Similarly, as an active site steward, a board member of the Arizona Archaeological Society and someone who tries to be involved in as much as I can archaeologically speaking across the state, I have never heard someone use the phrase petroglyph hunter, nor have I ever heard someone refer to themselves as a petroglyph hunter. But I am glad Andy created an entire subset of people that do not exist to create a fantastical narrative of who else might have been involved in bolting the panel. In a google search of the term "petroglyph hunter" I found references to petroglyph panels with "hunters" but nothing referring to the phrase petroglyph hunter, apart from his article, which was somewhere in the middle of the first page I searched.
You have never heard of people stealing petroglyph panels? The Table Lands near Bishop had some panels stolen a few years back and the thieves went to pretty extensive efforts to cut out the panels. I wouldn't get so upset about semantics, you know what he was referring to right? Maybe petroglyph hunters isn't the correct terminology but surely you knew what he meant. I also wouldn't put this past environmental groups. I personally witnessed two people, a man and a woman from the Center For Biological Diversity plant trash and start a fire using used oil filters at Williamson Rock just prior to its environmental closure. How do I know it was them? They weren't very smart, they looked really nervous when we came upon them and the van they drove said Center For Biological Diversity on the side. Brilliant!
In a google search of the term "petroglyph hunter" I found references to petroglyph panels with "hunters" but nothing referring to the phrase petroglyph hunter, apart from his article, which was somewhere in the middle of the first page I searched.
Andy needs to stick to complaining about Olympic climbing and climbers that use Instagram instead of speculating on archaeology and creating made up groups to push some narrative about who he thinks might have been involved in bolting that panel.
Yes, there are a lot of hits for petroglyphs that depict hunters.
And hits for Chris Mansell, an author and "petroglyph hunter."
And the "petroglyph-hunting trio" of Magnus Tangen, Lars Ole Klavestad and Tormod Fjeld.
The author comes off pretty cringe and whiney, but that seems to be his thing, so no surprise.
It seems he could have just written a stand alone article about why it was not climbers and why the coverage is unfair and it would have probably been a solid article. Instead, his ramblings about archaeology (weeks long quests to build ladders, oh boy lol), sabotaging, bolting wilderness defenders and petroglyph hunters reads more like a mountain project forum than a newsworthy article, but I guess this is what we call climbing journalism, so maybe I am just not for it. And his whole "gotcha moment" of the article where he posted the picture he found through stalking someone's Facebook of a finger touching a petroglyph panel, lol pretty cringe stuff there. You sure got them Andy, they touched a petroglyph panel, therefore, they must be willing to bolt one, lol.
His theory that rogue "petroglyph hunters" bolted a panel to get a better picture is just comical and sounds more like a claim that would be made by some anonymous account on here. First of all, the majority of his "petroglyph hunters" are old timers and retirees, I do not think they are in the habit of placing bolts on easy 5th class terrain to get better pictures. He acts like any Joe is comfortable standing on bolt studs 15 feet off the deck to take a picture of rock imagery. Likewise, he dedicates a lot of words and paragraphs to explaining how it could have been "petroglyph hunters," or "Guy" only to finish up with saying, but I am not saying it was them.
Similarly, as an active site steward, a board member of the Arizona Archaeological Society and someone who tries to be involved in as much as I can archaeologically speaking across the state, I have never heard someone use the phrase petroglyph hunter, nor have I ever heard someone refer to themselves as a petroglyph hunter. But I am glad Andy created an entire subset of people that do not exist to create a fantastical narrative of who else might have been involved in bolting the panel. In a google search of the term "petroglyph hunter" I found references to petroglyph panels with "hunters" but nothing referring to the phrase petroglyph hunter, apart from his article, which was somewhere in the middle of the first page I searched.
Andy needs to stick to complaining about Olympic climbing and climbers that use Instagram instead of speculating on archaeology and creating made up groups to push some narrative about who he thinks might have been involved in bolting that panel.
Can you not call me Andy, please? I hate that name. Thanks
hifno
·
Jan 23, 2025
·
Unknown Hometown
· Joined Feb 2006
· Points: 25
Lee Chandler wrote:
Oh no, someone I will never know or meet thinks I am cringe :(
I love when people post their long winded opinion on a public forum, then later try to claim to not care what people think of their opinion. Why did you post it in the first place?
Damn dude I was just checking in for updates, this thing really went off the rails. Did the persons who did it get caught or is that not the point anymore?
The author comes off pretty cringe and whiney, but that seems to be his thing, so no surprise.
...
His theory that rogue "petroglyph hunters" bolted a panel to get a better picture is just comical and sounds more like a claim that would be made by some anonymous account on here. First of all, the majority of his "petroglyph hunters" are old timers and retirees, I do not think they are in the habit of placing bolts on easy 5th class terrain to get better pictures. He acts like any Joe is comfortable standing on bolt studs 15 feet off the deck to take a picture of rock imagery. Likewise, he dedicates a lot of words and paragraphs to explaining how it could have been "petroglyph hunters," or "Guy" only to finish up with saying, but I am not saying it was them.
Similarly, as an active site steward, a board member of the Arizona Archaeological Society and someone who tries to be involved in as much as I can archaeologically speaking across the state, I have never heard someone use the phrase petroglyph hunter, nor have I ever heard someone refer to themselves as a petroglyph hunter. But I am glad Andy created an entire subset of people that do not exist to create a fantastical narrative of who else might have been involved in bolting the panel. In a google search of the term "petroglyph hunter" I found references to petroglyph panels with "hunters" but nothing referring to the phrase petroglyph hunter, apart from his article, which was somewhere in the middle of the first page I searched.
