Missing crashpads at Panther Peak

this thread rules. started a little slow, was gonna watch Jerry Springer (ahhh, a medieval torture device on my leg and oxycodone...), but then it picked up around page 2 or 3. we need a few more ALL CAPS and !!!!!! in replies, though.
hope you guys get your pads back, regardless.
i think Stitch needs to amend his original post: "Ever hear of Chaos Canyon in Rocky Mountain NP?"

"Ever hear of a little place called Vietnam, Larry?"

"Ever hear of a little place called Vietnam, Larry?"

I'm assuming that's a Big Lebowski reference. I still haven't seen that damned movie! Argh.

Hey Kelly, how's the leg? I may have handled the same type of fracture repair kit they probably used on you.

This befalleth when thou firk’st a stranger ‘twixt the buttocks, Laurence! Understand’st thou? Dost thou attend me? Seest thou what happens, Laurence? Seest thou what happens, Laurence? Seest thou what happens, Laurence, when thou firk’st a stranger ‘twixt the buttocks?!

runleiarun.com/lebowski/

Peter Beal wrote:Not all multiple pad clusters are for highballs. . . . Many times the problems are so low and steep that a TR or even a spot is useless. This is not a justification for stashing gear but an explanation as to why many problems really do require multiple pads to be safe.

That is true in a few places I climb as well. Idk if PP is like that or not. But the anti-TR thing is religion, now, and I see folks in sensitive access areas building out landing pads under problems that could be tr'd with no visible impact.

Funny-- the 1st place I ever saw anyone use a pad bouldering was in Tucson in the 80s. Gault used to bring ensolite sleeping pads out to Murray Traverse.

This particular incident seems like a very local event that probably would've been better off kept a local event.

A lot of locals and others continue to weigh in on this issue that the environmental impact of temporarily stashing gear or pads is deminimus or negligible. Provided the animals do not get into your pads and chew them to shreads, this is true. This argument however misses the bigger issue, which I tried to illustrate in my earlier posts. Let me try again ... The Panther Peak Boulders are IN Saguaro National Park - West. In addition, at a minimum, these boulders are located on the boundary of - if not IN - a federally designated and protected Wilderness Area.

The bigger and only issue here is the impact pad stashing would have on the opinions of land managers for Saguaro National Park and the Wilderness Area located within that national park. I also noted that developing a bouldering area off-trail will eventually be brought to the attention of land managers, so I encouraged them to bring this area to the attention of land managers now. If this area is worthy and becomes popular, it is possible that an officially designated trail to the boulders might even be considered. I think I read somewhere that a trail to Panther Peak was proposed. That is all.

Having never been to Panther Peak, or even climbed in Arizona for that matter, I can't really speak to the local ethics of the area. I do however think that stashing pads in a designated wilderness area is always poor form.
I started the thread about stashed pads in Chaos Canyon because I was worried about the impact chewed and snowbound pads would have on future access to such an amazing area. I couldn't really care less what people do with their own belongings if it does not negatively impact access. You want to leave something you paid for out in an unsecured area, go for it. But when your decision to do so puts mine and every other climbers access in doubt, it just seems selfish and short-sighted.
Again, I have never been to this area, but you guys as developers are setting the example for what is acceptable. Most people are followers, if they see stashed gear they may think it is ok to do.
Just my two cents.

I hope you get your pads back.

Larry DeAngelo wrote: Boulderers can be seen as rowdy, rebellious types, offensive to other outdoor users, and more in step with the urban skate park than the wilderness ethic. My low-value vote: if in doubt, pack it out...

Both funny and serious. Nicely done

To be productive regarding the original post, can you post pictures with the pads in them of find photos of like pads on the net to post. I will keep an eye on craigslist and so on as well as when I'm at boulders, if seen I will hold said party at gunpoint and call one of you for assistance.

You know I take that ride all the time, I have looked up at the boulders so many times and laughed knowing the pads were up there. Firstly, picturing two guys up there trying to carry that many pads out of that approach. Secondly, thankful if I went I wouldn't have to bring a pad cause the approach is a warmup times two. Lastly, thinking it was a damn good idea to leave em there cause I sure as shit wouldn't wanna hike a pad into there. Also, I was thankful you guys were putting in so much work on that project.

Sorry this happened guys, it really sucks! Anybody that went up there must have done so because of MP and possibly/ironically the hard work that caused you to leave them there in the first place. I saw nothing wrong with stashing them in a location so remote that the pool of people going would be so limited anybody finding them would/should have the ethics to leave them. That location is so off the beaten path you're not going to end up there by mistake.

Good luck!

This is why crashpads should not exist except those big ones in gyms! Idk, I guess I've never seen the point, if you climb something without gear high enough where you need a pad to not get hurt I would never climb something where I would fall and trust the pad to keep me uninjured... IMHO..Stay close to the ground or don't fall...

JJ Brunner wrote:This is why crashpads should not exist except those big ones in gyms! Idk, I guess I've never seen the point, if you climb something without gear high enough where you need a pad to not get hurt I would never climb something where I would fall and trust the pad to keep me uninjured... IMHO..Stay close to the ground or don't fall...

You'd be surprised on how much damage you can do to yourself without getting high off the ground. Crashpads are not just for highballing.

RyanJ wrote: You'd be surprised on how much damage you can do to yourself without getting high off the ground. Crashpads are not just for highballing.

No sh*t, some of the scariest climbing I've done was out there a couple of months ago..Busting off footholds right as you're pulling the lip 8 feet off the ground..

I've climbed over those stolen pads so I guess I'm an environmental terrorist too..

Well, anyway, I think there's a middle ground here somewhere between all this drama..

