Deciding whether or not to share routes on Mountain Project. Gatekeeping?

Personally, I think that publishing something online is a form of development, and choosing to whether or not to publish an area or cliff or boulder should largely be based on if the area is prepared to handle impact. 

There are a lot of things to consider like, how easy is access to the area? what is the relationship with the land manager? is there already official trails to the area? is there parking in the area? Is there a climbing management plan? Does the land manager want trails there? All of these questions should be asked. If I go out and clean a few boulders off trail, the impact on the area is pretty low. But if I post a ton of videos and put it all on MP, other people will probably go out there and try them as well, creating social trails and impact in an area where people were not going before. 

I think a developer has a responsibility to at least ensure what they are publishing is in a state that it can handle more users, but this takes a ton more effort. Often trails need to be built, explicit permission from land managers needs to be gained, and for large areas plans for things like parking and long term trail maintenance need to be sorted out. Ignoring these issues or going behind their backs is often why land managers get upset and closure happen. It is not always as easy as "hey I bolted some climbs, everyone have at it!"

I think this is often why many places are "secret," maybe the area was developed without permission or there are not good trails or the land access is bad. I know awesome crags that are not published because the relationship with the land manager is very tenuous, or places on DNR land that are only open ~6 weeks a year during hunting season. Sometimes it is not a big "gatekeeping" scheme, it is something much more practical. And if it truly is gatekeeping, don't spray it online and lose your friends, just feel lucky you were brought into the fold.

Dan Booklesswrote:

It's Gatekeeping.  

Its public land and belongs to all of us.  Route/crag Development isn't altruistic, it's self-serving.  You have every right to the cliff and can spray about it online even if the developers don't want you to.  you can even add bolts if you want.  ROCK AND ICE BELONG TO US ALL.  

(caveat: god bless good hearted route-developers)

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. 

If you never fuck around, you’ll never find out. Post the worst route with no description how to get to it

Dan Booklesswrote:

It's Gatekeeping.  

 ICE BELONG TO US ALL.  

(caveat: god bless good hearted route-developers)

Bless your heart. Don’t tell the LADWP about that ice you are claiming is yours. The people of the Owens River Valley will tell you that water is definitely not yours. Water rights are weird

George Perkins wrote:

Exaggerating or fictionalizing the "access issues" is perhaps the most commonly used gatekeeping trope.  By doing so, developers and their fanboys can still believe they're inclusive and welcoming.  Really they just don't want other people occupying the warmups, downrating their shit, doing the route/problem they haven't gotten to yet, or getting bit by their unleashed dogs.  All climbers not in the secret club should view any so-called access issues with skepticism (if not complete dismissal) and wait to form their own opinions upon visiting.  

If there were "real" access issues, the developers ought to halt their own visitation until those issues get resolved.  Typically, the steady stream of spray suggests otherwise.

-

It should go without saying that posting up a "secret spot" you had no hand in developing may come at a social cost.  Consider using an anonymous account if you choose to do so.

There's nothing wrong with gatekeeping or a 'secret club'. It's called having word-of-mouth conversations with friends, developing relationships, and staying off the MP ( free OnX labor) database for the next tick.

Dan Booklesswrote:

It's Gatekeeping.  

Its public land and belongs to all of us.  Route/crag Development isn't altruistic, it's self-serving.  You have every right to the cliff and can spray about it online even if the developers don't want you to.  you can even add bolts if you want.  ROCK AND ICE BELONG TO US ALL.  

(caveat: god bless good hearted route-developers)

Not all crags are on public land. 

We need more gatekeeping, not less.

George Perkins wrote:

It should go without saying that posting up a "secret spot" you had no hand in developing may come at a social cost.  Consider using an anonymous account if you choose to do so.

Nobody show this guy the spot 

Sam Ehmannwrote:

Personally, I think that publishing something online is a form of development, and choosing to whether or not to publish an area or cliff or boulder should largely be based on if the area is prepared to handle impact. 

There are a lot of things to consider like, how easy is access to the area? what is the relationship with the land manager? is there already official trails to the area? is there parking in the area? Is there a climbing management plan? Does the land manager want trails there? All of these questions should be asked. If I go out and clean a few boulders off trail, the impact on the area is pretty low. But if I post a ton of videos and put it all on MP, other people will probably go out there and try them as well, creating social trails and impact in an area where people were not going before. 

I think a developer has a responsibility to at least ensure what they are publishing is in a state that it can handle more users, but this takes a ton more effort. Often trails need to be built, explicit permission from land managers needs to be gained, and for large areas plans for things like parking and long term trail maintenance need to be sorted out. Ignoring these issues or going behind their backs is often why land managers get upset and closure happen. It is not always as easy as "hey I bolted some climbs, everyone have at it!"

