The Park Service Wants to Ban All Rock Climbing in Designated Wilderness

At midnight Mountain Time on January 30, the public comment period closed for two proposals from the National Park Service (NPS) and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) that would ban fixed anchors (bolts, pitons, snow pickets, slings) in America’s Designated Wilderness areas.

I’ve written a lot about and around this subject; so if you want a full treatment, read “New Wilderness Management Proposals Could Render Every Climb on El Cap Illegal.” But here are the three essential facts you need to know about the proposals and their implications:

1. Fixed anchors would be banned unless individually proven otherwise. 

By leaning into a clever bit of legalese, the NPS and USFS are trying to re-classify all “fixed anchors” as “installations.” Since “installations” are explicitly banned from wilderness areas unless deemed otherwise on a case-by-case basis, all fixed anchors would be banned too. This essentially inverts the formula that the NPS and USFS had previously used to manage fixed climbing hardware: Previously, climbing anchors were considered legal unless there was some reason (generally archeological or environmental) to disallow them; now climbing is illegal unless the park goes out of its way to decide otherwise.

As Erik Murdock, Interim Executive Director of Access Fund, told me several months ago: “If this proposal passes, all fixed anchors will be considered illegal until they are provided an exception. The wilderness administrator can provide that exception. But they may not if they don’t want to.”

2. This is not simply a problem for sport climbers.

The term “fixed anchors,” as defined by the Forest and Park Services, does not just apply to bolts. Instead, it includes all forms of permanent or left-behind protection. In addition to bolts and rap rings, it includes slung trees, stuck nuts, snow pickets, pitons, and any safety gear a climber happens to leave behind—even in retreat. A ban on permanent gear would effectively ban getting down off of thousands of cliffs and mountains around the United States.

To look at the potential implications of this, just look at North Cascades National Park, where anchors are banned in order (according to their website) to “preserve a wilderness experience that reflects a raw style of mountaineering in a range that has changed little since Fred Beckey made first ascents of now-popular peaks.” What that means, however, is that descending climbers are generally forced to avoid rappelling clean rock faces and instead descend via steep, avalanche-prone couloirs—and without the legal right to leave behind snow pickets as protection even if they deem it necessary.

3. Opposing the proposed ban does not mean supporting grid-bolting. 

The vast majority of climbers have historically been great advocates for wilderness spaces; indeed, climbers and climbing organizations almost uniformly agree that the placement of anchors—especially bolts—in wilderness ought to be overseen by land managers. But climbers think that anchors are compatible with the wilderness areas we have helped to create.

Lifelong rock climber and former Colorado Senator Mark Udall, for instance, helped bring federal wilderness protections to huge swaths of Colorado, including parts of Rocky Mountain National Park, and when he did so he considered climbing a legitimate use of that wilderness. For that reason, he has outspokenly opposed the NPS and USFS’s attempt to twist the language of the Wilderness Act to ban climbing.

In an article published by The Hill this past November, Udall wrote: “As the primary sponsor of the Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness and Indian Peaks Wilderness Expansion Act, I want to be absolutely clear: Nothing in those bills was intended to restrict sustainable and appropriate Wilderness climbing practices or prohibit the judicious and conditional placement of fixed anchors—many of which existed before the bills’ passage. I used fixed anchors to climb in these areas, and I want future climbers to safely experience profound adventures and thereby become Wilderness advocates themselves.”

And there you have it: even the people who created these wilderness areas are opposed to the USFS and NPS’s attempt to manage them.

You can read Access Fund’s guidance on these issues here.

Learn more about how you can support the Protecting America’s Rock Climbing (PARC) Act here

NOTE: The deadline for public comment period has now passed. But you can still support wilderness climbing by supporting the Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences (EXPLORE) Act, which is currently in congress and includes language overtly protecting wilderness climbing and fixed anchor use.

—Steven Potter