A Brief Update on What’s Next When it Comes to Fixed Anchors in Wilderness

The climbing community is collectively holding its breath while we wait to find out what the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service are going to do with their proposed regulations on fixed anchors. Now that the public comment period is over, and the agencies are categorizing, and reviewing the thousands of comments, we wait. The gravity of these proposed regulations is not lost on any of us, and we want the agencies to take their time and appropriately consider the issue from all angles.

As we wait, many of you are wondering, “What’s next?” There are a few different paths this issue can take. After reviewing the public comments, the agencies could implement the regulations as written, making no changes at all. The agencies could consider the specific issues the public noted and modify the regulations. The agencies could do nothing and could delay implementation pending further consideration of the issue.

One move the agencies could take, which the AAC hopes they strongly consider, is a committee-based resolution. Utilizing the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), negotiated rulemaking process, or similar collaborative process, an appointed committee could tackle this complicated and nuanced issue head on. The committee could consist of agency representatives, wilderness advocates, climbing advocates, and any other appropriate groups, and would address fixed anchors and their usage in Wilderness. The AAC, Access Fund, Outdoor Alliance, AMGA, Wilderness Society, and many others made this recommendation to the agencies in our public comments and believe it to be a viable option for the agencies to address the proposed regulations through a collaborative process. The AAC is working to activate our volunteer network and climbing advocacy volunteers towards sharing their own thoughts on the potential of the FACA process.

In the interim, the AAC will communicate with the agencies, land managers, and legislators and keep the climbing community informed. If this issue is important to you, continue to contact your legislators and tell them why it matters. Stay tuned!

Policy Alert: Take Action!

As climbers, many of us are familiar with the often delicate and fragile access to climbing on private land. In Colorado, we now have the opportunity to pass legislation to ensure that our access to our beloved climbing areas is no longer so tenuous.

The crux of the matter is liability. The current Colorado Recreational Use Statute (CRUS) has private landowners concerned about the liability they take on when they allow the public to access their lands for recreation. The result has been a drastic number of closures or uncertainty for some of Colorado's most iconic recreational areas—including 14ers, attending the Leadville 100, and even climbing in Ouray Ice Park.

The AAC is part of the Fix CRUS Coalition, and we have worked alongside our partners as they crafted SB-58, a landmark bill that will fix the Colorado Recreational Use Statute (CRUS), ensure the balance of landowner rights, and protect public access to our state's natural wonders that are on private land. 

Now, we need your voice to turn this work into a reality. This impacts more than just Colorado climbers, but our entire outdoor family that utilizes Colorado lands. 

What SB-58 Does

This bill takes a carefully balanced approach to help limit landowner liability exposure while ensuring visitors are aware of non-obvious or man-made hidden hazards. SB-58 would do the following:

• Protect landowners who put a warning sign up with pre-approved language at the main access point from lawsuits related to most natural, agricultural, and mining-related hazards.

• Clarify that visitors must use a designated access point, stay on trails and within approved areas or they will be classified a trespasser for purposes of liability (not criminality).

• Update which recreational activities are protected by CRUS, to include rock climbing, ice climbing, trail running, backcountry skiing, rafting, and kayaking, etc.

Your Role: Advocate for Colorado's Outdoors

Your voice is crucial. We urge you to contact your Colorado State Senator and Representative and express your support for SB-58 asking them to support and cosponsor the bill.

SB 58 is a bipartisan bill sponsored by Senators Mark Baisley and Dylan Roberts, and Representatives Shannon Bird and Brianna Titone. This bill has passed out of committee with unanimous consent, and we just need voices from Colorado outdoors enthusiasts like you to push it over the edge and make it a reality! 

Interested in learning how liability concerns impact recreation across the country? Do a deep dive into recreation, private land, and liability with our article “Whose Risk Is It?”