I think this is often why many places are "secret," maybe the area was developed without permission or there are not good trails or the land access is bad. I know awesome crags that are not published because the relationship with the land manager is very tenuous, or places on DNR land that are only open ~6 weeks a year during hunting season. Sometimes it is not a big "gatekeeping" scheme, it is something much more practical. And if it truly is gatekeeping, don't spray it online and lose your friends, just feel lucky you were brought into the fold.

Wisdom right here. Thanks for the more nuanced and thoughtful shades of grey approach. All of this is so accurate and I hope more folks read this as there is a lot to consider as a “user” and “developer”

People gatekeeping crags is one of the stupidest parts of climbing culture.

If you're going to pretend it's about maintaining access, I have to ask, "access for whom?". You're not some sort of access activist because you maintained access for your little clique. "Access" in a sense that anyone else cares about is "access for everyone". Maybe you're maintaining access for you and the three people who can tolerate your personality, but for everyone else, you're a barrier to access. People can't access things they don't know about.

It has been my experience that people who will stop being your friend if you tell others about the rocks they showed you, greatly overestimate the value of their friendship (and their rocks).

And then there's the intersection with the ethics of naming and retrobolting. The same people who want to keep secret crags then get mad when those crags get developed and people claim FAs in them. If you climb a 5.8X trad route and tell no one, you can't really get mad if people bolt it and give it a name. Of course there are caveats to this--don't bolt splitters--but it's really magical thinking to expect people to somehow know you climbed something when you didn't tell anyone about it.

There's a crag near here which was recently bought by the local climbing coalition. There were a bunch of 5.11 and harder bolted routes on a freestanding block, but no bolted moderates, so when the crag was bought, some folks went in and bolted a few 5.8-5.10 routes on a face/slab about 10 yards away. It turns out some of those had been trad climbed before, and the trad FAists were mad that their FAs had been bolted. But the kicker is all the climbing there--bolted AND trad--was trespassing before the climbers coalition bought it. The entitlement of secretly tresspassing and then wanting credit for it when people do things the right way is absurd.

• grug gwrote:

Who cares. 90% chance its some local choss pile that most people wouldn't touch. Putting it on MP is not going to magically create a portal from your gym to the crag.

Only people that cry about crowds are NIMBY's and usually from hillbilly small towns. 

Can’t speak for other areas, but this is absolutely untrue for the red. Some of the best rock in the region is intentionally left off of MP

grug gwrote:

Who cares. 90% chance its some local choss pile that most people wouldn't touch. Putting it on MP is not going to magically create a portal from your gym to the crag.

Only people that cry about crowds are NIMBY's and usually from hillbilly small towns. 

I think there are a lot of factors at play that need to be considered before you blanket statement that most hidden crags are chose piles.

-proximity to a populated area of climbers

-proximity to a road ( sometimes choss piles clean up nicely and become very popular due to being roadside)

-high quality stone w/ heavy entry fee ( long approach, in the backcountry or a long drive from populated areas)

-lack of trail or really great user trail

-private or public land access

-style of route development ( safe sport routes or ground up sketchy trad/mixed)

Sam Ehmannwrote:

There are a lot of things to consider like, how easy is access to the area? what is the relationship with the land manager? is there already official trails to the area? is there parking in the area? Is there a climbing management plan? Does the land manager want trails there? All of these questions should be asked. If I go out and clean a few boulders off trail, the impact on the area is pretty low. But if I post a ton of videos and put it all on MP, other people will probably go out there and try them as well, creating social trails and impact in an area where people were not going before. 

Sure, there's a lot of nuance here, but...

I've literally never seen any of this nuance solved by keeping an area secret. In fact, it's often not true that "If I go out and clean a few boulders off trail, the impact on the area is pretty low", because "impact" is highly area-dependent. In every case I've seen, the people keeping crags secret aren't any better at keeping their impact low than the general populace. People who only care about climbing access for themselves, also unsurprisingly tend to not care much about their impact.

There's an area near me with some really amazing boulders where an endangered species of flower grows. In the prime season (winter) you wouldn't even know you're disturbing the flowers because all sign of them is underground. I'm not bringing up details here because I don't want to derail this thread with local politics, but if anyone asks me about that area, I don't keep it secret, I tell them "Don't climb there because you'll be killing endangered flowers." Most of the people I know who have gone in there, went because they didn't know about the endangered flowers, because there's very little information available about the area. In short, the impact on this area is because people have kept the area secret for so long. Publicizing information about the area could have prevented a lot of impact.

