The Fiend of Indian Creek meets The Friends of Indian Creek

'Setting a good example' isn't as much fun to type as 'fuck the dirtbags/trustfunders/yippies/everyone who isn't just like me' but it remains the single best solution here. To wit:

Pay up. Clean up a little more than you think you should have to. Don't excuse yourself from actions you'd want others to take. Be nice when you ask if people have kicked down to the donation box, or when suggesting that firewood should come from elsewhere.

I don't climb there anymore, I moved far away, but here's what I see: we need to change the culture a bit. Changing what is 'normal' requires a lot more example-setting than ranting. Some folks need to be educated, and others just need to walk their talk a little more. None of us can do much more than do the right thing ourselves, and create the expectation that others will naturally want to follow suit.

Seems like the longer somebody spends at a place, the more they end up recognizing the inevitable changes and wanting to help keep the place nice. If Creek visitation is indeed way up, then sooner or later most of these people-if they stick around- will feel the need to keep things the way they should be. Here's hoping for 'sooner'.

jammer wrote: Sorry, but I hate the ignorant. The world is black and white, right. Yea, viva pitching in and doing your part to help out, such as cleaning things up to help give climbers a good name. Or if, like the situation is here, we have shown ourselves that we as a user group are not responsible enough to not trash the place, then we will have to wait for "the man" to come wipe our butts for us again, almost literally. It's not just the dirtbags that are ruining the place, it's everyone. We need to be better stewards. I personally like the idea of paid camping/fees only because this would give the people who are taking care of the place a revenue to do so, that way it will be worth their time and actually get done. This isn't "the man" trying to stick it to us. This is us showing that we are too short sighted to take care of our own crag, and that is sad. If you don't like regulations and laws, live your life in such a way that they are not needed. As for the dirtbags, why don't you guys just shut everyone up by actually pitching in? That way when people start bitching about dirt bags you can point to all the good things you do and set a good example and make them eat their words. Instead of priding yourself in vengefully sucking off the system that cares not for you, why don't you guys include yourself in the system and try and change it from within? You drove in on that road that was created using tax revenue, you camp in the site that you certainly didn't create yourself (and if you don't, you created selfish unnecessary impact by trampling another piece of sensitive desert, so I guess I'm saying those established campsites are good from a environmentally concious hippie dirtbag perspective), and you walk up approach trails that were not built in the wink of an eye by the hand of an omnipotent god. Roads, campsites, and trails are all created to focus and therefore at least manage impact. Why can't a plan be something to the effect that you pitch in financially or you pitch in with your own two hands? Seems like that might be an idea to consider as well. As for myself, if I go to IC I save my money and drive down there. I use the roads, the campsites, and the shitter and I don't pay a dime for any of it. I pack out my trash and generally clean up after myself, but I need to do more to pitch in, so next time I am down there I will have to bring a suitable donation to one of those sites. Also, the VAST majority of people I meet are not bad people. They are just trying to get through life and have a smile on their faces. This goes for dirtbags and capitalists alike.

wow! someone has a lot of free time. You must be a full time "rock" climber?

or a college student.

havent been to the creek in years.i moved away when people started camping at what is now called the super bowl area. i never understood it. there were blm campsites with vault shitters just down the road outside the maze. it is not as pretty when you wake up, but there was something to be said for not having to deal directly with your own shit first thing in the morning. its why i dont mind paying taxes.
indian creek is a good thing, thats why the "dirtbags" moved in down there. thats why everyone followed them. everything good becomes a scene. then it becomes the brutish hoard. all this hub bub reminds me of the lou reed song about how some people will "throw car batteries in a lake and shit in a stream then complain they cant go swimming". change is the only constant. as a user group we have had our shot at self regulation, it is failing. just like mountain bikers at slickrock. or climbers at the oak creek camp ground in vegas.
look at indian creek like you would a free market economy with no regulation. it devolves into chaos and havoc and ultimately hurts the group it is supposed to be helping. the problem is not government regulation. it is not not being involved to shape that regulation. our resistance to what is for the greater good is directly proportional to our self interest.