Three First Ascents from the Historic Roots of Wilderness Climbing

By Hannah Provost

With much ado about whether the NPS and USFS will prohibit fixed anchors in Wilderness areas, the AAC thought we’d lean into one of our strengths—the immense amount of climbing history at our fingertips, thanks to nearly 100 years of documenting climbing through the American Alpine Journal and the AAC Library. Climbers have been utilizing and advocating for the responsible and thoughtful use of fixed anchors (including pitons, slings, and bolts) in what are now designated Wilderness areas since before the passing of the Wilderness Act in 1964. These stories from before Wilderness as we know it shows that climbers were thinking with careful judgment about the wilderness experience, and sparingly using fixed gear—if it was in fact crucial for the ascent or descent at all. Since then, recreation, including climbing, has been a major tenet of what the Wilderness Act aims to protect. The question is: how do fixed anchors fit into that commitment moving forward? And how do Wilderness climbing’s roots inform that future?

Check out the climbs below to get a sense of the roots of Wilderness climbing.

Check out this map, powered by onX, which features Mountain Project data in conjunction with Wilderness Area boundaries, to help visualize how climbing across the country is impacted by this discussion.

Take Action: Share Your Voice on the Proposed Wilderness Fixed Anchor Guidelines

The Salathé Wall, Yosemite Valley

Designated Wilderness in 1984

3500 ft (1061 m), 35 pitches, VI 5.9 C2, Robbins-Pratt-Frost, 1961

One of  the longest routes on El Cap—and full of infamous wide cracks and ledges to bivvy on, The Salathé Wall is one of the iconic climbs in the world. The route has you balancing up the Free Blast, and shimmying up chimneys until you’re climbing the impressively steep headwall that makes everyone gape at El Cap. If you’re a badass, you can free it at .13b. But in 1961 Royal Robbins, Chuck Pratt, and Tom Frost were just excited to get up the thing, placing minimal fixed gear. 

In Royal Robbins’ 1963 report for the American Alpine Journal (AAJ), in which he recounts the first ascent done in 1961 and the first continuous ascent done in 1962, Robbins grapples explicitly with the bolting choices he and his team made as first ascensionists. Reflecting on the first continuous ascent, Robbins writes: “Tom [Frost] skillfully led the difficult section of the blank area where we had placed thirteen bolts the previous year. The use of more bolts in this area had been originally avoided by some enterprising free climbing on two blank sections and some delicate and nerve-wracking piton work. It would take only a few bolts to turn this pitch, one of the most interesting on the route, into a ‘boring’ walk-up.” Robbins and his peers were invested in finding those moments of “enterprising free climbing,” where they had to get creative and grit their teeth. Throughout his career, Robbins would have a lot of ambivalence about bolts—Salathé is a perfect example of that careful balance.

Though not directly or explicitly linked with his stance on fixed gear, it’s notable that Royal’s account of the continuous ascent of Salathé is intertwined with soulful reminiscing about nature. Robbins and his team considered Yosemite a special kind of remote nature, well before El Cap got a Wilderness designation with a capital W. Robbins ended his Salathé report: ”We finished the climb in magnificent weather, surely the finest and most exhilaratingly beautiful Sierra day we had ever seen…All the high country was white with new snow and two or three inches had fallen along the rim of the Valley, on Half Dome, and on Clouds Rest. One could see for great distances and each peak was sharply etched against a dark blue sky. We were feeling spiritually very rich indeed as we hiked down through the grand Sierra forests to the Valley.” This experience of vastness—of feeling the smallness of humanity within the quietude of nature, and that such experiences are enriching to the soul—is at the heart of what the NPS and USFS are trying to preserve, and which climbers like Robbins and all those who have followed him up El Cap have deeply loved about these places. 