There's another bouldering area which has specific parking, and is on private property where the land owners only allow access because they are persuaded that it doesn't affect their business. I doubt there will be access there for much longer, because the people keeping it secret are bringing dogs and not cleaning up their poop, littering, playing loud music, taking up customer parking, and openly smoking weed (I've nothing against smoking weed, but some of the families that are customers of the business certainly do). I went there twice: the first time I dragged out half a trash bag of litter and the second time I got annoyed and left. Admittedly, some of these problems are partly caused by non-climbers as well, but these problems could be fixed if a more official agreement was reached with local climbing organizations which included signage and regular trail cleanup days. Again, keeping it secret hasn't been the solution, it's been part of the problem.

George Perkins wrote:

Exaggerating or fictionalizing the "access issues" is perhaps the most commonly used gatekeeping trope.  By doing so, developers and their fanboys can still believe they're inclusive and welcoming.  Really they just don't want other people occupying the warmups, downrating their shit, doing the route/problem they haven't gotten to yet, or getting bit by their unleashed dogs.  All climbers not in the secret club should view any so-called access issues with skepticism (if not complete dismissal) and wait to form their own opinions upon visiting.  

If there were "real" access issues, the developers ought to halt their own visitation until those issues get resolved.  Typically, the steady stream of spray suggests otherwise.

-

It should go without saying that posting up a "secret spot" you had no hand in developing may come at a social cost.  Consider using an anonymous account if you choose to do so.

This is not always the situation. I am aware of a number of areas where the land owners ( these are often private land) or managers, turn a blind eye to a few people discreetly climbing on the land, but have a very different reaction once it becomes popular. I can think of one outcrop in my area that got shut down after it became popular, especially after some idiots started blaring music and otherwise caused a racket---and thus wasn't a locale that was on MP or otherwise documented, only word-of-mouth.

Alan Rubinwrote:

This is not always the situation. I am aware of a number of areas where the land owners ( these are often private land) or managers, turn a blind eye to a few people discreetly climbing on the land, but have a very different reaction once it becomes popular. I can think of one outcrop in my area that got shut down after it became popular, especially after some idiots started blaring music and otherwise caused a racket---and thus wasn't a locale that was on MP or otherwise documented, only word-of-mouth.

So this was never posted on MP? Only ever word of mouth? That seems like an example of secrecy not solving these problems.

And how were you tracking popularity to know that it got shut down after it became popular? It seems to me that people claim popularity killed a crag, when in reality it was just a few of the in-crowd in a secret area abusing their private playground, and the area wasn't any more popular than it ever had been.

Notably, secret crags don't get trail cleanup days or signage about local access concerns. If you're really concerned about access, get access, don't trespass and pretend you have access.

The OP’s question is premised on a false binary. There’s quite a bit of room between (the somewhat click-baity concept of) gatekeeping, and a presumed obligation to record, on this website, every rock that has ever been climbed. I go climbing all the time. Some of these routes are in guidebooks, some aren’t. None of us is under any obligation to rush home, and contribute to this privately owned, publicly accessible database of routes.  As others have pointed out, there are more factors at play besides selfishness, and openness.

Let’s imagine there’s a bit more grey area in between the poles of cliquey, in-group secrecy and the ideal that all information wants to be free for everyone everywhere:

If I have structured my life in order to have the resources – free time, research, vehicles, fitness, gear etc. – to seek out unexplored climbing areas, and you haven’t, why am I under some obligation to immediately fill you in on that?  You are equally free to do your own legwork.  I am free to share, or not.  If you run into me somewhere, and you ask, I’ll probably tell you all about it. This is not the same as granting 6.5 billion humans instant access to this information. Relationships still matter.

The idea that unlimited human visitation is the highest good does a great disservice to the landscape.  I personally appreciate the sensation of being in a place where few have been. I think other people should get to experience that. In some places, this could be the greater good.  People are busy fucking up this beautiful planet as fast as they can. Am I morally obligated to accelerate this process? 

TL:DR -  it’s not that simple. Other considerations may apply. Different people value these differently. 

Alan Rubinwrote:

This is not always the situation. I am aware of a number of areas where the land owners ( these are often private land) or managers, turn a blind eye to a few people discreetly climbing on the land, but have a very different reaction once it becomes popular. I can think of one outcrop in my area that got shut down after it became popular, especially after some idiots started blaring music and otherwise caused a racket---and thus wasn't a locale that was on MP or otherwise documented, only word-of-mouth.

George is actually spot on in his context. NM has several areas like that. Some access concerns are legit, but most are absolutely hyped up. That said, given that we are bordered by CO and AZ, states with large climber populations that tend to swarm “uncrowded” NM areas, I’m totally fine with some of these areas staying off the radar…I just wish they stayed off of the insta-face. 