I don't have anything against hyperbole or righteous indignation...but the third page of my google search "petroglyph hunters" did turn up the AZ Petroglyph Hunters FB group with 2.7K+ followers...from what appears to be your home state...and on the fourth page a YouTube video with 8.4K views on a YT channel with 306K subscribers that uses the same label. Several folks label themselves as fossil hunters, shed hunters, and a host of similar hunting-labeled pursuits that would seem to validate 'petroglyph hunter' as a viable epithet.
Honestly, any semi-positive media that might turn down some of the hate and blame local climbers have been getting over this panel is appreciated.
Noted and I acknowledge I probably could have found a more civil way to publicly say I disagreed with your article FWIW.
All good bro. I read your comment with the same attention to its content that you gave to my article so the only thing I actually gleaned is that you think my name is Andy. It’s not
All good bro. I read your comment with the same attention to its content that you gave to my article so the only thing I actually gleaned is that you think my name is Andy. It’s not
I enjoyed the article and found it thought provoking. Bisharat is one of the few (the only?) climbing writer willing to critically assess our sport, despite the blowback this occasionally earns him. If ´petroglyph hunters’ have thin skin, too bad :-)
I don't have anything against hyperbole or righteous indignation...but the third page of my google search "petroglyph hunters" did turn up the AZ Petroglyph Hunters FB group with 2.7K+ followers...from what appears to be your home state...and on the fourth page a YouTube video with 8.4K views on a YT channel with 306K subscribers that uses the same label. Several folks label themselves as fossil hunters, shed hunters, and a host of similar hunting-labeled pursuits that would seem to validate 'petroglyph hunter' as a viable epithet.
Honestly, any semi-positive media that might turn down some of the hate and blame local climbers have been getting over this panel is appreciated.
Well after Andrew's fair point that I did not read his article well, I will admit to giving it another look and I will say he clearly says something to the extent of petroglyph hunters probably not being an actual unified group, but a broad range of people interested in petroglyphs. He was clearly using the phrase for ease of writing and to refer to anyone who might have interest in that panel. I probably did not need to spend half my rant dwelling on the semantics of the phrase petroglyph hunter. I was on my phone and just googled the phrase out of curiosity; I don't have Facebook, or a presence on Youtube, so I could just be out of the loop on some of that stuff. I'll own it. I could have just mentioned some points of disagreement and moved on, or not commented and moved on. I can own that too. lol
All good bro. I read your comment with the same attention to its content that you gave to my article so the only thing I actually gleaned is that you think my name is Andy. It’s not
I am not sure why I read your article and chose violence. I will reflect on that. I have read through it a couple of times since. You did a fair job of describing people interested in petroglyphs and presenting an alternative scenario to how the bolts could have got there. I was just being tribal I guess. For me, its hard to imagine someone in the archo community doing that in the same way that most can't imagine a legitimate climber dong that bolt job I suppose. Either way, there is enough negative discourse out there and I did not need to contribute to it today, my apologies and I will own missing the point of your article. Truthfully, I only seem to ever come across negative takes about your stuff, so I probably entered into the article with a poor mindset.
I enjoyed the article and found it thought provoking. Bisharat is one of the few (the only?) climbing writer willing to critically assess our sport, despite the blowback this occasionally earns him. If ´petroglyph hunters’ have thin skin, too bad :-)
I admit I don't read enough climbing articles to realize that Andrew had a "rep" (i still don't understand what it could be). The article, though a little long, seemed to be well written & at least made an effort to dig a little deeper than the quick 2 min news nugget that blew up.
I was also interested in figuring out what the rest of the "climb" looked like because all we saw was 1 bolt beneath the petroglyph.
It just blows my mind that anyone, be it climber or petroglyph hunter or amateur archeologist, would be so disrespectful to do something like this.
I am not sure why I read your article and chose violence. I will reflect on that. I have read through it a couple of times since. You did a fair job of describing people interested in petroglyphs and presenting an alternative scenario to how the bolts could have got there. I was just being tribal I guess. For me, its hard to imagine someone in the archo community doing that in the same way that most can't imagine a legitimate climber dong that bolt job I suppose. Either way, there is enough negative discourse out there and I did not need to contribute to it today, my apologies and I will own missing the point of your article. Truthfully, I only seem to ever come across negative takes about your stuff, so I probably entered into the article with a poor mindset.
Thanks, Lee.That's a really nice comment and rare thing to see on a message board. Appreciate you.
MP
·
Jan 28, 2025
·
Unknown Hometown
· Joined Sep 2013
· Points: 2
hi andrew,
thanks for talking the time to share photos and write up your thoughts. i agree that this looks like some crappy effort by petroglyph enthusiasts to look at the art a bit more closely/safely, but who knows. People who self-identify as climbers like to believe that there is some obvious distinction between 'real climbers' and 'everybody else,' but the distinctions are often a lot more hazy. There are people who top rope at the gym from time to time and go do 3rd class peak bagging occasionally and like to look for petroglyphs who I'm sure would describe themselves as "climbers," even though the 'core climbing community' wouldn't agree with that.
In terms of the blame the climbing community has gotten-- i think part of the issue has been the degree to which internet news companies have to ruthlessly optimize the title and the lede to drive views; and the degree to which americans as a whole have gotten comfortable with imprecise grammar and diction, without really thinking about the downstream consequences.
Because of that, the factual statement of "BLM is looking for anyone involved in the installation of climbing bolts" becomes distorted into "climbers bolt 5.3 over petroglyphs," and we end up with all sorts of people talking past each other.
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