Dunc said:
It has to be said that taping in whatever form is generally ugly and tends to detract from the overall beauty of what it is trying to protect.. Add to the fact that over time the tape gets knocked, moved, covered in mud, buried and generally trashed and it ends up looking even worse and not doing the intended job in some cases.
In some caves where caver-traffic may be high I think better methods of taping or more frequent replacement of tape are needed. I've not seen the taping methods in Sidetrack but it sounds better than the usual method of tape just layed across the floor with maybe a rock or two to hold it in place..
Well, certainly some examples I've seen have tended to be the red/white road tape laid directly onto the floor (e.g. JH workshop) which does look a mess and a bit temporary.. But the trouble is, some of these things
are in need of something more obvious to protect them. In the darkness, perhaps when a less conservation-aware caver may be tired or in a hurry, it could be all too easy for a careless footstep, albeit intentional, to destroy an irreplaceable artefact or formation and perhaps not even notice.
The taping (more 'cording') in Sidetrack is really well thought out and installed thoughtfully by myself and Johnny. It is not a wholesale 'tape everything' approach, however it is also a little prominent, being orange. It actually looks quite neat, and as I pointed out to the DCA conservation panel at the time, will actually make a point to future visitors that, in certain areas, there is in fact something worth seeing / saving here. Not just a random pile of pebbles- so they may be spurred into wondering "why" and "what is it?"- and (hopefully) learn something and become more conservation aware.
Dunc said:
In an ideal world we wouldn't have any taping at all, but we don't live in an ideal world so as far as I'm concerned I'm more than happy to see taping in caves if it helps to protect the formations. I would much rather see tape stretched out along a passage with nice formations rather than have no tape and
no formations!
Agreed, however the fact that it is blatantly obvious that, unfortunately, there seem to be two options- either conserve or destroy, simplistically, then we have a responsibility to ourselves and future generations to take the best approach. Dave Webb made a very good point at the BCRA conference last year, that we as cavers are in a unique and beneficial position of ultimately being entirely responsible for the environment in which we carry out our activities. Therefore we have to take that responsibility seriously and to the greater good, and if that means a few tapes ehre and there, then I'm all for that.
Incidentally, I went back to Sidetrack at the end of last year to inspect the cords- all of them were intact, clean and from what I could tell, were doing their job pretty well.