Trees Cut down at base and mid route Necedah

Went out tonight for a quick romp up Eagle Rare at Petenwell tonight. Initially thought it looked weird and was shocked to see the tree at the base freshly cut down and also trees mid route. Upset is an understatement. I am a local here and myself have done trail maintenance where trees have fallen over the path and cut them away to prevent more unnecessary trails from forming.

This however is too far. There was ZERO reason for these to get cut down. They were in no way in the way of the route or a hazard of any kind. I climbed this 2 weeks ago with my son. This property is a place we have the PRIVILEGE to climb. This is a prime example of self entitled people who give zero cares. Shit like this can become a major access issue. This isn’t Colorado or even Minnesota where climbing is recognized as a use of outdoor recreation.

A big part of me hopes I’m wrong and someone from the WCA had permission to do so. Please correct me if I’m wrong. 

Ive been seeing this at a few other locations in WI. Cutting down trees for your own personal climbing is just plain entitled 

No, the WCA had nothing to do with this - the WCA only does projects in coordination with the land manager.

This is a route with a couple of hundred ticks (so probably over a thousand ascents), so actually pretty well-traveled without anyone else feeling the need to remove those pine trees.

Taking it upon yourself to cut down trees is a real problem for access - some of us remember the uproar over climbers cutting limbs from trees at Rattlesnake Point in Ontario - this was national climbing news in the 90s.  That is part of the reason we are still fighting to regain access to our Wisconsin State Natural Areas.  And honestly, if every climber sees fit to "relandscape" (removing plants, soil, and rearranging landing/staging areas) rather than accept the terrain as part of the challenge, then the WDNR is probably right to consider climbers a threat to our natural heritage.

Rise to the challenge.  If you don't really enjoy a particular route because of the trees, move on to another route.

Seeing that this is somewhat on topic, what is the ethics of removing moss, not lichen, from rock to make them climbable?

My personal recommendation would be:  only the absolute minimum you need to make a specific hand/foothold work.  There are probably rare mosses out there that shouldn't be touched, but I wouldn't have the expertise to tell you which ones.

Edit to add:  I have had a well-respected DNR naturalist tell me they aren't particularly worried about mosses, because they mostly grow pretty quickly, but still... exercise restraint, and enjoy the natural cliff environment.

I know where these trees are/were... This is really unfortunate.

This is a shame and behavior like this ABSOLUTELY can affect our access to areas where rock climbing isn’t exactly a sanctioned activity.

I’ll play the other side here just for the sake of discussion. Doug and Burt, you guys absolutely know how much work and alteration to the natural environment it takes to actually develop a route and make it climbable. And most climbers never notice the evidence of efforts like that. To them, the norm is no vegetation on climbs and clean rock right?

If you were to think forward 10 years, would those trees have become troublesome for that route?

There’s a number of routes around the Midwest that become functionally un-climbable because of a tree in the way, when in the past they were very popular. Birnam Wood at Devils Lake is a fine example. If it wasn’t for the giant tree in the middle of the route, the upper finger crack would be great. Rebel Yell at Necedah has become a little dangerous because of how close the tree is. I fell off the end of the second crux and hit a few branches on the way down. Give it a few years, that’s a recipe for injury. Right now, if you were to take a lead fall off the crux of Son of a Great Chimney, you might get impaled. Same thing with L.S.D.

The popularity of those routes has drastically decreased lately. 

Eagle Rare is an awesome 5.4 at a wall at Necedah that mostly has hard routes. It would be a shame if it became dirty because people didn’t want to do any gardening.

As climbing grows the conservation efforts need to grow with it, but sustainable use of an area also prioritizes safety and ease of access.

I want to make it clear that I am not in support of rouge development efforts, but where is the balance? Is the right thing to actually never remove trees and allow things to overgrow?

Garrett Hopkinswrote:

This is a shame and behavior like this ABSOLUTELY can affect our access to areas where rock climbing isn’t exactly a sanctioned activity.