"sorry dude, but didn't you get the memo? the last election was a referendum on supporting all the free-loading fucks that make bad choices. being successful or being a good steward is no longer respected or rewarded."

yeah, and the free loading fucks won. the banksters still get huge bonuses at their financial institutions, paid for by taxes on my ever dwindleing wages. meanwhile, they get tax breaks. thanks to their stewardship, our jobs were sent overseas, our food is poisonous, our air is killing our children, we drink bottled water, and you cant eat the fish you catch in our fresh water because all the mercury they put in it. yet we call the free loading fucks who have done this to our commons successful.
oh, and by the way. i bet the people who put up a majority of the routes we climb probably fit into the dirtbag category. so before we go off half cocked about who gives back and who does not....

roundhead wrote:havent been to the creek in years.i moved away when people started camping at what is now called the super bowl area.

Oh, so you apparently stopped climbing in Indian Creek in the 70's...

Well, I'll tell ya, I have spent a lot of time in the Creek over the past bunch of years. The longest stint was about two months. I am not exactly sure what the official definition of a dirtbag is. I for one have a job and donate money and time to IC. I speak from my experience when I say the people I have "dirtbagged" with in the creek are some of the most conscious of their footprint. I can't begin to state how many new fire pits and campsites I have reclaimed or how much trash I have hauled out of the place after all the weekenders leave (mostly in the Superbowl). It seems like a lot of haters out there and I think your hate is quite misdirected. Folks who spend a lot of time down there are suspicious of people like 305tom (ie lending the ax) because that is who we end up cleaning up after (and don't take it personal tom - I don't know you or the situation... is simply an example). I remember going down to the Superbowl after Thanksgiving in 07 and the place was completely trashed - who do you think cleaned up after all the folks down for the holiday (and I am not taking credit - I did very little that time around). Sure, there are going to be some bad apples in every bushel and we all leave some sort of impaction behind. Before you go pointing fingers and calling names take a look in the mirror and clean up your own back yard. There is a reason someone like Alf (and ya, he is a bit of an ass) doesn't like people from Colorado. Generally speaking the "dirtbags" are some of the best stewards of the land down there. I am looking forward to when I can spend more chunks of time down there, I will continue to clean up after others, kick down cash and haul my shit out of there.

FYI, just spent a week at the Creek and there's no wag bags to be had, at least at the 4 sites I checked out. Including the most popular winter camping spots (SB, CP). Make the daily pilgrammage to the little concrete house. I actually can't remember the last time I found wag bags in stock in the tubes. At least 0 for last 10 over the past 4 years.

And WTF is wrong with you guys that want another part of our public lands to become fee only? You do realize that many of those programs don't even pay for themselves? Unless you make it a private concession...

no beagle, actually it was in 1999. people were camping there, but it was not the scene it has become, and thats the point. so far all i hear are the same arguments given for keeping slickrock deregulated. i dont know, maybe you lived in moab in 1991 when i moved there. if i had my choice between slickrock now, and what it was before mountainbiking there became such a scene, i would take then. and i am just talking about the enviromental commons. i have no judgment for the scene, just what the large user group did to an area without some sort of regulation. all this talk about how such and such user group has such high enviromental values, i think i perfered the ranchers. once the chain drags stopped all the cows did was spread giardia.

i plan on returning to the creek this year to climb, so we will see what it has become. i can only go on hearsay. i do not feel that climbing in the creek should be fee dependent, but camping is not climbing. five people camped out somewhere for a month is no big deal. hell, a year is not bad if they keep it clean. forty people camped in the middle of a sensitive enviroment is another thing. what do you do with your shit/garbage?a place to park?if you have horses, where do you pen them? who pays for the improvements? i do agree with timmamok that there does seem to be a lot of haters out there pointing the finger of blame. seems to me either the community involved comes up with a solution or one will be provided for you, thats all i am saying
"freedom without responsibility is license not liberty"
ben franklin

the superbowl was a clusterfuck in the early 90's.

What a hateful thread on Indian Creek. Maybe it's going out of vogue to climb there. Come to think of it, the mags haven't been giving it the press they once did. Fine with me.

Regulation rarely stops the problem, it just creates new ones. Maybe you'll decrease the buried feces out there but you'll create more trash and probably an increased environmental impact overall. In fact if you create an official campground you'll probably see increased traffic from the non-climbing community (offroaders, RVers, etc). It is arguable that they may even be worse stewards than climbers. One jeep can destroy enough crptobiotic soild to equal a 1000 climbers in a day.

