By Laura Snider
For more than a century, some of the biggest champions for protecting wild places have been climbers—explorers whose experiences on the rock and on mountainsides forged within them a deep and abiding love for the landscapes they traveled.
David Brower, for example, who put up many historic first ascents around the United States, was an executive director of the Sierra Club and early advisor to Access Fund. The North Face founder Doug Thompkins, who used his personal fortune to protect massive tracts of land in Patagonia, claimed early ascents of the Salathé Wall on El Cap and Fitz Roy, among others. Former United States Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, who has made a life and career out of connecting people with conservation and the natural world, has an accomplished mountaineering resume that includes an ascent of Vinson Massif, the highest peak in Antarctica.
The opportunity to climb in some of the world’s most spectacular landscapes continues to turn individual adventurers into committed conservationists and ensures that climbers as a whole support Wilderness protection and other conservation initiatives.
But that opportunity is currently under serious threat as the National Park Service and US Forest Service are working on new national-level guidance that may prohibit fixed anchors in Wilderness areas, which would amount to a fundamental re-interpretation of the Wilderness Act of 1964. In other words, the government would regard bolts as illegal unless federal bureaucrats provide special allowances for individual fixed anchors. At stake is not only the ability to safely climb some of the most iconic routes in America, from big walls in Yosemite and Zion to alpine spires in Rocky Mountain National Park, but also the potential erosion of climbers as Wilderness advocates.
Red Rock Canyon National Recreation Area, Nevada. Ancestral lands of Nüwüwü, Nuwuvi, and Newe Sogobia. © Andrew Burr
“When the Wilderness Act was being conceptualized in the 1960s, climbers and mountaineers were out exploring these wild places, and their experiences helped build support for the Wilderness Act,” says Access Fund executive director Chris Winter. “If climbers are no longer welcome in Wilderness, the long and rich history of climbers as vocal advocates for conservation will be undermined. We need an army of people to protect public lands, and it’s critical that climbers remain among those numbers.”
“If climbers are no longer welcome in Wilderness, the long and rich history of climbers as vocal advocates for conservation will be undermined. We need an army of people to protect public lands, and it’s critical that climbers remain among those numbers.”
The fight to protect bolts and other fixed anchors in Wilderness areas is not new. In fact, Access Fund has been leading this advocacy battle since the organization’s inception more than 30 years ago. Through its vigilance over the decades, Access Fund has been able to defend the position that conditional use of fixed anchors is an historic activity that is fundamentally allowed in Wilderness areas. This position has always included necessary restrictions, which Access Fund has largely viewed as appropriate, including a ban on power drills to place bolts in Wilderness. While challenges to fixed anchors in Wilderness areas have arisen over the years, the current threat is deeply concerning for its scope.
Language matters
The current threat to climbing in Wilderness first popped up in January 2022, and as is often the case with these things, it wasn’t announced with any sort of fanfare. In fact, for most climbers, it may not have been obvious that there was any threat at all.
The issue began in language used in a scoping document that outlined Joshua Tree National Park’s intention to create a Climbing Management Plan, in part to address negative impacts associated with an increase in park visitors, including damage to desert crusts, cultural resources, and desert vegetation. Access Fund and climbers in general have supported reasonable regulations to help manage our impacts, and many climbers’ first reaction was to support the broad concepts proposed by the park.
Joshua Tree National Park, California. Ancestral lands of Yuhaaviatam/Maarenga’yam and Newe Sogobia. © R. Tyler Gross
The problem, however, was that the document referred to fixed anchors as “prohibited installations,” and according to the Wilderness Act, “no structure or installation” shall be allowed in Wilderness areas, a designation that covers 85% of the park and about a quarter of the established climbing routes. Historically, “structures and installations” have been interpreted as buildings, fences, pipelines, communications towers, and the like—not climbing hardware. The language used in the Joshua Tree scoping document would upend 60 years of precedent that pitons, bolts, slings, and other fixed anchors are fundamentally allowed in Wilderness. Essentially, the park service was now saying they believed fixed anchors were instead prohibited by default.
