues.

The major request made by the climbing groups was for the council to consider restoring the high pressure sodium lamps. While not answering with an absolute, the council representatives did step around the question quite a number of times (it was raised consistently throughout the meeting), stating that there were a number of factors that contributed to the choice of LED lighting. These factors seemed to be primarily weather-resistance, energy efficiency, maintenance, and a bit of a blurry set of points that really seem to collapse into colour adaptability. Their weather-resistance argument was made against the old sodium lamp installation, and seemed moot, since they did not let us know how weather-resistant a new sodium lamp installation might be. The energy efficiency argument also seemed somewhat moot, since the LED light installation is providing only a fraction of the lighting intensity for the energy values calculated. On the maintenance front, LEDs are clearly superior to the old sodium installation, however as the climbing groups pointed out, losing a single sodium lamp was less significant than losing a single LED array, as light spillover from surrounding sodium lamps still maintained some lighting. Furthermore, it was unclear whether newer sodium lamp installations might reign in maintenance costs. In my opinion, these issues seemed to be of little importance to the council in comparison to the final point(s).

It was stated by the council representatives that it was the council’s belief that LED lighting would provide a “softer, more beautiful look” to the cliffs and that LED lighting would allow fast and cost-effective changes of colour for special events. This seems to be the crux of the problem – despite the points below, the council has placed a large value on the colour adaptability of the new system. As the climbing group representatives pointed out, the LED lights in their current form do not provide enough illumination to have the cliffs stand out at any distance, thus changing the colour would have very little effect. The ‘softer, more beautiful’ argument is highly subjective, but the council representatives didn’t try to defend the current appearance of the cliffs as standing up to this claim over the old appearance (this point seemed more like a defense of their initial decision, as something they had been told). Finally, with respect to lighting changes being fast and cost-effective, it was raised that the council had already agreed to change the lights only on specific occasions that had been previously discussed with the community. The ongoing costs of requiring physical changes to the lighting (as with the old sodium lamps) was not available.

It seems as though the council is fairly determined to go ahead with the pure LED lighting solution. They are going to demo their proposed fix of an extra row of lights (with a small subset of the KP lighting fixtures) to the climbing community representatives from the meeting at some point this week. I’ll send an update when this happens.

One final note: as Dave of the ACAQ pointed out, KP is a substantial and unique asset of Brisbane, nowhere else is there such an outdoor climbing arena in the middle of a city. It is a known factor in some people’s decisions to move here, particularly students studying abroad who have an interest in the sport. In this sense, the cliffs as a climbing facility have an economic value that the council have degraded with the new lighting, evidenced by the greatly decreased numbers of people using the cliffs of a weeknight when compared with pre-flood numbers. The unspoken implication was that the economic value of having the cliffs lit as before may realistically outweigh both the additional costs of such lighting and its value as merely a nice-looking backdrop to the city.

Cheers,
Chris.

I just contacted a few climbers to see what they wanted to say at Lower River Terrace flood recovery project meeting (Wednesday 29 February 2012 at 4pm), and 100% of them (5 people) said that the lights are an issue. Several said that they still use head lamps because you just can’t see the cliff even with the lights on. All of them suggested that the lights need to change in some way. All of them don’t like lights.

one said that they are not confident in climbing at KP anymore (at night) because the lighting made things more difficult than before.

one person said that they think there are problems with cyclists at KP, but I think that might have been a little off topic.

The other night, several climbers also said that the cliff was safer when it was dark. At least they could count on the lighting that they had personally.

One climber mentioned that the use of generators to create light was a distraction. It ruined the aesthetic appeal of the climbing (loud noise).

Some climbers asked why the pole lights were not put in place. The same climbers suggested that there was a rumor going around that more lights (of the same type, ie. led) were going to be installed inbetween the light boxes that are currently there. (I don’t think that this idea was thought through if it was indeed an idea and not a rumor).

I hope that adds a little fuel to the mix
Hope that helps Chris

Nathaniel

Hoping to get up there soon for a climb but need more practice at Mt Tinbeerwah as I’m only a 16 noob at the mo! In the meantime I’ll have to be content with trying to get under 20 mins to the top! – No way 8 is going to happen

Thanks again for a great resource!

Kiki

To summit in 8 minutes is fast indeed!

For rock climbing at Mt Coolum, check out the
Coolum rock climbing guide for all information regarding access, routes and topos.

–Dennis

23 minutes is pretty good. We have started the Mount Coolum Wall of Fame on Facebook if you’d like to join us and add your time and pics there!

Check out our local bloggers attempt to outdo his mate at 8 mins

Also looking for more info on how to get to the entrance to the Climbing section for our rockclimbing page. If you can help us out, please email me info@visitcoolum.com.au

Cheers

http://www.visitcoolum.com.au