Public comment on wilderness area fixed hardware

apogeewrote:

The sense of individualism that has long been a central part of climber's identities serves one well while establishing an FA on some remote wall on Baffin Island, but has never worked well in the 'real world' of politics. The time is now for the climbing community to become savvy about how policy and legislation works, and to influence it using effective tools and strategies.

One great advantage the climbing community has right now is sheer numbers (like it or not)- there is the potential to have a far stronger voice than we've ever had before, if people can step up and learn, stop quibbling about minor, irrelevant aspects, and speak with a clear, unified voice on this important issue. Again: don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

Unfortunately, those sheer numbers are the problem, especially when so many of them think the solution is to grid bolt even more to 'alleviate the crowding'.

I got major shit for criticizing rap-bolted climbs where not a single bolt was clipped when I led them with gear. This "inclusive climbing community" is going to get what they deserve sooner or later. 

Yeah, can't wait to have climbing opportunities officially reduced to bushwhack corner systems that max out at 5.10. That will show those pesky sport climbers who runs the roost.

I have criticisms about a growing population that demands all climbs be sanitized from risk, but right now we need to focus on the fundamental implications surrounding "fixed anchors"—not just bolts. If more of you had heard the off-the-record conversations that I've been privy to, you would be more concerned too. A few individuals with influence appear to be driving these anti-climber policies. And guess what, there are way more voters who don't climb and are susceptible to believing the misinformation. They see roadside crags and are led to believe that is what the wilderness crags will look like.

With all the nit-picking, people seem to be overlooking this point, which I highlighted in my Jan. 12 article:

These mandated MRAs would be “a very subjective process carried out by land managers who may not climb,” Keith said.

The wording of the proposals would have land managers consider: is this route similar to the one next to it? What is the minimum number of anchors necessary for an appropriate rock climbing experience? If there is one route to the top of a cliff, why must climbers have multiple routes that ultimately take them to the same place?

Please comment—kindly and respectfully—by Jan. 30 to support the sixty years of precedence for managing climbing in Wilderness. Let's secure our legal standing first, then work together to address the competing interests of climbing styles.

https://www.accessfund.org/action-alerts/stop-the-bolt-prohibition

—Derek Franz

Ģnöfudør Ðrænkwrote:

So they got one guy documenting one area.  That just shows how pathetic and ineffective the government will be in this process.  The government having to repeat the process will for ALL climbing areas is just laughable and will take forever. 

sounds like you didn't take a good look at the link i posted.  that's a second area, a totally different agency, and the quality of the work is actually quite good...  

the guy i met in pine creek cataloged psom (30+ climbs, including up to six pitches) in a couple of hours and spent a couple of weeks in the canyon (that's 650+/- documented climbs).  that was in the fall of 2022.  at that rate, he/one person could have knocked off many (dare i say most) of the popular areas on the sierra eastside (which is home to several thousand climbs) since then.

Trad Manwrote:

What if I only use my removable bolts?   

I heard that someone down here had a proper go at developing a new crag with only ClimbTech removable bolts in drilled holes.

The experience was, the removable bolts eventually break and get stuck in the holes - requiring more drilling for removal that was just as invasive as replacing a normal bolt.

Sam Mwrote:

I heard that someone down here had a proper go at developing a new crag with only ClimbTech removable bolts in drilled holes.

The experience was, the removable bolts eventually break and get stuck in the holes - requiring more drilling for removal that was just as invasive as replacing a normal bolt.

Are you talking about the old RBs that worked like a ball nut? We got better stuff these days. 

Trad Manwrote:

Are you talking about the old RBs that worked like a ball nut? We got better stuff these days. 

Yeah, it would have been those original older ones. Interesting, will check out the new developments.