The Diagonal, Black Canyon of the Gunnison 

Designated Wilderness in 1976

2000’ (606m), 8 pitches, V 5.9 A5, Kor-McCarthy-Bossier, 1963

The Diagonal is in some ways an odd route to include here, because although it was important at the time, and excellent tales have been told about this first ascent, this route is rarely climbed today. It has the distinction of half a star on Mountain Project, and is known for the boldness required—which is particularly important to note in an area that already favors the bold. But we’re including it here precisely because of the climb’s historic nature, and how the first ascensionists—the magic team of Layton Kor, Jim McCarthy, and Tex Bossier—have articulated their thoughts on fixed anchors. 

As a historic climb, The Diagonal contains multitudes. Layton Kor, who was the driving force behind the first ascent, was certainly known to be a singular kind of person. There was no one quite like him. In Climb!, his contemporaries describe this towering figure in awed terms: “Of his more forceful characteristics, those who knew Kor well during his climbing years say that he frequently exhibited the qualities of a man possessed. A driving inner tension gnawed at him. His way of escaping from this sensation was to be active in a way which totally occupied his mind and body. His climbs, pushed to the limit of the possible, served this function well.” When Kor legendarily quipped, staring up at the crux pitch on The Diagonal, that he wasn’t a married man, and perhaps he should take Jim McCarthy’s lead for that reason, behind the glint in his eye was that tension and drive. Kor did take the lead on the “horror pitch,” taking six and a half hours to complete it—and it’s still noted as one of Kor’s hardest leads in his career. After all, the team was trying for glory—attempting to find Colorado’s first grade VI, though it would turn out to be another grade V. It remains an iconic moment in climbing’s rich history of contemplating and pushing past our agreed upon limits. 

Bossier indicated, in Kor’s book Beyond the Vertical, that the boldness that would come to characterize the climb was due in part to an intentional philosophical stance that the team made about the restrained use of fixed gear. Bossier writes: “The two major ethical dilemmas of the day were expansion bolts, and siege vs. alpine style ascents. We had taken oaths that the first grade six in Colorado deserved our commitment to a classic ascent. Despite knowing that we would pass through bands of rotten rock, we planned not to degrade our attempt with unnecessary bolting or extensive bolting.”

This sense of committing to good ethics and terms of engagement with the landscape is the backbone of the American idea of Wilderness, and embedded in the Wilderness Act, which defines Wilderness as “untrammeled,” “primeval,” and “undeveloped” landscapes, in which humanity is just a visitor. Though Kor, McCarthy, and Bossier weren’t meditating on nature in those explicit terms, their ascent too is wrapped in high-minded reflection on immersion in natural landscapes. After their wet bivvy, nature brought about a brush with awe that is so often what we seek in great, vast, wild adventures: “Next morning, as light became perceptible, we were engulfed in a dramatic whirlwind of dancing clouds. Shafts of light shone vertically upwards from the depths of the Canyon, while other masses swirled and skipped in wave patterns. We sat on our perches awed as light beams and rainbows mingled with mist. They were below us. They were with us—we could reach out and touch them. The clouds died as the power of the sun burned through and we began to take stock.”

No doubt waking up to this kind of light show—their position in the midst of it only possible because of this unique terrain—was part of the transformative experience of this climb. Bossier’s reflections demonstrate again that just as climbers of this time period were grappling with the appropriate boundary for the responsible use of fixed anchors, they were likewise attuned to how the landscapes they were climbing in shaped their experience. 

D1, The Diamond, Rocky Mountain National Park

Designated Wilderness in 2009

1,010 ft (308 m), 8 pitches, V 5.7 A4, Kamps-Rearick, 1960

Though climbing lore often focuses on tales of breaking the rules and going against the grain, there has been a long history of climbers working within land agency regulations in order to gain sustainable access. The story of The Diamond of Longs Peak, one of the most sought-after walls in the country, is one such example. According to the recounting of the first ascent, published in the 1961 AAJ: “In 1953 a party organized by Dale Johnson of Boulder announced its intention of attempting an ascent of this wall, but was refused permission by the National Park. Since then the Diamond has been ‘off limits’ to climbers. Being thus restricted from the climbing activity going on elsewhere in the country, it gradually assumed the distinction of being the most famous unclimbed wall in the United States.” So when Robert Kamps and David Rearick received permission from RMNP to attempt to climb The Diamond in August of 1960, all eyes were on them. 