I’ll play the other side here just for the sake of discussion. Doug and Burt, you guys absolutely know how much work and alteration to the natural environment it takes to actually develop a route and make it climbable. And most climbers never notice the evidence of efforts like that. To them, the norm is no vegetation on climbs and clean rock right?

If you were to think forward 10 years, would those trees have become troublesome for that route?

There’s a number of routes around the Midwest that become functionally un-climbable because of a tree in the way, when in the past they were very popular. Birnam Wood at Devils Lake is a fine example. If it wasn’t for the giant tree in the middle of the route, the upper finger crack would be great. Rebel Yell at Necedah has become a little dangerous because of how close the tree is. I fell off the end of the second crux and hit a few branches on the way down. Give it a few years, that’s a recipe for injury. Right now, if you were to take a lead fall off the crux of Son of a Great Chimney, you might get impaled. Same thing with L.S.D.

The popularity of those routes has drastically decreased lately. 

Eagle Rare is an awesome 5.4 at a wall at Necedah that mostly has hard routes. It would be a shame if it became dirty because people didn’t want to do any gardening.

As climbing grows the conservation efforts need to grow with it, but sustainable use of an area also prioritizes safety and ease of access.

I want to make it clear that I am not in support of rouge development efforts, but where is the balance? Is the right thing to actually never remove trees and allow things to overgrow?

Love this response and the points you brought to the table. I’ll admit I was acting like an old curmudgeon when I saw the hacked down trees. Where is that line of acceptable removal of trees? And what route do you take, especially at the base where non climbers see it? Do we chop the trees in danger or just stick to the leader does not fall mentality? I fully understand route maintenance and development, but what scares me here is it starts on eagle rare, next thing you know the not so little pine on “little pine” get chopped off the wall. At what more do land managers take notice and we have another Gibraltar or the drama that surrounded Hillbilly 5ish years ago.

Way to turn this into a hell of a debate and get me really thinking. 

I could amend my previous statement with out issue.. kinda..  It's unfortunate that one person has been offended by recent tree removals at Necedah.  I am not totally against tree removal at the crag... i have done it in ways myself...usually branches only..  but in the case of dead trees... yes whole ones.

As a reminder, Necedah (and Hillbilly Hollow) are owned by the Department Of Transportation. While there are no rules against climbing at these places at the moment, we don't exactly have permission either. The access here is very much grey, and we should do our best to not jeapordize that. 

Trimming branches ocassionally seems fine to me, but removing full living trees is pretty lame. Based on the pictures and my guess as to where these specefic trees were, it's difficult to imagine you couldn't climb around them. Maybe they would be too difficult to navigate in the future, but instead of speculating what might be 10 years form now, let's cross that bridge when it comes. 

This is why locals should not share their route info, well, here, or anywhere else on-line.

This leaves the specifics of a few pine trees at Necedah far behind.  But Garrett asks “where is the balance” between acceptable cleaning and too much?  

Obviously there are a lot of different points of view on this.  Different climbers take different views, everywhere from “as close to zero impact as possible” to “chipping holds is totally fine”.  And it is crucial to understand that climbers are not the only ones with opinions that matter, since most climbing areas are on public lands.

Personally?  My preferences (biases) are pretty 1970s.  I learned to climb at the dawn of the clean climbing era, in a community and a place with a pretty staunch “trad” ethic – the Red River Gorge.  (We didn't call it “trad”, because this was a decade before “sport”.  We probably would have used the terms “strict”, “clean”, and “pure”.)

We wandered along the base of cliff lines, looking for places we thought might go (our “elders” wrote a skimpy guidebook that we used, briefly).  Our ideal was the clean on-sight with no falls.  We did not prepare routes, we eye-balled them and then committed.  We made an effort to steer around vegetation, and loose rocks were also avoided (and left in place).  Where we felt we needed to remove a small amount of vegetation (a last resort) we referred to it euphemistically as “gardening”.  Our word choice indicated that it wasn’t a desired part of our climbing experience.

