Indian Creek dirtbagging is dead

Todd Rwrote: "Poop is another issue that is worth talking about"

Nobody gives a damn about plaques.  Who sees them?  Just the climbers.  Who sees shiny anchors,  chalk, and tat?  The ranchers, maybe, if they ever look up to enjoy the beautiful terrain above their cow pastures full of dirt and dung.

What sticks out is vehicles (especially the same distinct ones living there) and trash.  And feces :/

Let's knock off surface shitting and used toilet paper under rocks or blowing around.  At ALL venues. Fisher Towers had copious used toilet paper blowing around last weekend.  Fuckin shitty(,) people.  

Sprayloard Overstokerwrote:

Not even close.

Trite graffiti by chimps versus sacred art are not the same.

I'm embarrassed to be a climber when I see such cultural arrogance and ignorance.

Next you will equate "Joe loves Mary" carved into a tree with the Sistine Chapel and say that the only difference is age.

Sacred art.. there’s a humanoid figure on south six shooter with a squiggly dick coming out of it. Humans are humans. Some rock art is probably sacred, and some is proof that teenagers have always been teenagers.

Reading all your posts, you are the quintessential hypocrite. Bolts for me but no plaques for thee. 

If everyone used their real names and noted their location in their Mountain Project profiles, I expect our forum conversations would be kinder. I challenge everyone to edit more and push send less, we're all part of the same community. Yes, I'm a softie, but I'm also the eldest in my sibling order (oldest of 6!) so I'm obligated to post this.

EDIT: Signed... Anna Brown from Albuquerque, NM

Tony Danzawrote:

Sacred art.. there’s a humanoid figure on south six shooter with a squiggly dick coming out of it. Humans are humans. Some rock art is probably sacred, and some is proof that teenagers have always been teenagers.

Reading all your posts, you are the quintessential hypocrite. Bolts for me but no plaques for thee. 

It's really quite simple, friend, one impact/activity is entire legal and required for safe climbing.

The other is entirely ILLEGAL in every National Monument or Park.

When climbers do illegal things it endangers EVERYONE'S access, oftentimes in other areas where we are not see as responsible actors who can be trusted to comply with the law.

Why won’t hillbilly engage with my questions for them?

I spent an amazing two weeks in the creek after I graduated, sleeping in the sand and falling off the splitters. There was just one night when I got a little testy when a big party invaded our secret spot in the middle of the night. I was like, "can you camp anywhere else, there's plenty to go around!" The next morning we made amends and had breakfast together. They taught me how to do thumb stacks so I could try to get coyne crack. Then a rancher moved his huge water tub back upright. Somehow it had tipped over and nearly rolled over my tent since it was windy as hell. We all had a good laugh. That is my fond memory of creek life. Honestly not sure what all the drama is about. Be nice and leave no trace.

Cory Nwrote:

Why won’t hillbilly engage with my questions for them?

Sorry, but “former AF reps” are concerned with much more important and pressing issues to respond to a lowly AF member and MP admin. I hope that someday all voices can be heard and acknowledged equally. 

Yet another thread on MP down the drain like a junkie with money.

MP forums are in a sad state my friend, borderline waste of time at this point.

With the ravenous moderation, onX acquisition, and most importantly almost all the best characters leaving I hate to say it, but MP seems to be in its last dying breath.

Climbers killed Indian Creek a long time ago so most of this is flogging a dead horse but plaques and defacing the rock is narcissistic.

Anna Brownwrote:

If everyone used their real names and noted their location in their Mountain Project profiles, I expect our forum conversations would be kinder. I challenge everyone to edit more and push send less, we're all part of the same community. Yes, I'm a softie, but I'm also the eldest in my sibling order (oldest of 6!) so I'm obligated to post this.

EDIT: Signed... Anna Brown from Albuquerque, NM

I quite literally cannot. I lost a 16 year old OG account (brought over from climbingboulder.com) because of a meme that didn't even warrant a Facebook ban even during the aftermath of HRCs loss, and everyone was getting clobbered over there then. Since then if my name appears, despite numerous first ascents and route contributions it gets zooked like I'm Sarah Connor

What if we bring our own rocks from home?

