RRC Archives

I always thought the purpose of the gate is to hopefully educate the large number of transient climbers that come through. Many of them never read the kiosk's, and have absolutely no idea of what the RRGCC is and what it does. I can't tell you the number of people I've talked to while climbing that climb at the gorge regularly that had no idea about the RRGCC. I thought the gate was a good idea to educate those climbers. Once the sign is installed, i think the gate will be a great educational tool.

Fact of the matter is, WE DON'T OWN IT. and we won't own it until we can come up with another $112,000 (approximately). not only do we have to come up with that rather large chunk of money, we have to do it in THREE YEARS. so that's the bottom line.

if you can think of better ideas of educating transient climbers and increasing donations, i'm sure the RRGCC would be happy to hear them. There was a BOD meeting scheduled for March, but that conflicted with the Reunion. They are currently working on rescheduling. You can send suggestions to the BOD directly at http://rrgcc.org/contact-us/ or come to the next open meeting.

charlie wrote:Word to the WD 40, and what Bill said.

Clevis Hitch wrote:.......So we all agree that the gate can be directly interpreted as a veiled threat of imminent closure unless climbers realize that "freedom of the hills", aint free..........

I do not agree with that statement. The intention was simply to raise awareness of the efforts going on. Those efforts are going on whether people are part of it or not, but it's still important to make those efforts known.

If people feel like they want to assist, great. If people feel threatened, that's between them and their conscious.

What does that mean exactly? Between them and their concious?

Clevis Hitch wrote:.....If something was going on in the Red once a month you'd raise more money.

I look at the numbers, and I can tell you that ain't the pattern.

Please explain?

More events is more work. More people involved is more work

. Actually more people involved in the work means less work per person so I'm gonna say that that statement is false

None of this happens without a certain amount of management and direction. Team management and defined direction isn't something that happens magically without effort. If I could dedicate 40 hours a week to working for free and managing everyone's suggestions and communicating everything that's going on behind the scenes and organizing events I probably would and we might stand a chance of raising more money. Sadly, I work more than 40 hours a week at the gig that pays my rent. We all do.

Its not that the efforts aren't appreciated, It's the exclusionary part of what you are saying.

I can't tell you how many events we've lost money on. That money we lost was almost always donated by BOD, the big givers we always have, and the event sponsors, but these events don't always make money. Our margin is usually pretty low unless it's a huge event

.So plan more huge events. Or appoint a commitee, get more people involved

Think what you want the BOD isn't a lazy group of idiots

I havent resorted to name calling, so don't start it up and act like I called anybody an idiot. The biggest name I used was elitist and now you're taking it out of context, nice

(how's that for elitist)? We get a ton of stuff done and have no shortage of ideas of what else we'd like to get done. Maybe we don't communicate as well as we should

Read; we are a shadow organization that operates behind closed doors and we have a kool kids klimbers club and you aint in it!

, maybe we could sacrifice more of our time and effort to do more stuff and help other people do more stuff, but that just means we burn out quicker and we all do have lives outside of the RRGCC (or we used to). Not that continually defending our actions is really anything we have to worry about.

That sounds like sarcasm, tell me I'm wrong. Sarcasm is the weapon of choice for an unarmed man.

We as an organization hesitate to take on any more responsibility, and rightly so. We've bit off more than we could chew too many times in the past and that not only sets a bad example with poorly organized tasks and events, it really burns those of us out that have been doing this for more than a minute.

So stop being so exclusionary and allow more people to participate. Quit being so secretive.

Clevis Hitch wrote:.The CC has enough of an elitist aire about it as it is without more gates going up.

Funny how I haven't heard that in years from anyone else. Most everyone I talk to thinks we're all pretty friendly.

You know what, you have sycophants whispering in your ears. Watch what happens later in this thread. I'll turn into an out and out character assasination effort by the troopers. I'm not trying to tear up the efforts of the CC. I'm trying to help you see how you are percieved by everyone else not just the ones who give you cuddos.