Of course we didn’t always live up to our ideals, but the pure clean-climbing ethic was very widespread and the aberrations were rare enough that they weren’t really a concern for anyone outside the climbing world.  (There were also a lot fewer of us, which is another important fact.)

Most of the climbing you do at Devil’s Lake is on rock in its native state.  It hasn’t been cleaned of loose rocks (but what are the odds that someone won’t take it upon themselves to use a crowbar on Peter’s Project?) nor has a lot of gardening been done (the tree at the base of Birnam Wood has “jealously guarded” that spot since the 1970s, see the Widule and Swartling guide).  The rocks you see are essentially the same as the Stettners found in the late 1920s.  The big change in the physical landscape is the user trails.

Rappel-bolting and sport climbing popularized the idea of preparing routes before they had ever been climbed.  Now we “clean” routes – no euphemism needed!  The increased ease of making safety judgements, and the narrower bundle of skills required to enjoy sport routes brought a lot of people into the sport who weren’t previously all that interested – the climbing population doubled in the US.  Not long after that we had the development of climbing gyms and the introduction of bouldering pads.

These changes have left us with a sizeable number of climbers who frankly expect climbing routes to be cleaned and easily protected.  Many climbers are looking for an outdoor experience that is more like gym climbing and less like exploring an untouched cliff.  Do today’s climbers all assume that places like Devil’s Lake have been cleaned and prepared?

It might sound like I’m complaining.  I’m not.  I have enjoyed both trad and sport climbing, and I’ve helped open new routes using all sorts of tactics that span the spectrum.  We certainly didn’t clean either of the Half Dome routes before beginning (and I still tend to leave removing rocks or vegetation to others).  On Half Dome there was nothing to clean.  And I think it is hubris to imagine anyone else might climb those routes again after we did – why waste the effort cleaning?

Some people get frustrated that climbers don’t all agree among ourselves about the appropriate amount of route preparation.  We have much more diverse viewpoints on climbing that we did when I was a kid.  While my natural proclivities tend toward the trad, I’ve certainly learned to see fun sport routes where before I wouldn’t have seen anything.  I’ve personally benefited from a broadened perspective.

We don’t need to all see things the same way.  But we do have to figure out how we are going to accommodate each other’s views.  And when it is okay to act on your personal preferences.

When these two points of view (prep v. no prep) clashed in the late 80s and early 90s, we told each other that a good détente would be to simply let the first ascentionists dicatate how each route would be approached.  We would respect their “creative vision” (“problem solving” in the trad lexicon).  If you’ve travelled much, and for as many years as I have, you’ll realize that this détente is regularly violated, and always in the direction of adding bolts, cleaning, or relandscaping.  There is always someone willing to push the envelope farther in the direction of route preparation.  This is where the pine trees at Necedah come back in - someone decided that a thousand climbers before them were wrong, and their "vision" was right.

If we want to create room for all forms of climbing experience, our quiet anarchy (“everyone do your own thing”) is not going to get us there.  We’re going to have to actually organize a solution and draw some clear boundaries.  And the solution will have to involve land managers, and the myriad interests they represent.

If we want to stick with our laissez faire approach, then land managers will need to weigh trying to maintain areas in their natural condition versus allowing climbing.  They might need to take a tougher approach to bouldering, for instance, and shut down climbing in more areas that other people appreciate for their natural values.

Garrett, I don't understand this assertion:

sustainable use of an area also prioritizes safety and ease of access

I don't see that sustainable use has anything at all to do with safety (reducing the actual number of accidents) or ease of access (convenience)?

The easiest way for a land manager to reduce the number of accidents in a cliff area would be to put a fence around it ... which might actually increase it's sustainability as a natural area.

Don't invite the masses in and then complain about the tragedy of the commons. That makes zero sense. 

The thing is? Consumers have labeled gate keeping to be bad. What they mean is its bad for their consumption.

We need more gate keeping. Its very simple - don't talk about fight club, don't share your crags online to the thoughtless masses. You may not save the planet but you might save the trees, and the peace and quiet, at your climbing place, if only for another month, season, year.... 

