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You can preserve it and not allow anyone to use and enjoy it or try to reach a balance. Perhaps you have seen Yosemite Valley, John Muir's love, filled with grocery stores, restaurants, hotels, post office, roads and parking lots. Not to mention millions of visitors each year. Perhaps eliminating the human race is a decent option. Or perhaps just leave a few special climbers to run the planet.

ynp1 wrote:This fish is still swimming...

... A spiteful fish. With a bruised ego.

Good post there dustonian, love those quotes. A few more quotes come to mind:

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike."

"One touch of nature makes all the world kin."

To ynp1 and anyone who shares his views:
1. Criticism coming from a climber, aimed at a hardworking and generous provider of a fantastic natural area open to climbers, doesn't hold much weight.
2. Even if it did, it doesn't sound like you have read any John Muir. One half of his philosophy was reverence for nature - the other half was seeing the importance of people getting out into nature.
3. There are a variety of ways to accomplish that goal, a continuum of preserving nature and making it accessible. If you want to dictate how that is done, go buy some land. Then you will have authority to manage it. You might have a better way to manage Muir Valley, but you don't have Muir Valley.

ynp1 wrote:This fish is still swimming...

Building bigger parking areas so more people can come climb each day, shitters, soft grades, closely spaced bolts, radios, heli pads, and the list goes on...

And the fish swims on...

I suppose it's better to have everyone crapping on the ground. A nice mess with hundreds of visitors daily.
Subtract a couple of grades from the rating when you finish the climb. Ratings vary from area to area anyhow.
Closely spaced bolts? Don't use them.

Nice to see a few posts taking the other side on this as well.

the stairs look great, would be cool to use such an army to build trail, our little band of about 1/2 dozen does some amazing work but that would take us several weekends, one day wow! As you mentioned erosion will be hugely diminshed with those in place and less ground will be damaged in the long run by far.

Don't sweat the haters, no matter whatcha do someone will be pissed off about it. With such a purist attitude, I assume that guy bikes to the Gorge and is using his buddy's computer/electronics to submit his steaming pile er perspective in order to have no carbon footprint / ahdere to his ethics, when you throw stones you better not live in a glass house dumbass!

I climbed with the Purdue club quit a bit back in the day. They have always been a good bunch. Miss those guys and girls. Stairs are a great idea. I don't see any trade off.

Wow, looks great! I guess I can just find out when I go out there climbing again, but where is this new, main trail located? Maybe I missed another post that already said, but I'm too lazy to check.

Tucky,

It spits you out at the Valley floor across from the trailhead to the Stadium. I believe the start of it will be somewhere on your left as you go downhill towards the switchbacks from the parking lot but that's subject to change.

Looks great!! I remember looking down that drop-off last fall when crawling, scouting out the newly carved trail and imagining the stairs job ahead. Leave it to Purdue,,school of engineering I trust was involved in this effort?? Nice nice work! And for those who haven't seen the new trail, it is so very user friendly and scenic, through the woods. Cool and comfy in the summer, even a bit drier in a light rain too I suppose. Nice work guys!!