RED ROCK -- BOLT UPDATE

Gigette Miller wrote:We need more climbing rangers in Red Rock.

This might come across as semantics, but I hope you understand my point. We need more rangers who climb, we do not need more climbing rangers. We DO NOT want to have climbing "police." There is a difference.

We need some sort of climbing law, and order in Red Rock. Otherwise we'll have more Unaclimbers splitting the climbing community.

Gigette Miller wrote:IMO.. since the growing popularity of climbing, and the number of climbers having skyrocketed, climbers can no longer "police themselves" like some would like to believe they can.

So would you prefer to have "climbing police"?

But I completely disagree, climbers, and climber groups can police themselves. It happens all over the country. I think Greg wrote about what that means well in an earlier post.

But really, if you don't think climbers can police themselves, then take it upon yourself to keep the community at large aware of problems that need to be fixed. If individuals don't have the time, then maybe the local climbing organizations should take responsibility. Please don't pass the buck to the BLM. As a group, if someone shits, one of us/or all of us should clean it up, it is our shit.

Oh access fund, where art thou?

Jed's not a climbing cop.

Unaclimber? I am unaware of who or what you are talking about. Enlighten me?

Gigette Miller wrote:Jed's not a climbing cop.

Great, then I agree, let's have more Jeds!

Unaclimber, we had one of those up in our parts, he is in jail now. Oh ooo.

But yeah, that guy sounds a little off... doesn't seem to have socialization awareness, etc. There will always be nut jobs. But I would rather have him around and tell him to STFU, then have to listen to a climber ranger 'school' me in climbing rules and regulations.

Don't get me wrong, I have met very wonderful rangers in different agencies that treated and treat climbers wonderfully. The Black Canyon come to mind. However, I have seen the weird and sad side too. Devil's Tower comes to mind. The thing is that it is too much of a crap shoot, and IMO is the wrong road to head down.

Fair enough, John. If it is true that climbers can police themselves, even with the rampant growing number of climbers, and the intense personalities that come with our beautiful sport, then more power to them/us. Only time will tell the real damage.

killis wrote:We're having mild growing pains as the next wave of canyon multi-pitch sport and mixed routes go in on rappel.

Well, count me in with the gulley thrashers when I'm in town. Pretty much says it all other than, killis, the tone of all your posts speaks volumes - what a dick. You'll make a great rep for the community down there and I'm sure the BLM is already wildly impressed by you.

And as far as the sport walking limit conjecture, there's a large free-standing block with a square, recently bolted face at the base of Wilson on the approach from the First Creek parking that stands as a bold and noxious contradiction to that notion.

All in all, it looks like protecting an open boltfest in the canyons is what the 'new' LVCLC is actually [nervously] all about under the noble guise of 'less regulation' - good luck with that. If it comes to sieging the canyons the BLM will be getting my vote for way more regulation - not less.

Killis, I may be a gulley thrasher as well but I do get offended when you describe me as monkey boy. Can you try to be a little less off-putting? Also, I bet you could say twice as much with half the words - try being a little less verbose!

Oh great Killis is back :(

Wasn't it nice to have the past 4 pages not filled with stupid ass comments from Killis?

Can the climbing community police itself?

Only if two conditions are met, I think. First, there have to be enough of us around to do the policing. Why is the BLM so ineffective at policing its climbing regulations now? Because they can’t possibly hire enough law-enforcement officers to patrol the canyons looking for climbers placing bolts. They can hire enough officers to enforce the loop road closing time. And their ability to police illegal camping falls somewhere in between.

In order to enforce any kind of climbing/bolting/bivying regulations in the canyons, the BLM is going to need the help of climbers (and maybe hikers), because we are the people who are actually out there. So far they don’t have that help, and that must be one of the motivations for revising their wilderness management plan.

The other condition it will take for climbers to police themselves is for the vast majority of us to agree that some common value is at stake. It’s going to be tough for us to come to a really clean, clear consensus on the bolting issue. I think it’s pretty safe to say that most climbers feel that the BLM’s “no new bolts” policy goes too far. Our lack of policing all these illegal bolts should be taken as a sign of our consensus that the BLM went too far.

Keep in mind, though, that from a BLM point of view the climbing community has failed to police itself.

But it is an uneasy consensus. I’m sure most of the people placing illegal bolts are making some effort to be discrete – you can’t just trust that all of the other climbers around are going to keep their mouths shut. In contrast to the occasional mumblings of “bolting is civil disobedience”, we don’t see anyone placing a bolt and then phoning in the BLM while a bevy of climbers and the media looks on. It’s more akin to driving 5-10 mph above the speed limit – you can get away with it as long as you don’t cut right in front of the other drivers on the road.

So where will the climbers in Red Rock draw the line? Clearly, many people are comfortable with having sport climbing areas inside designated wilderness. Sunny & Steep is very popular, despite the walk in. In Red Rock, it seems pretty clear that retro-bolting is also pretty widely tolerated, although you do hear some grumbling about this. It takes something at the level of adding bolts to popular, classic, heavily used routes like Cat in the Hat or Olive Oil before people are actually willing to act.

Maybe we do have a consensus after all? It would appear that the majority of us believe that “anything goes” (or just about). It’s not that we aren’t policing ourselves, we just don’t see anybody doing anything we consider wrong. Wilderness designation is irrelevant, climbing is just climbing. There is nothing back in those canyons that we value above what we can find at the First Pull-out.

Or at least, there is nothing that we value where any amount of bolting would make a difference.

But wait … maybe we have this backwards? Maybe we should be looking at all the new routes that are being done without bolts? Could it be that the majority of people doing new routes in Red Rock are eschewing bolts? Of the new routes that have used bolts, how many are sport-bolted (i.e. no trad gear needed)? Maybe the consensus is actually ….

But no, there isn’t really any consensus. We don’t agree on bolts, we don’t agree on what makes the canyons valuable, we don’t have a clue what non-climbers might value back there. We are only able to take action (i.e. police ourselves) where someone does something so extreme that we can come to rare agreement. We are unable or unwilling to draw lines and ask people to stick to them. We aren’t policing ourselves. At least, not in Red Rock.