Pocket Wall, will access ever be restored?

[Spragwa]

Bet you don't send Thursting Skull if it ever opens either...

[tomdarch]

Personally, I appreciate Wilson Francis's position. If there weren't people trying to preserve the forest in its natural state than human greed would consume it. Imagine a lumber company with as much passion for chopping trees as climbers do for climbng. Should their desires be appeased just because they have a loud voice?

But the question here is (should be?) impact on the living entities of the cliffline ecosystem. Climbers and timber extraction operations aren't even nearly equivalent. Climbers generate an impact on the ecosystem only as a side-effect of their actions, while timber companies intrinsically impact the ecosystem. So, no, timber companies shouldn't be listened to just because they have a (monetarily) loud voice. Furthermore, extractive industries are a short-term thing, while wilderness recreation is a 'forever industry' if done well.

The Red has definately experienced an overload of climbers in the past five years and the result is highly-impacted cliff lines. Climbers mean well, but it is a fact that we have adversly effected the cliffline ecology. Should this go on un-checked?

A big part of the problem is the concentration of climbers in certain areas. It will probably seem counterintuitive, but we could greatly reduce the impact at a lot of areas by expanding the climbing resources available (a.k.a. add lots more routes in the area). Expanding the number of routes in the Red will not cause more people to start climbing. Also, I've never heard of anyone NOT going to the Red because "it's too crowded at the crags." Lastly, having 3k vs. 2k routes won't attract more visitors. Because of this, adding more routes will simply disperse the climbers in the area, thus avoiding the damage caused by concentrations of climbers at many crags.

That said, it would be better if we had the resources to better maintain and 'shape' the bases of crags to mitigate whatever impact does occur.

All in all, while the popularity of sport climbing has increased climber activity at the Red, it has also reduced impacts to crack dwelling plants/bugs and also minimized climber activity at the tops of cliffs. Again, it's counter intuitive (and counter to Wilson's arguably intentionally ignorant statements) but sport routes impact the local ecosystem less than typical trad routes.

From a more global perspective, Do you think the preservation of biological diversity as superior to the climbing communities needs to have new routes?

Like I said above, I think that more routes would actually help to reduce the severe local impact from concentrations of climbers by spreading them out.

But on a more philosophical point, I think we need to do more of thinking of ourselves as one species among many. That means that we do 'deserve' to have an impact on the ecosystem. We don't 'deserve' to destroy it, but we have the same 'rights' as other species to push a bit. There's a fairly cool book called "The Botany of Desire" about how different species of plants "use" us to get what they "want". In the introduction to the book, the author talks about the struggle between grasses and trees on the American prairie. In a tongue in cheek way, the author claims that by producing food (wheat and corn) the grasses "used" us to defeat the trees in that ecosystem. We want wheat, so we cut down the trees and plant grass. The grass wins. Off topic, but interesting to me.

[Johnny]

WF is a fraud. Apply real science to his conclusions and you will see that he's akin to the Flat Earth Society. Bottom line is that he has no data and he extrapolated theories well beyond existing resource management fact. He's a zealot, but no scientist.
I wish he would put his energies into dismanteling the monstrosity of Natural Bridge State Resort Park. Talk about an impact! Chair lifts, hotel, sewage problems, severe impact by hikers, desecration of Natural Bridge itself. The list goes on. Now compare that to climbers' impact. Hmmm.....
I wouldn't waste my piss on that guy if he were on fire.

[rhunt]

I wouldn't waste my piss on that guy if he were on fire.

[captain static]

An appropriate quote from my personal comments of the DBNF Forest Plan:

The standards proposed for the management of rock climbing, rappelling, and bouldering on page 3-7 of the Draft Plan appear to be a furtherance of the current Forest Service practice of reviewing the approval of these activities and climbing routes on a case by case, route by route basis. This “micromanagement” of climbing activities has already proven to be cumbersome for the Forest Service to implement and very frustrating to climbers. Apparently, the Forest Service has considered a climbing route as a “trail” in the DBNF as a convenience that has allowed more options for management of the activity under the framework of the current Plan. As previously stated by this commenter, individual climbing routes are not trails and options for management would be broadened if the Forest Service would abandon this mindset in finalizing the current Plan. The following approach to evaluating rock climbing in the DBNF and the data produced by this evaluation should provide a basis for considering the impact of rock climbing and thus the need for management in a different perspective. The Bronaugh guidebook segregates individual climbing routes by area. Where several climbing routes are found in proximity along a continuous portion of cliffline in a specific location, the book gives this aggregation of routes an area place name (e.g. Military Wall). Where there are more than several routes along a specific area of cliffline, the guidebook provides scaled maps of the cliffline showing the various locations of individual routes along the cliff and where access trails are located. Thus climbers consider their activities by an aggregation of routes into areas that are associated with parking areas and access trails.

To put the impact of climbing on the Cliffline Prescription Area into perspective, I have used the scaled maps in the Bronaugh guidebook to estimate how much cliffline in DBNF is actually affected by climbing. Using the maps, the length of the cliffline was measured from end to end at nineteen different climbing areas within the Stanton Ranger District that have place names given by climbers. It should be kept in mind that while some individual routes may be closely spaced (e.g. only fifteen to thirty feet apart) spacing between individual routes can exceed one hundred feet. All of the cliffline shown on the maps was measured regardless of the spacing of individual routes, thus it is considered that these measurements provide a fair measurement of the cliffline affected. According to the measurements, the rock climbing documented in the Bronaugh guidebook affects approximately 18,835 linear feet or 3.57 miles of cliffline. In a workshop given by the Forest Service concerning making comments on this Plan, it was indicated that a cliffline width of three hundred feet was used to estimate the total area of the Cliffline Prescription Area. Without going into the details of the math, it is estimated that rock climbing activities in the DBNF affect only 3.57 miles of cliffline out of a total 3,058 miles of cliffline. Or from a land area perspective, climbing affects only 130 acres or 0.12% out of a total of 111,205 acres of Cliffline Prescription Area in the DBNF. Looked at in this perspective, the management of climbing on a route-by-route basis hardly seems justified and the management of climbing on an area basis would be more practical.

[tomdarch]

0.12% !?!!?!

Dang! This all comes down to the reality that there are deep-rooted prejudices against climbing. Most people believe that climbing is unacceptably dangerous, and thus a reckless, stupid thing to do. As a result we get things like this bizzare system of route-by-route approval (or non-approval, as the case is). What if hunting was covered by a deer-by-deer tag system? Bah!

Your 0.12% figure further reinforces my point that opening up route development would lead to reduced localized impact on cliff areas by dispersing climbers! Arrgh!

[captain static]

If anyone is interested in reading the full six pages of my comments on the DBNF plan send me a PM w/your e-mail and I will sned them as a Word attachment.

[the lurkist]

um, no thanks.