Also, newsflash: I value my homies more than randos. Not certain this makes me unique.

When we run into each other, and share that information, you move from rando to homie. This is how people work.

The use of the term gatekeeping has become an excuse to act entitled. You are not entitled to a served up menu of all the climbs in your area, you might have to go look around and find some of them. MP should remove info if posted by someone but the FA/developer asks for it to be removed, which most would only do if there is a reason (access, current development or hazards occurring, etc). Point being, a 10 year old, long completed ‘secret’ crag many know about on public land is different from an under construction crag or a private (ie illegal) crag.

This is a major shift in climbers mentality from years ago, to the reddit / mountain project / internet  attitude of recently far more popular sport with a large influx of newer climbers.  These specific gathering places seem to bring out, highlight and foster a larger sense of entitlement (we deserve to have your hard work on MP! You have to share it or you’re a gatekeeper!!)

Route development is hard work, often akin to construction (depending on your stone).  It can take years to thoroughly and effectively develop an area be it long routes or sport crag. It can be dangerous and hazardous below.  There can be legality issues that may mean someone is waiting till they’re ’all clear’ of an area (this can create a lose lose scenario, post about it, get berated, don’t post, get berated).  

Personally I think many new areas should never be posted to MP until a published guidebook (theoretically done by an author with the open input of FA’ists) is released or the FA wants to share. That’s when the FA (the person doing all the hard work out of their love of it) has said, this area is now safe, open and public knowledge.  Before then, you are welcome to go hunt around and find the cliff, maybe dig around the climbing community to figure out who is doing the work and see if they will share some info. Sure it isn’t their cliff, but they are working on it, and common courtesy and respect in climbing culture has always been that you make some efforts before getting in the way of someone’s hard work, it seems reasonable to me…

And the term gatekeeping applied to this discussion is totally fucking annoying and entitled.  The idea that you are entitled to information and expect me to spend my valuable time writing up and posting on the internet or you’re going to call me a gatekeeper? Fuck off! You don’t know why i haven’t posted about an area yet! Go have an adventure in the spirit of the sport and find and climb a route if you’re so keen

If you think it should be on the web so badly (after you went hunting for routes, found, and climbed them all), then go to the FA and offer to document, write up, describe, photograph, draw, and detail their whole cliff.  Maybe offer to help out, or encourage them to post about it, but doing it yourself without a sign off from the person who invested lots of money and time is rude, entitled and BS.

David W.A.wrote:

The use of the term gatekeeping has become an excuse to act entitled. You are not entitled to a served up menu of all the climbs in your area, you might have to go look around and find some of them. MP should remove info if posted by someone but the FA/developer asks for it to be removed, which most would only do if there is a reason (access, current development or hazards occurring, etc). Point being, a 10 year old, long completed ‘secret’ crag many know about on public land is different from an under construction crag or a private (ie illegal) crag.

This is a major shift in climbers mentality from years ago, to the reddit / mountain project / internet  attitude of recently far more popular sport with a large influx of newer climbers.  These specific gathering places seem to bring out, highlight and foster a larger sense of entitlement (we deserve to have your hard work on MP! You have to share it or you’re a gatekeeper!!)

Route development is hard work, often akin to construction (depending on your stone).  It can take years to thoroughly and effectively develop an area be it long routes or sport crag. It can be dangerous and hazardous below.  There can be legality issues that may mean someone is waiting till they’re ’all clear’ of an area (this can create a lose lose scenario, post about it, get berated, don’t post, get berated).  

Personally I think many new areas should never be posted to MP until a published guidebook (theoretically done by an author with the open input of FA’ists) is released or the FA wants to share. That’s when the FA (the person doing all the hard work out of their love of it) has said, this area is now safe, open and public knowledge.  Before then, you are welcome to go hunt around and find the cliff, maybe dig around the climbing community to figure out who is doing the work and see if they will share some info. Sure it isn’t their cliff, but they are working on it, and common courtesy and respect in climbing culture has always been that you make some efforts before getting in the way of someone’s hard work, it seems reasonable to me…

And the term gatekeeping applied to this discussion is totally fucking annoying and entitled.  The idea that you are entitled to information and expect me to spend my valuable time writing up and posting on the internet or you’re going to call me a gatekeeper? Fuck off! You don’t know why i haven’t posted about an area yet! Go have an adventure in the spirit of the sport and find and climb a route if you’re so keen

If you think it should be on the web so badly (after you went hunting for routes, found, and climbed them all), then go to the FA and offer to document, write up, describe, photograph, draw, and detail their whole cliff.  Maybe offer to help out, or encourage them to post about it, but doing it yourself without a sign off from the person who invested lots of money and time is rude, entitled and BS.

How about the term “butt buddies”?