“We were caught a bit off-guard,” says Erik Murdock, Access Fund vice president of policy and government affairs. “All of a sudden, without consulting any national park partners or stakeholders, the park is saying it now considers bolts and other fixed anchors illegal.”
The problem, however, was that the National Park Service was referring to fixed anchors as “prohibited installations,” essentially saying they believed fixed anchors were prohibited by default in Wilderness areas.
The shift to anchors being banned by default in Joshua Tree’s Wilderness could, at its core, make climbing less safe in the park and even result in the removal of dozens of routes in their entirety. Currently, one-to-one bolt replacement with a hand drill is allowed without a permit.
While any proposed climbing restrictions in Joshua Tree—with its thousands of routes and boulder problems—are a big deal in their own right, Access Fund staff were immediately concerned that whatever happens in Joshua Tree could set a new precedent for Wilderness areas across the country. It turns out they didn’t have long to wait for affirmation that their worries were valid.
Last June, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, home to gritty and adventurous multi-pitch climbs that wander up the tallest cliffs in Colorado, restarted its work to update how it regulates climbing as part of a larger Wilderness and Backcountry Management Plan.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Colorado. Ancestral Ute lands. © Brittany Hamilton
The draft plan, similar to Joshua Tree, treated fixed anchors in Wilderness as fundamentally prohibited—another domino was falling. Would Rocky Mountain National Park, home of the Diamond on Longs Peak, the Petit Grepon, Sharkstooth, and other classic alpine features, be next? Or Yosemite, where El Capitan is designated as vertical Wilderness after you get a couple pitches off the ground?
Marshaling support
Access Fund is not waiting to find out. The organization launched a vigorous response to the proposed Joshua Tree Climbing Management Plan, which included joining a half-dozen other organizations to protest the interpretation that fixed anchors are installations. It’s notable that the partnering organizations included The Wilderness Society and the California Wilderness Coalition, among other conservation groups, a testament to the long relationship between climbing and conservation.
Ultimately the response caused the park service to put the Climbing Management Plan on hold while they craft national-level guidance to clarify whether bolts and other fixed anchors should be fundamentally allowed, or not, in Wilderness. The guidance has yet to be issued, but signals on the Hill have Access Fund staff preparing for a fight, and in the interim, they are continuing to mobilize support for fixed anchors.
One powerful advocate for Access Fund’s position is Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who sponsored legislation when he served in Congress that designated the vast majority of Rocky Mountain National Park as Wilderness. The legislation was passed relatively recently, in 2009, long after climbing was well-established in the park. The intent of the law was never to restrict climbing.
Polis laid out this argument and others in a letter to the secretaries of the interior and agriculture dated December 5.
“I understand that the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service are considering a proposal to change the long-standing considerations and status of fixed anchors in designated Wilderness,” Polis wrote. “I believe this would be a serious mistake, and I urge you to ensure that this does not happen. … I am deeply concerned about the impact this would have on the ability to manage and designate future Wilderness areas, an effort we must continue to undertake in the face of climate change, impacts to nature and biodiversity and in efforts consistent with the administration’s own America The Beautiful initiative.”
While Access Fund marshals its supporters, it’s also pursuing another line of defense: a legislative fix. A national law that would enshrine the legality of fixed anchors in Wilderness areas has long been a priority for Access Fund. Last fall, Access Fund successfully negotiated the inclusion of language in the America’s Outdoor Recreation Act that would do just that, allowing for the responsible and sustainable use, placement, and maintenance of fixed anchors in Wilderness. The act has yet to pass, but it has bipartisan support and Access Fund and other outdoor recreation groups supporting the legislation are still hopeful that the bill could become law in the future.