Look at it like this. The CC was formed to preserve climber access. Big hoopdi-doo with the FS. Access was preserved. Then they bought land. All of a sudden that land gets closed and the CC elects to put up a gate going up to drive-by to keep climbers from driving to a crag that they own and then to add insult to injury they actually put the gate up to preserve oil worker access! So let me get that right, The CC bought and installed a gate then gave the keys to the oil company to preserve their access? Thats not what I thought the CC was about.
Another case in point, Torrent Falls. Access issues, Predident of the CC purchases it. Keeps it closed, then errects a gate. Opens it to the Kool Kids Klimbers club. I bet you and every member of the board has a permanent access code to torrent while it is closed to the constituancy. Look, its Bobs land, he can do with it what he pleases. It looks elitist to shut it down for everyone but the Kool Kids and then say that you are the president of the climbers coalition who is dedicated to preserving access. So you in good conciousness could go to another land owner and ask for access for climbers and you wont even allow unfettered access to your own land. At best its disingenious and at worst hypocritical. Then now we have a gate popping up in the S.R. where access wasn't a problem. Do we have a CC authorized closure to look forward to?

wtf?

i think posting contributions motivates. it's all about the numbers right?
maybe just grouped in ranges. that the idea doesn't get broad support shouldn't be surprising, plus it rewards those who make sacrifices.

I've never been psyched to post donation amounts, especially when some of our biggest allies throw effort at us instead of money. Also, that involves a lot of record keeping that involves a lot of effort, especially when someone gave a check to someone and for some reason it doesn't make it to the list. We get a lot of help that doesn't come in the form of a check. I may be wrong, but it never really seemed like a good call to me.

Clevis Hitch, dude, my point was simply we can only get so much done. I didn't mean to insult you if that's what you're getting from this. That was not my intention. I'll just move past what might be considered unfriendly words in your post because I like to believe everyone deep down wants to be nice.

Yes, more people spreads the work out and in certain situations more gets done but we aren't making widgets in a factory. Most of our challenges involve coordinating efforts and communicating, or fixing the miscommunications when a lot of stuff is going on. It's a lot about herding cats. Well intentioned and productive cats, but one person doing this while another person is also doing that and neither of them know they're working on the same thing isn't terribly productive. It's largely about working the balance between the coordinators and everyone that wants to help. I speak only from experience here but we've been doing this for a little bit. That's what I mean about biting off more than we can chew. Of course, having more psyched volunteers than you can manage isn't a bad problem to have.

So, planning and organizing events isn't the easiest thing to do. Granted, we have a ton of people helping and that's the only reason we ever pull it off, but ask any of these people and they'll tell you it only gets easier because they were involved last time. All this stuff takes some coaching, I'm just trying to say it's important to not dismiss the amount of effort involved in coordination before we even get to the event date.

Say we plan a big event that happens same weekend as an SCC event, or the Red River Rendezvous, or Memorial Day, or whatever and nobody shows. Or everybody shows and we piss off some other organization that's on the team because it looks like we're competing. You'll notice most of the big events around the SE are staggered like that. There are a lot of things to consider, not to mention we do actually like to take a few odd weekends a year for ourselves. I'm not saying it's not possible, just that it's pretty hard to pull off more than we do already in a calendar year.

These events also take a significant amount of cash to put on and not everyone wants to pay to attend anyway. We've always been challenged by the "why should I go there and pay when I could just hang here for free." Profit wise, it's always a gamble, but we're getting better.

I'm not going to talk about Torrent, since I haven't climbed there in over a year but I have spent more than a few weekends in that time frame working there on RRGCC business. I'll let Bob speak to that if he chooses.

I can talk to you about the Driveby thing off line if you want but I have no problem defending that action at the time. The road was effed and the oil workers were having trouble getting up there because of the traffic and how bad it had gotten. They were also a bit annoyed by some gates that had been damaged by climbers a bit earlier so they pro-actively checked with us. The good will we got from that action is not to be underestimated. That was pretty much the turning point where they started working with us and I think everyone is happier since they started working with us.

Maybe there are people out there that hate us. I'm not stupid enough to think we can please everyone. If character assassination is what you're interested in all I can do is let my reputation stand. If people think I should step down and they can do a better job as President then don't think I'll be anything other than relieved to not have to worry about this stuff any more.

the rrgcc is just not elitist. 'opening' it up is a euphemism for doing more of what you want. if you want to do something then do it. if you need other people's help with an idea or project, why blame it on the coalition?

an obvious point but it seems to come up. some people know how to get stuff done, the rest is not their fault.

How petulant, I ask a couple of questions. Your response is that I am attempting to assinate your character all the while dismissing the actual questions with "I'll just move past what might be considered unfriendly words in your post because I like to believe everyone deep down wants to be nice"
How about a response to the questions I asked or are you just going to bury them with long posts hoping that people lose interest? So how about the questions I asked?

Clevis. You are now in charge. Answer your own questions. And here's one: Why should I give you money?

Because I'll put a gate in your front yard as a precursor to shutting you out of your house unless you come up with some money.


see my point

that's mighty Goldman Sachs of you.

Was there a gate installed, or a straw man?