Tyler Sheen wrote:

I think that the basic idea is solid, but is some situations, it only makes the problem they are trying to fix worse. Climbers need to realize that putting permanent installations into the rock isn't ethical just because it makes a route safer. If the route is unsafe without bolts, go climb something else. Just because you can't safely climb something doesn't mean that you should go out of your way to deface the rocks. Even if they decide to not go ahead with their bolt removal plan, it would be great if they were to come up with something that at least bans bolts/pitons on any routes that have not been defaced yet.

I see you are a new user with zero interactions on MP. The post you shared sounds like a poorly written AI script from the 1960s, or a Wilderness Watch script from someone who knows little about the history of climbing. Where do you climb? How do you prefer to get down from a climb? What is the point of a climb if you can simply hike up the backside? 

Tyler Sheen wrote:

Just because you disagree doesn't mean that its an AI script. 99.9% of climbs can be accessed from the top. The point is the challenge. The challenge, exposure, and risk factor is what makes climbing up so much more satisfactory than walking around the back. It's more challenging and a better overall experience when people haven't defaced the rock for the sake of safety and efficiency. I mostly climb at the Linville Gorge and Looking Glass. Yeah, bolted anchors can make a climb significantly safer, especially at looking glass, but they give me the same feeling of when people climb mountains with fixed ropes. Personally, I want to know that I made the ascent purely by my own efforts, not someone who climbed up prior to me and made it easier for me. If its too difficult or scary for you without the bolts, consider another climb. I'd like to see more people adopt a UK style approach where they leave the rock how its been for generations - everybody gets to experience the exact same climb, minus the heavy chalk marks. #chalkisaid 

The Access Fund estimates that about 90% of wilderness climbs have bolts or fixed anchors in place. There's not much "pure" wilderness climbing out there as you put it.

Tyler Sheen wrote:

Just because you disagree doesn't mean that it’s an AI script. 99.9% of climbs can be accessed from the top. The point is the challenge. The challenge, exposure, and risk factor is what makes climbing up so much more satisfactory than walking around the back. It's more challenging and a better overall experience when people haven't defaced the rock for the sake of safety and efficiency. I mostly climb at the Linville Gorge and Looking Glass. Yeah, bolted anchors can make a climb significantly safer, especially at looking glass, but they give me the same feeling of when people climb mountains with fixed ropes. Personally, I want to know that I made the ascent purely by my own efforts, not someone who climbed up prior to me and made it easier for me. If it’s too difficult or scary for you without the bolts, consider another climb. I'd like to see more people adopt a UK style approach where they leave the rock how its been for generations - everybody gets to experience the exact same climb, minus the heavy chalk marks. #chalkisaid 

Tyler, you best never clip a bolt or piton ever again lest you be considered a #hypocrite.

In fact you probably shouldn’t ever climb any recorded or established route either because even a climb protected exclusively without any fixed pro  had choss, dirt, grass and sticks removed from the cracks making it easier for everyone after the first ascent.

Best of luck out there.

Oh yeah, make sure not to use any approach trails, roads, staircases, maps, gps, guidebooks, etc. We wouldn’t want the adventure to be taken from you.

Tyler Sheen wrote:

Just because you disagree doesn't mean that its an AI script. 99.9% of climbs can be accessed from the top. The point is the challenge. The challenge, exposure, and risk factor is what makes climbing up so much more satisfactory than walking around the back. It's more challenging and a better overall experience when people haven't defaced the rock for the sake of safety and efficiency. I mostly climb at the Linville Gorge and Looking Glass. Yeah, bolted anchors can make a climb significantly safer, especially at looking glass, but they give me the same feeling of when people climb mountains with fixed ropes. Personally, I want to know that I made the ascent purely by my own efforts, not someone who climbed up prior to me and made it easier for me. If its too difficult or scary for you without the bolts, consider another climb. I'd like to see more people adopt a UK style approach where they leave the rock how its been for generations - everybody gets to experience the exact same climb, minus the heavy chalk marks. #chalkisaid 

Tyler, super rad that you enjoy traditional walk-offs. I really like them too and often seek them out by heading to Joshua Tree and Devils Lake a few times a year.