While I am sort of domesticated now I can say that back in my DB years there is no way I would pay a fee. I agree with the above comments about trying to regulate camping in an area of this size.

I would rather it be a free shithole than just another pay-for-use campground with asses for camphost like what is found in Red Rocks and other places.

Will Butler wrote:That's a ridiculous statement. Of course I don't want people leaving wag bags strone across the desert. Pack it out, like everything else. Its our personal responsibly as stewards of land to leave it in the same manner in which we found. And by dirtbag I mean a person who has chosen to live his or her life chasing seasons and amazing climbs. This is typically one of the most responsible users groups out there. Trash, I would argue, is far more likely to be left by the visiting weekend warrior.

What a minute...so are you saying that I should pitch in a little extra cash so that some dirtbag can "keep living the dream"? Screw that. I work hard and I am more than willing to pitch in cash at donation stations/help maintain trails etc. However, asking those of us who work and then try to find spare time to climb to carry dirtbags is BS. That is called being a freeloading leach.

Brian Scoggins wrote: I made right around $10,000 last year. If I want to go anywhere interesting, it has to be on the super cheap. So please understand where I'm coming from when I say the following: FUCK THE DIRTBAGS. If letting a few leaches (who don't contribute a damned thing to society) continue to leech means we end up ruining an irreplaceable resource, then I say they have no right to that resource, and no reason to expect my sympathy. I spent a week in the Colorado plateau last year. When it snowed in the Creek, we bailed back to Moab and paid for camp sites at Big Bend for 4 nights. We could've stayed for 10 more. We did this because we scrimped and saved and didn't blow our money on weed back home. If you can afford to drive all the way out to Indian Creek, you can damn sure save up a little bit to cover camping. I am sick and tired of hearing all of this "but what about us poor dirtbags?" horseshit. Just because you've "nobly" devoted your life to climbing doesn't mean that you can take as much as you can from an area and not give an ounce back. The era of karma-neutral dirtbagging is over. It has been for decades. If you think you can live like that, you'd better be giving something back. Otherwise, you're just a fuckin' freeloader, and I'll be damned if your refusal to give back is going to cost me what I work my ass off to do. I'd wager that dirtbags make up less than 1% of the annual users of Indian Creek. And shit, $3/person/night is $90 a month. That's 13 hours a month at minimum wage. 13. God damn! Shit, you could stop smoking weed and have that much at the end of the month.

amen.

J. Albers wrote: What a minute...so are you saying that I should pitch in a little extra cash so that some dirtbag can "keep living the dream"? Screw that. I work hard and I am more than willing to pitch in cash at donation stations/help maintain trails etc. However, asking those of us who work and then try to find spare time to climb to carry dirtbags is BS. That is called being a freeloading leach.

Way to read between the lines to decipher the true meaning behind my words. That's exactly what I should have wrote.

start charging for out of state plates, double for CO plates since most of them are trusties anyways

When I went last May there wasn't a wag bag to be found. We all just got on the schedule of waiting to use the pit toilet in the morning/evening. I felt pretty good about not contributing to the wag bag fund at that time.

mobley wrote:start charging for out of state plates, double for CO plates since most of them are trusties anyways

Next time you could simply say "I don't really know what I am talking about and my opinion is totality irrelevant".

Dude your from Connecticut.

edit: I apologize for perpetuating the dumbest thread on the site right now.

Timmamok wrote: Next time you could simply say "I don't really know what I am talking about and my opinion is totality irrelevant". Dude your from Connecticut. edit: I apologize for perpetuating the dumbest thread on the site right now.

I guess living there for close to 20 years doesnt count huh?
I've seen IC change, I'd have to blame the guidebooks more than the CO folks though. Before the first book came out you didnt see too many CO plates there.

speaking of books, I find it odd that MP is allowing Millcreek to get added to the database, especially after blocking the Lost City in NY. That will be the next CO license plate parking lot near Moab.

I guess living there for close to 20 years doesnt count huh?

No, it doesn't count.

The Dirtbags that decided to live there for months on end are what has fucked it all up.
Example: David ("DR" what a load of crap) Bloom was one of those Dirtbags and look what his worthless, inacurate book did.