J W wrote:

In addition to bestowing an epideictic thumbs-up on your pre-porcine-pearl of a post, I stopped by to suggest that we should use this as a route name. Full-body stemming, perhaps?

J W wrote:

Read that thru twice.  Very nice.  
although it appears to me that it is not either/or between Huxley or Orwell, but rather a phased evolution.  Orwellian book burning is preceded by fertile ground of the moribund, disinterested, non-readers.   Once ya got em stupid, keep em stupid.  And it’s axiomatic that you can’t fix stupid. 

That was a fine piece of writing but no thumbs up from me, JW.   

J W wrote:

Your conclusion may be valid, but perhaps you’ve misidentified the causes.

As I see it, epideixis and bots are the Scylla and Charybdis vexing this ship (and all others, for that matter).

The first could be fixed with a few lines of code. But try wresting heroin from the clutches of an active user. That little thumbs up seems benign enough. But it changes everything. And everyone. The digital digit didn’t invent empty virtue; it did, however, transform it into our chief commodity. 

The second could have possibly been dealt with a few years ago. Many of us called for early intervention. We were roundly dismissed as alarmists or crackpots. Now it’s likely too late. Not that there couldn’t be a coding solution (I lack the expertise to know whether it’s possible; perhaps it’s not), but that apathy abounds. It’s hard to motivate a herd when “Who gives a shit?” is the prevailing sentiment. Turns out we’ve got a serious bug in our wiring such that a malevolent actor can do just about anything to huge groups of people who lack sufficient motivation to resist. See: Human history, in its entirety.

In contemplating the slow decline of public discourse, of which this forum is but one outpost on a field of battle already lost, I’m reminded of Neil Postman’s observation that Huxley’s dystopian views of a moribund, listless society have proven significantly more prophetic than have Orwell’s. He was speaking about something slightly different, but his description is not inaccurate for what’s happened here. I trust the reader’s ability to draw the appropriate connection (which trust, incidentally, doesn’t conflict with the overall pessimism expressed in the rest of this post). Keep in mind, nearly everyone stopped reading long before this point. I’m not writing to them.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.”

What’s to be done? Who can say? I stick around because there are 20-30 people whose minds are so expansive, whose posts are so compelling, that I don’t want to miss what they say, for as long as they say it.

Also, I like pictures of rocks and of people climbing.

Once in a great while, a comment, even an entire thread, is simply beautiful, a meeting of hearts and minds crossing a gulf of time and space to say (as all art does) “You’re not alone. I, too, know what it’s like to be human.”

Each and every time this occurs I feel a swelling of gratitude for the reminder that when we’re at our best, we’re good, which is good enough.

While discourse may be in decline, the battle is definitely not lost. For me, filtering through the diverse opinions and mostly comical arguments about highly subjective topics, is whatI I value about social media.  I don’t believe that every post needs to be profound or even “on topic” to contribute to a conversation. Sometimes the random can take on initially unrealized meaning. I find embracing the absurdity of modern life to be far more palatable than dwelling among the uncertainty of a speculative future. 

I don’t think that anything needs to be done. I will always choose freedom and possible chaos over control and possible stagnation.

I too enjoy photos of rocks and climbers.

Daniel Shivelywrote:

I don’t think that anything needs to be done. I will always choose freedom and possible chaos over control and possible stagnation.

Here here

Between 2023 and 2025, Devin Finucane was charged in five separate cases with ten federal and state violations on southeast Utah lands. The charges included damaging natural and cultural resources, trespass on posted private property, littering, overstaying camping limits, and possession of controlled substances. Seven charges were dismissed pursuant to plea agreements. He entered guilty pleas to three charges, one of which was later dismissed upon compliance. He is presently paying fines for trespass and is under a one-year ban from all BLM lands in southeast Utah, including Bears Ears National Monument. These outcomes reflect a documented pattern of repeated violations over a two-year period.