The draw of the Diamond was certainly a sense of ultimate challenge. The altitude and remoteness of this striking wall was a key part of the adventure. Today, D1 is often overlooked, with more accessible lines like The Casual Route and Pervertical Sanctuary getting the most mileage, and lines like Ariana getting the most attention at the 5.12 grade. However, Mountain Project whispers suggest that well-rounded Diamond climbers consider it the best route on the Diamond. So unlike Kor’s The Diagonal, it’s historic and good climbing. 

Rearick and Kamp’s three day ascent “was one more dent in the concept of the impossible.” Like many Diamond climbers even today, they battled the weather and a waterfall dripping on their belays and bivvy. But this encroachment of water seemed to be a reminder that though they may be conquering the wall, they were but a small creature in a wilderness that was ultimately untamable. Like so many other climbers recreating in such extreme natural environments, the ascent was inextricably linked to moments of sublime quiet. “The night was clear and we watched the shadows from the moon creep stealthily along the slope of Lady Washington below us and across the shimmering blackness of Chasm Lake. We both managed to doze for a few hours. Since the temperature stayed above freezing, the waterfall continued all night, occasionally splashing us. The altitude at this point was about 13,700 feet.”

 Rearick and Kamps placed 4 expansion bolts in total—by hand, of course, which continues to be a requirement for new or replaced bolts in Wilderness—when all other ways of securing a belay were exhausted. This method and their tools had been explicitly reviewed and approved by the National Park beforehand, as a condition of their permission to attempt this famous feature. This incredibly important ascent was just the beginning of a revolution in climbing, as Godfrey and Chelton recount: “the concept of the impossible was seized roughly by the scruff of the neck and shaken up so as to be unrecognizable.”

***

As these three first ascents demonstrate, the roots of Wilderness climbing is often tied up with philosophies of restraint in use of fixed gear, spiritual connection with nature, pushing the limits of the sport, and prioritizing boldness without being unsafe.

That was Then…This is Now…

Much of the discussion around fixed anchors in Wilderness within the climbing community has simplified and erroneously associated the concept of fixed anchors with grid bolting or sport climbing. Some people are kicking around the idea that the only climbing that should happen in Wilderness is the purest kind, like “back in the day”—suggesting that absolutely no fixed gear was used “back in the day.” The history of these iconic Wilderness climbs shows that this narrative is full of misunderstandings. Even when the best climbers of the day refused to “degrade” their ascents with unnecessary bolting or fixed gear, they did apply these tools when necessary for safety. Evidently, Wilderness climbing’s roots lie in a philosophy of responsible and restrained use of fixed anchors to facilitate meaningful experiences and inspire advocates of Wilderness. Now the question is, what is Wilderness climbing’s future? 

You can help decide. Share your thoughts on the proposed fixed anchor guidance from the NPS and USFS before January 30, 2024. 

Resources:

This article was only possible thanks to the depth of resources from the American Alpine Club Library and historic records from the American Alpine Journal. Want to delve into our extensive historic climbing archives and guidebook library? Check it out. 

“The Salathé Wall.” American Alpine Journal. 1963.

“Salathe Wall.” Mountain Project.

Beyond the Vertical by Layton Kor

“The Diagonal.” Mountain Project.

Climb! Rock Climbing in Colorado by Bob Godrey and Dudley Chelton

Royal Robbins: The American Climber by David Smart

The Black: A Comprehensive Climbing Guide to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park by Vic Zeilman

“The First Ascent of the Diamond, the East Face of Longs Peak.” American Alpine Journal. 1961.

“D1” Mountain Project.