I take issue with your insistence that all crags should be homogenous in style and form. It’s myopic, dogmatic and laughably inaccurate (your 99.9% comment) Different rock types and regions require different tactics. Do you know many limestone crags that aren’t primarily sport in style?

I’m as glad that there’s steep sport climbs at Rifle as I am traditional climbs at Eldorado Canyon.

Respectfully, this thread has nothing to do with your climbing ethical opinions.  If you would like to contribute - please let us know how your opinion related to the proposed policies by the NPS and USFS.

I'm not going to repeat Mr. Sheen's post for yet another time, but while pretty much everyone here on MP understands how nonsensical much of his post is, presuming that he is expressing similar views elsewhere, I'm very afraid that less knowledgeable audiences ( who include most everyone as well as the NPS/NFS officials screening responses to the proposed regulations) will take them at face value. And, undoubtedly there are others, representing themselves as climbers, who are also submitting similar comments.

For obvious reasons I seriously doubt Mr. Sheen's climbing 'bona fides'. Particularly notably, he says that he has done much of his climbing on Looking Glass---while, despite his comments, "99.9%" of climbs in this country cannot be easily accessed from above, a roughly similar percentage of routes on Looking Glass do entail the use of at least some fixed anchors. It is highly doubtful that he has climbed any such routes 'purely by (his) own efforts' without relying on the fixed anchors previously placed by others.

Virtually all towers and spires require some form of rappelling. Sure, one can sling trees, bushes, horns, chockstones and boulders, even drill threads, but all of these would be illegal “installations” also under the proposed rule. 

Tyler have you ever had to bail unexpectedly from a multi-pitch rock climb, or had the pleasure of standing on a summit that can be accessed only via 5th class terrain? If not, these are amazing experiences that I hope you have some day. But you'll need fixed anchors when you do. Climbers use them all the time.

Oh, and when you climbed The Nose at Looking Glass what did you use for belay anchors? 

Also, you should check out the Gunks. It's in New York where you live. Conservation-minded land stewards there have installed numerous bolted rappel routes to divert traffic away from traditional walk-offs over sensitive cliff-top flora. How's that for ethical?

after weeks of posting and lurking here in multiple threads, reaching out directly to climbers i respect in my local community, and trying to gather as much information and supporting evidence as i could from personal experience and online sources, i finally managed to submit a five page NPS comment.  i tried to make it as informed and comprehensive as i could and would like to thank ALL of the MP community (including some of those who were eloquent but who i disagree with) on this and other threads for providing insights and angles that certainly broadened my horizons and contributed to the final document.

*please crib, but don’t just copy/paste- there’s a bunch of my personal experience referenced

NPS:

I am writing to suggest some refinements to the proposed regulation of fixed anchors.  I first began climbing as a teenager, in about 1985, when I was taken up an (otherwise unprotectable) sparsely bolted three-pitch face climb.  This experience changed my life.  In the decades since, I have sought out precisely the values expressed by the Wilderness Act of 1964- primitive and unconfined, often alone- in remote and not-so-remote places, some of which are designated Wilderness.  Living for over half of my adult life next to the Mt. Massive Wilderness in Colorado, I spent many days exploring and climbing on the granite visible out the back window.  I was once caught out on a crumbling face, well above my removable anchors on a crack below, in an intense summer lightning storm swirling around the 250’ spire.  I drilled- by hand- a pair of quarter-inch bolts as an emergency descent anchor, and returned home safely. That climb (with a revamped, safer anchor) now affords people the opportunity to experience this terrain without fear of stranding.  It has not become overrun.  Despite an approachable difficulty grade, and publication in the local guidebook, the crag remains rarely visited and even the grass at the base shows little sign of human impact.  The rock-colored, camouflaged stainless-steel anchor is tough to spot -– “substantially unnoticeable” in the words of the Act-- even if you know where to look. In the many days that I spent there, I never saw a hiker wander over from the popular Windsor Lake trail a quarter mile away.  

