While climbing is not necessarily dependent on the freedom to place bolts, in most areas climbing cannot be accomplished without some use of fixed anchors. Hundreds of this country's most historic, popular and challenging climbing resources are found in designated or proposed wilderness. The urgency of resolving the bolting issue in a way that protects both wilderness resources and climbers' ability to be responsible for their own safety cannot be overstated.
The Access Fund believes that climbers must become much more active in defending their traditional freedoms. The key to this defense is agreeing to give up a non-traditional freedom: the use of power drills where they are already prohibited. It is imperative that the climbing community recognize that power drills are illegal in wilderness areas, and comply with this modest restriction.
The Access Fund has devoted considerable time and resources to a broad-based, grassroots effort to influence climbing management policy, especially where it concerns the use of fixed anchors in wilderness areas. A report on our progress:
Working in Washington
Local officials from all the federal agencies that manage wilderness are waiting for direction from Washington, DC on bolting policy. In early February, Access Fund representatives, joined by American Alpine Club president Jed Williamson, met with senior officials from the US Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management in Washington to discuss fixed anchor use in wilderness and proposed climbing regulations. The Access Fund also met with environmental groups and with congressional staffers from key House and Senate committees.
In these meetings we learned:
National Summit on Outdoor Recreation
In April 1994, the Access Fund was proud to join the Outdoor Recreation Coalition of America (ORCA) in sponsoring the National Summit on Outdoor Recreation, a landmark event which brought together the outdoor industry, recreational and environmental groups, land managers, and other government officials to discuss crucial issues bearing on outdoor recreation.
Particularly important was the dialogue in the working group on fixed anchors in wilderness. Senior officers from the Park Service, BLM, and Forest Service joined representatives from environmental groups in questioning climbers' right "to climb anything that has potential" as well as the legality and appropriateness of bolts in wilderness areas. Climbers, represented by Todd Skinner, Mariah Cranor, Michael Kennedy, Kathleen Beamer from REI, Doug Scott (an expert on the Wilderness Act), Brad Udall and Sam Davidson, maintained that exploration and adventure are the core of the "climbing experience," that climbers should not be subject to restrictions on access that do not apply to other user groups, and that bolts are an appropriate use of wilderness.
Initially, no land manager or wilderness advocate would agree that any use of fixed anchors in wilderness was acceptable. But after two days of talk, the group drafted a "working paper" outlining compromise positions on wilderness management and fixed anchor use. This paper essentially reaffirmed the Access Fund's position: fixed anchors are permissible under the Wilderness Act; power drills are prohibited in wilderness, and the level of fixed anchor use which will be allowed should be determined on an area-by-area basis through wilderness management plans.
A Negotiated Agreement?
After the Recreation Summit the Access Fund, the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, and the National Parks & Conservation Association agreed to continue discussion of the fixed anchors in wilderness issue, with the working paper as a basis for negotiations. REI assumed a leading role in sponsoring these negotiations, and arranged a meeting in Boulder, Colorado on May 25. This meeting produced an improved draft of the working paper, and renewed commitments to find agreement on language which could serve as the basis for regulations. Any agreement on this issue will include the principles that fixed anchors, properly managed, are acceptable in wilderness, and that climbing should be managed by the same strict standards which apply to other uses of wilderness.
Status of Regulations
The Access Fund has stayed in constant contact with the agencies drafting new regulations of climbing in wilderness. These regulations are in various stages of development. The Park Service's regulations await final approval from Assistant Secretary of the Interior George Frampton. After Frampton's approval these regulations will be subjected to a comment period. Reportedly, these regulations affirm the essential role of fixed anchors as climbing safety equipment, and allow their continued use in national parks and national park wilderness under guidelines to be developed on the local park level.
The BLM's regulations have been drafted and are being reviewed by government legal counsel. Sources say that these regulations would prohibit bolts in all BLM wilderness areas; we do not know if this means existing bolts would be removed.
The Forest Service also has drafted regulations pertaining to climbing in wilderness, but further work is on hold pending a policy decision by the Chief Jack Ward Thomas. The Access Fund's Sam Davidson and Paul Minault met with Deputy Chief Grey Reynolds and Lyle Laverty, Director of the USFS Recreation, Cultural Resources & Wilderness Management division, in April. Reynolds and Laverty told the Access Fund that any agreement forged between climbers and environmentalists on fixed anchors in wilderness would assist the agency in setting policy and preparing new regulations.
What To Do Now
It is vitally important to keep pressure on land managers to make climbing policy which allows fixed anchors in wilderness. The Access Fund believes that any agreement climbers can enter into with leading environmental groups will advance this cause. Therefore we are continuing to negotiate with various environmental organizations, are maintaining regular contact with influential land managers, and are working to inject better understanding and more objectivity into the bolting issue.
Here's what you can do!