Worst destination climbing area to be a local?

Frank Stein wrote:

I have no reason to doubt Cesar Salad. I’m no geologist, but it is my understanding that Hueco is a type of rhyolite, pretty much impervious to water. However, it is also my experience that Texas Historical Parks will look for any reason to introduce new restrictions at Hueco. 

I formally lived in Las Cruces for a number of years and guided at Hueco during that time. Very much enjoyed stumbling on this discussion. The rock at Hueco is porphyritic syenite (I am an armchair geologist, full disclosure). It's an intrusive igneous rock, similar to granite. Hueco is a laccolith, magma that intruded the existing limestone in the area and then cooled and was exposed to the surface over time by erosion. I moved away around the time the new wet rock climbing rules were instituted but I thought they were bogus. Anyone who knows Hueco well knows how much choss is out there. It's kind of ridiculous to think rock is some static, inalterable feature. Of course we impact it by climbing on it. Not to mention what might happen when someone wants to establish a new problem or route... The horror! 

New staff have moved in at the park in recent years and they are younger and more internet savvy. My takeaway was that the park is paying attention to the online bickering that climbers like to engage in. There was always lots of wet rock shaming on Instagram from locals, and the park caught on and made it an official policy. In my time climbing at the park frequently, I saw a lot of "locals only"/territorial behaviors and I got the sense that the harder it was for traveling climbers to access Hueco, the better. The park put another new policy in place recently to purge people from the guide rosters. They changed the way guides have to pay for commercial tours (guides now pay a lot more fees to the concessionaires-annually and per tour) and made it so guides must take out at least one tour per year or lose their status and have to go through the training again. I'm not sure what the motivation was here, maybe just too much paperwork to keep track of all the people with guide certifications? Either way, I think the net outcome will be less commercial and volunteer guides and possibly increased prices for commercial tours.

All that aside, I actually really enjoyed being local to such a destination as Hueco. If you can navigate all the restrictions it's amazing how often you feel like you are out there completely by yourself outside of the peak season. I guess I am sort of guilty of enjoying the restrictive policies, ha! In addition, other climbing nearby offered great variations during the warmer months. Boulder at Hueco all winter (and spring and fall), sport climb at The Tunnel all summer, go get your ass handed to you by the brutal approaches and old-school adventure climbs in the Organs if that is to your tastes. I could see myself moving back to Cruces/El Paso someday, depending on how hard it gets to keep climbing at Hueco. 

For da nurds

Not Not MP Admin wrote:

For da nurds

Deez nurds