I support the ambitions and effects of the Act, but I believe that a 180 degree policy reversal in the case of fixed anchor management is a misguided application of the intent of the legislation. Here’s why:

1) Fixed anchors are not ‘installations’ as per the intent of the Wilderness Act.  The Wilderness Act came along decades after climbing began in this country. It was promulgated by climbers and wilderness lovers who themselves had left safety anchors behind in order to experience wild places.  The Act was written to prohibit “structures and installations”, but these were clearly intended to refer to roads, motors, vehicles and aircraft- not bits of gear like a sling around a tree, or a cigarette-sized bolt in the rock.   These possibilities were known to the authors of the Act, and yet they did not exclude them, because they knew that fixed anchors are an integral part of the “primitive, unconfined recreation” that the Act sought to preserve.

2) The proposed rule change represents an arbitrary, capricious reversal of a functioning policy.  As a climber and wilderness lover, I have scrupulously adhered to the law.  I believe in the Wilderness Act, and during all my exploration I have never brought a power drill (or a snowmobile, drone, motorcycle, OHV or any other motorized tool) into designated Wilderness.  The law as written is an effective self-regulation.  If you have ever spent the time to pound a 3-inch hole in a rock with a hammer and drill bit (try it sometime!), you know that the decision to place such an anchor is not made lightly.  Every bolt I have ever placed has been the product of careful consideration.  This is a solution in search of a problem. 

3) The banning (or requirement of an MRA) for the placement or replacement of fixed hardware is a) unsafe and b) replaces personal, on-the-ground agency with an unwieldy, unfunded, and uninformed bureaucratic sledgehammer.   

a) Self-reliance is a fundamental tenet of vertical exploration, and the ability of a climber or canyoneer to safely assess and adjust the security of life-sustaining equipment cannot reasonably be entrusted to a distant clipboard-holder with a lengthy backlog of other priorities, much less one who knows nothing of the activity in question.  Placing obstacles in the way of updating critical hardware is going to get people killed, as the Park Service is doubtless aware after the 2013 rockfall death of a park visitor in North Cascades who was forced to descend a dangerous gully because NPS removed the bolted rappel route that avoided that gully in favor of a clean path down a rock rib.  Replacing of old, unsafe hardware must remain in the hands of users.  

b) Requiring precise preapproval of every piece of fixed hardware on new routes is unreasonable, unenforceable, and will stifle the creative exploration encouraged by the NPS mission.  It is simply not possible to foresee the necessity of each protection, belay, and/or rappel anchor on any route longer than one could throw a Frisbee.  Any such preapproval process must be timely, allow for judgment on the spot, and not subject visitors to bureaucratic second-guessing or penalties.  When I decided to climb a previously unvisited section of cliff in Yosemite Valley, I was pleasantly surprised at the number of bolts I didn’t need to ascend 900’ of new climbing on a blank-looking face.  But any answer to some kind of new-route application question would have been a wild guess, and I wouldn’t have wanted to feel like I had to take unnecessary risks in order to comply with that guess.

4) Quality fixed anchors prevent resource degradation.   I used to climb in New England, where a staunch local prohibition on bolts forced climbers and descenders to trample fragile clifftop ground cover in order to use trees for anchors.  That ground cover is long gone, the treeline has retreated many yards from the barren cliff edge as roots were trampled, and now there’s NPS-approved bolts along at least one of those clifflines anyway.  How much resource degradation happens every time a SAR helicopter flies through wilderness to pluck someone whose crappy natural anchor failed?

5) Reversing a functional and long-standing policy will make enemies of Wilderness out of a generally supportive and engaged user group.

My wife and I lived for a few years in Yosemite, where climbers have for years organized a parkwide cleanup called the Facelift.  Climbers have collectively removed thousands of pounds of junk, construction and road debris, and user-generated trash that far exceeds the impact of our user group because we value wild places and have a generally good relationship with land managers.  An ill-considered policy clumsily restricting the use and enjoyment of public lands for primitive and unconfined recreation is not going to improve this relationship or create future advocates for Wilderness protection.  