With all of the undocumented folk around the area down there, it may not only have been the climbers that found the pads useful.

Jim Gloeckler wrote:With all of the undocumented folk around the area down there, it may not only have been the climbers that found the pads useful.

Dude, I have seen them running about from time to time when I'm out someplace shooting but if they found their way to those pads I would be SHOCKED! There would be ZERO reason to find yourself there unless you were trying to get yourself there.

This thread is like a bad acid trip.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/14313/fear-and-loathing-in-las-vegas-revolving-bar

So Chris asks about stolen crashpads and we get 6 pages of blather from people who don't know anything about the situation ? Wow.

Chris, speaking as someone who has stashes all over S. Arizona, I guess the lesson is...don't stash anything you might really miss. Or stash it better.

Sucks though, that many pads sounds like a lot of $$.

Came in late here, but I can say that I've seen some horribly messed up areas from people "stashing" in Colorado. Mostly they get pad when people forget to unstash their shit and it ends up getting eaten by packrats, decaying, etc.

Bummer on losing the pads, but its lazy to leave them up there in the first place. Outdoor bouldering is not the gym. Pack it in then pack it back out. If people are that psyched on an outdoor area I think "hauling" pads out and back is really no big deal. It's a whole 45 mins. up there.

I'm way behind here - just stumbled on this posting and read all the way through. Chris, sorry to hear about your stolen pads. I hope you get them back. Whoever took them was wrong. I don't suppose it's any consolation, but you deserve thanks for inciting the very interesting discussion that ensued, even if that was not your intent. And now as you may have guessed, I'm going to add my 2 cents to the very interesting discussion that will unfortunately do nothing to get your pads back to you.

Panther Peak looks like a beautiful place (I checked out the web site), and it's nice to know that such places exist. It's also nice to know that there's good bouldering in beautiful places. Unfortunately, bouldering inherently contributes to the de-beautification of beautiful places, by creating ugly chalk marks (especially when we use white chalk on non-white boulders), and by trampling down access routes and landing zones. Sport and trad climbing also adversely affect the natural environment, but that seems to me to be true-and-unrelated. The boulderer-holier-than-sport-climber and vice-versa attitudes of many posters are off target. We should all just admit that we're a bunch of nature-trashers, and even the "best" of us are hypocrites (see Steve House's comments in the recent "Green" edition of Climbing magazine, #283). This shouldn't stop us from climbing, but we should at least try to be better about minimizing the adverse impact caused by our self-centered actions. The fact is, any climbing creates an impact, and it's the right thing to do to try to minimize that impact (see Verm's comments in the same issue). I'm not going to try to come up with an answer for where to draw the line (stashed pads, fixed draws, etc), but I think it's important for each of us to spend some time thinking about where that line lies for ourselves in various situations, and to try to understand other people's views.

In case anybody cares, I offer the following observations which seemed to me to have been conspicuously absent in the discussion so far:

1) It seems that a lot of climbers justify the leave-no-trace ethic from a selfish standpoint: if our environmental impact makes us too obvious, people will hate on us and will take away our climbing (land managers, park rangers, etc). Why not keep our impact to a minimum for the more pure reason that we climb in beautiful/natural places, and it is simply the right thing to do to keep them as beautiful/natural as possible? Is it really rational to say that stashing pads is not creating an impact on a natural area because it's unlikely that somebody will walk past in the next X days and be offended? I'm sure that logic would make Ed Abbey roll over in his grave...

2) For the most part, the pro pad-stashing comments in this thread seemed relatively benign - more selfish than hateful. However, I was appalled to see someone use this discussion as an opportunity to condemn the act of caching potentially life-saving bottled water for "illegal immigrants" crossing the desert borderlands (AKA our Gawd-given soil) as an example of the kind of environmental destruction we should REALLY get worked up about. At least the link he included, if you bother to read it, did more to invalidate than support his own misplaced diatribe. I'll bet Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and Jesus are all rolling over in their graves over that one. I'm ashamed to be linked to the poster of such hate by the common bond we share as climbers.

Dave Wachter wrote: 2) For the most part, the pro pad-stashing comments in this thread seemed relatively benign - more selfish than hateful. However, I was appalled to see someone use this discussion as an opportunity to condemn the act of caching potentially life-saving bottled water for "illegal immigrants" crossing the desert borderlands (AKA our Gawd-given soil) as an example of the kind of environmental destruction we should REALLY get worked up about. At least the link he included, if you bother to read it, did more to invalidate than support his own misplaced diatribe. I'll bet Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and Jesus are all rolling over in their graves over that one. I'm ashamed to be linked to the poster of such hate by the common bond we share as climbers.

Perhaps it was a bad comparison. My bad! I just find it odd that we can justify stashing stuff in the desert when it comes the purpose of why it is there. Never once have I said I condemned the actions of No More Deaths. I just believe there are other ways to go about it, kinda of like how everyone told Chris that there are other ways to develop an area and not impact the environment. But whatever my reasoning, like I said before, perhaps it was a bad comparison.

Fair enough, Ryan. Border justice is a touchy subject which is important to debate, and I think we agree this is not the forum for it. Plenty of fodder for discussion without going there. Glad to see some common ground reached, even if the core issue of pad stashing is still a matter of contention (though I hope the even more core issue of pad stealing isn't).
Now if only The Dude would ride into town on the "Magic Carpet" with the other 2 pads in tow, and we could train some endemic javelinas to carry the pads in & out (until the area is defined enough to move on to post-development status), we could all drink a round of Dale's Pale Ale (in pack-em-out recyclable aluminum cans) and sing a rousing chorus of Kumba-ya.