Don't invite strangers into your living room. To hell with the charge of gatekeeping.

Cherokee Nuneswrote:

Don't invite the masses in and then complain about the tragedy of the commons. That makes zero sense. 

The thing is? Consumers have labeled gate keeping to be bad. What they mean is its bad for their consumption.

We need more gate keeping. Its very simple - don't talk about fight club, don't share your crags online to the thoughtless masses. You may not save the planet but you might save the trees, and the peace and quiet, at your climbing place, if only for another month, season, year.... 

Don't invite strangers into your living room. To hell with the charge of gatekeeping.

To play devil's advocate: 

And then when some chud inevitably adds it to the proj what then? If you do it yourself at least you have control of the information and can loudly establish norm, ethics, and guidelines. 

The way I see it some crags you can keep secret and some you can't. Half of MP knows about my crag I'm developing that I haven't published yet, and I don't mind because I intend to publish here soon-ish. But there are crags I work on also that hardly anyone knows about because I don't say shit about them. I'm skeptical there's a one size fits all solution. 

J W wrote:

That’s debatable, isn’t it?

If you're in the lower highway 4 climbing scene you know about them. If you aren't you don't. And considering that there's like seven of us, no one knows about them. Doesn't seem very debatable to me. 

Half of MP knows about my crag I'm developing that I haven't published yet,

You mean that PDF you posted for anyone to download?

I agree, its very hard to keep a secret that way.

Cherokee Nuneswrote:

... the tragedy of the commons....

I don't see how one person deciding to cut down trees is an example of the inadvertent overuse of our shared climbing resource.  You'd have to explain to me how this is even relevant?

On the other hand, it's heartening to see that I'm not the only who defaults to concepts from the late 60s and early 70s!

Garrett, some more fun trivia.  The Smith and Zimmerman guide (1970) describes Birnam Wood as "hidden by an egregiously foliated tree".  You could ask Dave Erickson about it, since he is credited with the first lead (he must have still been a high school kid at the time?).

Conditions on routes change, and popularity waxes and wanes ... and the two aren't necessarily related.  Widule & Swartling (1979) call the route to the left of Birnam Wood a "variation", even though they describe it as a completely separate route.  Nowadays we call that "New Light Waves".  There was a period in the 1990s when that had a TR hung on it nearly every time I saw it.  In the decades since, it hasn't been nearly as popular.  Conditions on that piece of rock haven't changed in a century, I'd bet.

Upper Diagonal comes to mind when I think about hazard trees.  Through sometime in the 90s or early 00s there was a big tree below/behind Upper D.  If you set up your rope poorly, and someone came off at the beginning of the diagonal, you could swack the tree.  It was also very obvious as hazard that you had to manage.  It required some extra thought - did that ruin the experience for some people?  

But then the tree died and fell over, leaving a jagged stump.

Discussions about how to manage that hazard included serious suggestions that we saw off the stump at the base ... but no one ever did.

Nowadays, of course, that's all gone and most climbers never think twice about it.

A little thread semi-hijack/ diversion. Doug, yes, the Erickson's and their friends did start climbing--and we're quickly very good at it--while still in high school, maybe even earlier for Jim---the Racine Crag Rats.

Back to the topic. Small trees on and near climbs do tend to grow over time--what happens with nature. As a result sometimes they do grow to become significant 'annoyances' and potential hazards, even to the extent of causing the climb to be abandoned unless 'remedial action' is undertaken. However, if any such remedial action is being contemplated, it should only be done, if it is to be done at all,  after consultation with and approval by the appropriate land managers or owners. This just seems to be common sense. Unfortunately there seem to be too many these days lacking that aspect of their thought process---and we all will likely suffer the consequences.

Doug Hemkenwrote:

Discussions about how to manage that hazard included serious suggestions that we saw off the stump at the base ... but no one ever did.

When it turned into just a spike of wood, I cut it flat with my hand saw. 

Also, good stuff here, and to the perps, please don't do any further damage...