bolt removal @ Lake Tahoe

[Barnacle Ben]

For whatever it's worth, the 9th Circuit (which affirmed the decision) gets reversed more than any other Circuit. But it's hard to see this one getting reversed, let alone reviewed, by the Supreme Court.

"According to Washoe lore, Cave Rock was a sacred place where tribal elders communed with powerful spirits.

The Access Fund maintained the ban was unconstitutional because it gave a religious group exclusive control over public property."

[pigsteak]

If this were a judeo-christian sect doing this (or the mormons), we'd have saxman, shamis, and caribe frothing at the mouth to show the ridiculousness of the religious nut jobs...

where ya at, venomous raptors?

[krampus]

its white man guilt piggy, deal with it

[Shamis]

If this were a judeo-christian sect doing this (or the mormons), we'd have saxman, shamis, and caribe frothing at the mouth to show the ridiculousness of the religious nut jobs...

where ya at, venomous raptors?

I'm still not entirely sure if I think putting hundreds of bolts into a crag is ethical or not.

[charlie]

Haven't been there, haven't spoken to anyone involved in the conflict, have no opinion.

[Evan]

Nothing like performing your sacred ceremony to the din of 18 wheelers and Harleys whizzing by at 80mph.

Exactly, I always found this kind of strange why the climbing is bad mojo but the highway is fine. In my opinion, its not a loss to climbers to go another 10 minutes or so to Lover's Leap but maybe Cave Rock was a good sport location. I personally didn't ever want to climb over/by the highway.

[michaelarmand]

If this were a judeo-christian sect doing this (or the mormons), we'd have saxman, shamis, and caribe frothing at the mouth to show the ridiculousness of the religious nut jobs...

where ya at, venomous raptors?

Yeah, where are the anti religion zealots? My opinion is that if land is designated "public" then no goups should be excluded. There are obvious limitations to this, but climbing is very low impact.

Take the red for example - as a climber I don't feel we "own" the land. I'm pleased to see hikers, bird watchers, even rappelers, etc out. I don't mind those digging for artifacts either. What I do mind is the atifact diggers acting as if they own the land by indefinitely closing parts of the cliffline down. Public land should not be monopolized...

[michaelarmand]

Politics really has no place in land access...but that is what this is all about. Remember all the bickering about the Scouts gay leader policies? Well since then they have been getting off a lot of public land/facilities.

http://www.bsalegal.org/boy-scouts-of-a ... go-212.asp

http://www.bsalegal.org/access-to-gover ... es-223.asp

So if the scouts can't use then because they are a "religious" organization, they how can we let an Indian tribe control public land?

[Snowpuppy]

There are other places for example Devil's Tower where there is time set aside for the native americans to come and have their religious worship, prayer ceremonies, etc -I'm not about to intrude on someones worship practices (c'mon how would you like it and alot of the "turons" that come through the area will remove sacred objects and prayer bundles-and that's not right either). I myself am all for that for they were here first and it was the arriving "settlers" that took their land to begin with (the native americans never believed in the begining that anyone could own the land-but you can thank the arriving "settlers" for teaching them otherwise-for the native americans are unfortunatly still considered a conquered people).

It does boil down to it is a shame to loose a place to climb and that the appropriate parties weren't able to be contacted and maybe something "worked out" to where it was a win-win situation for both.

[Rollo]

makes me want to blow the whole thing up...