     Incidentally, in all of the many happy hours I spent lounging in El Cap Meadow admiring the view and talking to tourists, I never heard one complain about how that view was ruined by the presence of fixed gear on the cliffs.  Most of them couldn’t pick out a climbing party until they were shown where to look.  But all these barely visible climbers were attached to the cliff with the anchors that someone is trying to restrict in the name of…visual impact?

6) Adding these restrictions is an unfunded mandate that places even more burden on an underfunded agency.  NPS has a, what, 22 billion-dollar deferred maintenance backlog? And that’s the management agency that the average citizen can name.  How’s this going to work when the regulations are forced onto BLM?

7) Defining fixed gear as an installation will make criminals of casual users.  I couldn’t get that cam out. We had to retreat in a thunderstorm and left a sling.  The crack system on the new route ended and we had to swing over to the left off a nut.  We had to rappel into the ski couloir because the top was iced up.  The old anchor halfway down the canyon was swept away in a flash flood and we put a new one in. Are we now in violation of federal law?  If this unenforceable policy is actually enforced, how much time and money will it take to process the newly defined criminals?  Are there perhaps better uses of federal tax dollars than prosecuting climbers, ski mountaineers, and canyoneers?

8) Many formations, such as freestanding pinnacles and slot canyons are impossible to descend without leaving an anchor behind. Did these suddenly become illegal to visit?

9) Classifying fixed anchors as illegal will destroy a significant human heritage of achievement. Certain climbing routes arguably represent the pinnacle of human possibility, standing as evidence of boldness, athletic ability, creativity and vision.  After the world heard of the Dawn Wall climb in Yosemite, many people came to see the place for themselves, like a shrine to perseverance and dedication. Others came to actually lay hands on the route and try it for themselves.  That’s just the one everyone’s heard of.  Multiply that by hundreds? thousands?, if you’re a climber or canyoneer, and you’ll have an idea of the number of inspiring paths though wilderness made possible by the presence of fixed anchors.  Defining these as ‘installations’ subject to removal will destroy these sources of inspiration for generations to come, for a benefit that this citizen sees as quite unclear.

In sum:

The Wilderness Act was never intended to prohibit fixed anchors, use of which long predated the Act and has nonetheless been subject to reasonable regulation ever since. Taking the responsibility for life-and-death, in-the-moment decision making out of the hands of a generally responsible user group and subjecting them to distant, uninformed, underfunded and overworked bureaucracy is a solution in search of a problem.  It will create others, some potentially deadly.  Fixed anchors are already subject to reasonable oversight.  Flipping the script to ‘presumed guilty’ from ’permitted unless otherwise found inappropriate’ is bad policy.  

Rob Dillonwrote:

*please crib, but don’t just copy/paste- there’s a bunch of my personal experience referenced

NPS:

I am writing to suggest some refinements to the proposed regulation of fixed anchors.  I first began climbing as a teenager, in about 1985, when I was taken up an (otherwise unprotectable) sparsely bolted three-pitch face climb.  This experience changed my life.  In the decades since, I have sought out precisely the values expressed by the Wilderness Act of 1964- primitive and unconfined, often alone- in remote and not-so-remote places, some of which are designated Wilderness.  Living for over half of my adult life next to the Mt. Massive Wilderness in Colorado, I spent many days exploring and climbing on the granite visible out the back window.  I was once caught out on a crumbling face, well above my removable anchors on a crack below, in an intense summer lightning storm swirling around the 250’ spire.  I drilled- by hand- a pair of quarter-inch bolts as an emergency descent anchor, and returned home safely. That climb (with a revamped, safer anchor) now affords people the opportunity to experience this terrain without fear of stranding.  It has not become overrun.  Despite an approachable difficulty grade, and publication in the local guidebook, the crag remains rarely visited and even the grass at the base shows little sign of human impact.  The rock-colored, camouflaged stainless-steel anchor is tough to spot -– “substantially unnoticeable” in the words of the Act-- even if you know where to look. In the many days that I spent there, I never saw a hiker wander over from the popular Windsor Lake trail a quarter mile away.  

