White Rastafarian’s fall zone boulder moved.

Just thought I would pass this on.

joshuatreebouldering.wordpr…

Having a hard time understanding why anyone would care except for maybe their own ego. I've moved plenty of hazards out from under boulder problems.. contrived hazards are stupid, esp if you're only moving a small rock a few feet. who cares?

Agree, Morgan. In this case it looks like the movement hardly changed any aesthetics or disrupted anything ecologically. It looks like it is just shifted out a little further out in the sand. Plant a stick in your butt if you want to increase the danger. If the visuals were changing a lot or a meaningful ecological argument could be made, then there might be a reason to object. Does this person also object to removing loose rocks from routes?

I disagree with both of you. One of the objective hazards of bouldering is the landing zone. It's not that different than a big run-out on difficult terrain on a roped climb. I suspect you'd be among the first to object if someone decided to bolt, say, Edging Skills or Hospital Bills (a Tuolumne Meadows 10b established by Bachar solo, thus it has no protection) in order to make it safer. Moving a boulder out of the landing zone for the crux on White Rasta, particularly on a relatively famous problem originally done without even pads, is much the same as retro-bolting. It's not a matter of wanting to increase the danger nor is it similar to removing a loose rock on a climb - it's about not altering the nature of the route. Changing the landing of a boulder problem fundamentally does just that. Why not chip in a big foothold near the crux as well?

Man, are you people for real?

Moving a massive boulder in a National Park, laying beneath one of the most iconic rock climbs on the planet, is absolutely unacceptable!

White Rastafarian was FA'd approximately 40 years ago by Stonemaster John Long, it has since seen ten of thousands of ascents, possibly hundreds of thousands.

This goes well beyond just moving "A" rock. It exposes a serious emerging flaw within the new rock climbing demograph - a complete lack of knowledge or awareness of ethics and climbing etiquette. People are being introduced to climbing in climbing gyms, in drogues, without any mentors or experienced climbers to teach them ethics or appropriate behavior at the crags.

The only recourse we climbers have to protect our climbs and also our freedoms is to weed out these poseurs and to expose them and their ignorant actions for all the world to see.

Turning the other cheek, or expecting the climbing community to handle it "inhouse" is a complete copout!

Marc801 wrote: I suspect you'd be among the first to object if someone decided to bolt, say, Edging Skills or Hospital Bills (a Tuolumne Meadows 10b established by Bachar solo, thus it has no protection) in order to make it safer.

Actually, I probably wouldn't object, though wouldn't necessarily advocate either. I have always felt the leave as the FA would like unless the local community as a whole really thinks it is a bad idea ethic is the way to go. Personally, I think soloing or X rating a route and then insisting that it be left that way for eternity is a jack-ass move.

In this particular case, not being a local, my opinion is more theoretical, so is only worthy of so much weight. There is a locally famous boulder at Lincoln Woods, RI, the Try Again boulder, that used to have sharp rocks below the landing. When somebody first removed them, I at first smirked a bit, having climbed the routes pre-crashpad days, but the removal was really a good idea. It is pretty dumb to leave them and have people breaking their ankles (and potentially heads and spines) Do you leave the broken glass below too?

...well move it back to its original location...

Roots wrote:...well move it back to its original location...

Easier to bitch on the internet.

I didn't do the FA. John Bachar and I did it together - can't remember who went first. It was never a hard problem, just an exciting one, and once you got up a ways, into the 5.11 move, I don't think you could hit that boulder - but maybe I'm not remembering this correctly. I don't see moving that boulder as any big thing. If you were cutting down a tree or something, that might be an issue. But so far as I can tell what's really going on here is people are clearing out the base for aspiring hardmen/women to get a feel for the first moves without crashing and buring on the landing. White Rasta is almost a tourist attraction, and is so far away from being any kind of testpiece that it all seems good to me.

Hard to believe that problem went down I think 41 years ago (1974??). Wink, my brother, and you're all old and shit.

JL

Dood, its a National Park, with rock climbing impact, and bouldering especially, being scrutinized for potential restrictions. The laws written to control climbing impact in Josh will influence Park Service law nation-wide!

Why should the future of JT climbing be compromised by a few pretend climbers, trying to dumb things down to their personal level?

It wouldn't be an issue if the dink didn't go and whine to the rangers and force them to think about it.

Thanks for commenting John.

I agree Mark, law enforcement should be a last resort.

Stupid to move it. Way stupider to alert the Park Service. Somebody moved it, how hard would it have been to just move it back?

John Long's comment should pretty much end this thread..but it won't.

I don't boulder, so I am just lobbing this out there.

How is moving a boulder at the base different than trundling dangerous loose boulders on a route? Both increase the risk...and neither are supposed to be climbed on.

Jonathan Cunha wrote:John Long's comment should pretty much end this thread..but it won't.

I don't know.

Should John Long's opinion on his own climb, really win out over the intardnet whiners?

I vote no! ;)

Tim Lutz wrote:How is moving a boulder on the ground different than trundling loose rock when putting up a route?

You make a very good point. :)

M Sprague wrote:It wouldn't be an issue if the dink didn't go and whine to the rangers and force them to think about it.

Ding, ding, ding.

Just another example in my opinion, of fake outrage on the author's part , and how people now use social media as their soapbox for their moral outrage .

M Sprague wrote: If the visuals were changing a lot or a meaningful ecological argument could be made, then there might be a reason to object. Does this person also object to removing loose rocks from routes?

From my personal experience I can say that the author approaches climbing with a minimal impact approach, approaching everything from the ground up cleaning only what is necessary to climb the problem.

It is not necessarily an issue with aesthetics, more of a purity/ethics/experience issue. Morgan calls it a contrived danger, I feel it is the opposite. How can it be contrived if the boulder has always existed there, making it a part of the experience? Like John says, the further you progress the more clearance from the boulder you will gain. I appreciate the "entry exam" aspect this provides. If you cannot "safely" climb the opening sequence maybe you don't belong on the closing sequence. I have heard arguments about making problems more accessible, I feel these arguments to be diametrically opposed to the goals and values of climbing. Where does making things accessible stop? I have seen some atrocious things that were done in the name of "safety", and it all started with one persons idea of how to develop an area and led to a handful of people with the same idea, now a lot of the problems have totally flat manicured landings.

There are so many threads where people go off on the dumbing down(accessibility) of routes, I do not see how this is different. You gotta walk before you run and there are no shortcuts on that path. Unfortunately there are shortcuts in climbing but should we take them, I for one don't think so.

If you want to be as safe as possible sell your pad, get a gym membership and be sure as shit to not boulder in Josh.

If looking for those things, wouldn't you go find a line of your own somewhere off the beaten track, not expect or demand it on a trade route? There is a thing called "reasonable"