An unnecessary change
Access Fund’s full-throated support for fixed anchors in Wilderness should not be interpreted to mean that the organization does not support limits on anchors—and climbing in general—in Wilderness areas. Climbers, and there are more of us all the time, have impacts, and there may be areas or time periods when climbing is not appropriate. However, Access Fund believes that the National Park Service, the Forest Service, and other agencies that manage Wilderness areas already have the tools they need to effectively manage climbing.
Climbers have impacts, and there may be areas or time periods when climbing is not appropriate. However, Access Fund believes that the agencies that manage Wilderness areas already have the tools they need to effectively manage climbing.
“Land managers are understandably struggling to deal with an increase in recreation of all kinds,” Winter says. “But we believe these agencies already have every tool they need—all the legal authority—to manage climbing. They can remove routes where the resource is jeopardized, they can remove fixed anchors if they are causing impacts, they can even close whole areas to climbing. There is no reason to reinterpret the Wilderness Act.”
As well, Winter points out that there are times when anchors actually aid conservation. For example, their placement can guide climbers away from more sensitive areas or lessen the erosion that can occur on descents. In fact, Joshua Tree itself specifically authorized fixed anchors in Wilderness to protect trees that were used as rappel stations. They can also reduce both the need for rescues—by making climbing and descending safer—and the impacts of the complicated rescues that are sometimes still necessary.
The fight will continue
As Access Fund waits to learn what the national-level guidance on fixed anchors in Wilderness will be, the threat continues to solidify. In December, just days before Christmas, the National Park Service approved the environmental assessment for the Black Canyon’s Wilderness management plan, which specifically defines climbing anchors as installations.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Colorado. Ancestral Ute lands. © Brittany Hamilton
The plan commits the park to reviewing all existing climbing routes as soon as possible to determine whether existing fixed anchors will be removed. It will also hamper the ability for old and unsafe bolts and anchors to be replaced, and make new route development unreasonably challenging to get approved.
While permit processes for bolting in Wilderness areas are not new, the elevation of a bolt to the category of “installation” means the bar for a permit becomes much higher and would require an onerous administrative exception process meant for activities that are illegal in Wilderness areas called a minimum requirement analysis (MRA). Instead of asking whether fixed anchors will create impacts to natural and cultural resources, an MRA process asks whether fixed anchors are necessary for the administration of the Wilderness itself. This high and vague bar would be subject to a wide spectrum of interpretation.
The gravity of the threat is one of the key points Black Diamond athlete Chris Schulte took away from a trip to Washington, D.C., in early December with Access Fund staff. Schulte, known for his bouldering exploits, has been climbing for nearly 30 years.
“I found myself up there realizing this is a big deal,” Schulte says of his time on the Hill. “I walked away with the realization that I want to be more vocal and share this information with other climbers, in social media and in presentations. This could be dire, and I want to help educate people.”
Schulte’s entrance into climbing in the 1990s in Durango was driven first and foremost by a desire to get out into stunning places—to be a part of the landscape—and he has an appreciation for the early explorers who felt the same.
“We can break out a few old photos of men climbing in bloomers and women climbing in wool dresses, and they’re using pitons,” he says. “Fixed anchors have always been part of climbing and part of American outdoor history.”
A war on wilderness climbing?
If the guidance, when it comes, does indeed overrule the current interpretation of the Wilderness Act and classify fixed anchors as illegal installations, the fight will still not be over, Murdock says. The issue is so fundamental to climbing that a ban cannot be left unchallenged.
“We have been dealing with this issue for 30 years, since the beginning of Access Fund,” Murdock says. “We will never stop in this battle.”
Regardless of what lies ahead, Access Fund will need the community’s committed support. When the action alert call comes, climbers need to speak up quickly, loudly, and share broadly within their networks. Our ability to climb in some of the most revered and precious areas in our country—from Yosemite to the Linville Gorge and from the North Cascades to the White Mountains—is at stake.
How you can help
We have a long long road ahead to protect Wilderness climbing. Stay tuned for an upcoming action alert, and please consider helping to fund our advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C.