 

I support the ambitions and effects of the Act, but I believe that a 180 degree policy reversal in the case of fixed anchor management is a misguided application of the intent of the legislation. Here’s why:

 

1) Fixed anchors are not ‘installations’ as per the intent of the Wilderness Act.  The Wilderness Act came along decades after climbing began in this country. It was promulgated by climbers and wilderness lovers who themselves had left safety anchors behind in order to experience wild places.  The Act was written to prohibit “structures and installations”, but these were clearly intended to refer to roads, motors, vehicles and aircraft- not bits of gear like a sling around a tree, or a cigarette-sized bolt in the rock.   These possibilities were known to the authors of the Act, and yet they did not exclude them, because they knew that fixed anchors are an integral part of the “primitive, unconfined recreation” that the Act sought to preserve.

 

2) The proposed rule change represents an arbitrary, capricious reversal of a functioning policy.  As a climber and wilderness lover, I have scrupulously adhered to the law.  I believe in the Wilderness Act, and during all my exploration I have never brought a power drill (or a snowmobile, drone, motorcycle, OHV or any other motorized tool) into designated Wilderness.  The law as written is an effective self-regulation.  If you have ever spent the time to pound a 3-inch hole in a rock with a hammer and drill bit (try it sometime!), you know that the decision to place such an anchor is not made lightly.  Every bolt I have ever placed has been the product of careful consideration.  This is a solution in search of a problem. 

 

3) The banning (or requirement of an MRA) for the placement or replacement of fixed hardware is a) unsafe and b) replaces personal, on-the-ground agency with an unwieldy, unfunded, and uninformed bureaucratic sledgehammer.   

a) Self-reliance is a fundamental tenet of vertical exploration, and the ability of a climber or canyoneer to safely assess and adjust the security of life-sustaining equipment cannot reasonably be entrusted to a distant clipboard-holder with a lengthy backlog of other priorities, much less one who knows nothing of the activity in question.  Placing obstacles in the way of updating critical hardware is going to get people killed, as the Park Service is doubtless aware after the 2013 rockfall death of a park visitor in North Cascades who was forced to descend a dangerous gully because NPS removed the bolted rappel route that avoided that gully in favor of a clean path down a rock rib.  Replacing of old, unsafe hardware must remain in the hands of users.  

 

b) Requiring precise preapproval of every piece of fixed hardware on new routes is unreasonable, unenforceable, and will stifle the creative exploration encouraged by the NPS mission.  It is simply not possible to foresee the necessity of each protection, belay, and/or rappel anchor on any route longer than one could throw a Frisbee.  Any such preapproval process must be timely, allow for judgment on the spot, and not subject visitors to bureaucratic second-guessing or penalties.  When I decided to climb a previously unvisited section of cliff in Yosemite Valley, I was pleasantly surprised at the number of bolts I didn’t need to ascend 900’ of new climbing on a blank-looking face.  But any answer to some kind of new-route application question would have been a wild guess, and I wouldn’t have wanted to feel like I had to take unnecessary risks in order to comply with that guess.

 

4) Quality fixed anchors prevent resource degradation.   I used to climb in New England, where a staunch local prohibition on bolts forced climbers and descenders to trample fragile clifftop ground cover in order to use trees for anchors.  That ground cover is long gone, the treeline has retreated many yards from the barren cliff edge as roots were trampled, and now there’s NPS-approved bolts along at least one of those clifflines anyway.  How much resource degradation happens every time a SAR helicopter flies through wilderness to pluck someone whose crappy natural anchor failed?

 

5) Reversing a functional and long-standing policy will make enemies of Wilderness out of a generally supportive and engaged user group.

My wife and I lived for a few years in Yosemite, where climbers have for years organized a parkwide cleanup called the Facelift.  Climbers have collectively removed thousands of pounds of junk, construction and road debris, and user-generated trash that far exceeds the impact of our user group because we value wild places and have a generally good relationship with land managers.  An ill-considered policy clumsily restricting the use and enjoyment of public lands for primitive and unconfined recreation is not going to improve this relationship or create future advocates for Wilderness protection.  

     Incidentally, in all of the many happy hours I spent lounging in El Cap Meadow admiring the view and talking to tourists, I never heard one complain about how that view was ruined by the presence of fixed gear on the cliffs.  Most of them couldn’t pick out a climbing party until they were shown where to look.  But all these barely visible climbers were attached to the cliff with the anchors that someone is trying to restrict in the name of…visual impact?

 

6) Adding these restrictions is an unfunded mandate that places even more burden on an underfunded agency.  NPS has a, what, 22 billion-dollar deferred maintenance backlog? And that’s the management agency that the average citizen can name.  How’s this going to work when the regulations are forced onto BLM?

 

7) Defining fixed gear as an installation will make criminals of casual users.  I couldn’t get that cam out. We had to retreat in a thunderstorm and left a sling.  The crack system on the new route ended and we had to swing over to the left off a nut.  We had to rappel into the ski couloir because the top was iced up.  The old anchor halfway down the canyon was swept away in a flash flood and we put a new one in. Are we now in violation of federal law?  If this unenforceable policy is actually enforced, how much time and money will it take to process the newly defined criminals?  Are there perhaps better uses of federal tax dollars than prosecuting climbers, ski mountaineers, and canyoneers?

 

8) Many formations, such as freestanding pinnacles and slot canyons are impossible to descend without leaving an anchor behind. Did these suddenly become illegal to visit?

 

9) Classifying fixed anchors as illegal will destroy a significant human heritage of achievement. Certain climbing routes arguably represent the pinnacle of human possibility, standing as evidence of boldness, athletic ability, creativity and vision.  After the world heard of the Dawn Wall climb in Yosemite, many people came to see the place for themselves, like a shrine to perseverance and dedication. Others came to actually lay hands on the route and try it for themselves.  That’s just the one everyone’s heard of.  Multiply that by hundreds? thousands?, if you’re a climber or canyoneer, and you’ll have an idea of the number of inspiring paths though wilderness made possible by the presence of fixed anchors.  Defining these as ‘installations’ subject to removal will destroy these sources of inspiration for generations to come, for a benefit that this citizen sees as quite unclear.

 

 

In sum:

 

The Wilderness Act was never intended to prohibit fixed anchors, use of which long predated the Act and has nonetheless been subject to reasonable regulation ever since. Taking the responsibility for life-and-death, in-the-moment decision making out of the hands of a generally responsible user group and subjecting them to distant, uninformed, underfunded and overworked bureaucracy is a solution in search of a problem.  It will create others, some potentially deadly.  Fixed anchors are already subject to reasonable oversight.  Flipping the script to ‘presumed guilty’ from ’permitted unless otherwise found inappropriate’ is bad policy.  

Beautifully written Rob! We are getting down to the wire folks…. 

biffy q wrote:

God forbid climbers actually practice leave no trace

Like it or not, no one actually leaves no trace, sorry to disillusion you. 

Does anyone have good language critiquing the non-wilderness component of the forest service draft policy? To restrict fixed anchors in places like that (for example, many crags in Catalina national forest or looking glass rock in Pisgah) seems particularly unfair and I suspect inconsistent with other forms of impact accepted in these areas. Thanks in advance. Scrambling to get comments in today. 

Edit: One more question. Does the NPS maintain a reading room where comments are stored and available for public review? I know the forest service has one here. 

I never climb in the wilderness so this doesn't affect me at my crags. Wilderness needs less people.

jake joneswrote:

I never climb in the wilderness so this doesn't affect me at my crags. Wilderness needs less people.

I dont use a wheel chair so we do not need wheel chair accessibility. The world needs more walkers.