December 17, 2024 • 21 mins
Climbers modify the rock to climb safely, leaving permanent anchors for catching falls. This was not always the practice, and its early implementation lead to a period of conflict in the climbing community when ethics were in flux. Climbing has solved this dilemma, and can show the world how to walk reframe the line between environmental sustainability and land use.
Name and title of interviewees:
Dan Earhart, MS, Climbing Coordinator, Stanford University
Jane Willenbring, PhD, Professor of Earth and Planetary Systems, Stanford University
Hugh Driscol, Principal and founder of Chord Architecture in Santa Fe New Mexico
Emma Harrison, PhD, Environmental Scientist, advocate.
Rupesh Chhugan TCMP, CHP, Hakomi practitioner.
Music Attribution (In order of appearance)
Setting Pace by <a href="https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290191">Blue Dot Sessions</a>
Road to Petersby by <a href="https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/285202">Blue Dot Sessions</a>
Hanging Rock by <a href="https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290346">Blue Dot Sessions</a>
Bauxite by <a href="https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290218">Blue Dot Sessions</a>
KeoKeo by <a href="https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290262">Blue Dot Sessions</a>
Evol Triumph by <a href="https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/290238">Blue Dot Sessions</a>
Capstone by <a href="https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/285163">Blue Dot Sessions</a>
Set the Tip Jar by <a href="https://app.sessions.blue/browse/track/285159">Blue Dot Sessions</a>
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
I'm 20 feet above the ground holdingonto a narrow ledge of polished rock.
In a cliff of gray limestone, I take abreath and with my free hand, I grab a
carabiner, hang out my waist, and clipinto the bolt, cemented into the rock.
At around eye level.
It might just save my life.
I love this about climbing.
(00:22):
It's a sport that forces me totrust myself even when I'm afraid.
And because of that bolt, a ring ofpinky thin stainless steel sticking
out of the rock, I'm perfectlysafe with that bolt clipped.
I dust my sweaty hands into a bag ofbright white chalk and catch my breath.
I'm on a route called The Bulge in Austin,Texas's Barton Creek Greenbelt, just three
(00:44):
miles from the bustling center of town.
It's a place of grotto's, clearflowing creeks and a history of halted
development ranching and indigenous lifeuse that goes back thousands of years.
But around me, the cliff is bareexcept where a single green fern hangs
from a pocket, despite the onslaughtof thousands of other climbers
who've ascended the route before me.
(01:05):
As I look around bolts feel tome like they've crossed some
invisible line of land use.
Like our impact as humans has gonetoo far, especially in areas set
aside for nature like the green belt.
And it raises the question, canI be a truly environmentally
minded person and climb on bolts?
How can we justify permanently changingthe cliff face for our own use?
(01:27):
And even if a sport like climbingmatters to me, does that outweigh
the cost of those glimmering ringsof steel sticking from the rock?
Have you been to the green belt?
That is where I tend to go.
Yeah, the green belt is insane.
Hi, my name is Rupe Chuin.
I'm a central Texas rockclimber since about 1995.
(01:48):
To understand how bolts got placedinto my neck of the woods, I wanted
to talk to someone who put them in.
Okay, so you're at the placewhere you wanna put the bolt.
You take out a rock hammer, and youhit the surface of the rock, and you're
listening to hear if it's hollow.
Rupe finds solid stone.
Then he gets out his drill.
It's a cordless hammer drill,and drills into the rock.
It's three to threeand a half inches deep.
Then he fills the hole withglue and takes out a bolt.
(02:10):
Imagine a grocery store twist high,but made of quarter inch stainless
steel, forming a ring for a carabineron one end with the tails twisted
together on the other, stick itin the hole and then smooth it
over and then you can't even see.
It just looks like rock.
It's hard work.
You're carrying a ton of gear.
It truthfully, when I started, I didn'tlove that there were bolts in the wall.
(02:31):
I thought it was ugly.
It took me a while to now appreciateit and not really think about it
anymore, but I mean, I get it.
Like an environmentally minded person.
Some weird glue.
How long is that gonna stay in there?
Oh, forever.
The glue ends are the next bigthing in bolting and our intended
to last at least 50 years withoutmaintenance or replacement.
(02:53):
Historically, other kinds of rockanchoring bolts like sleeve bolts,
which rely on friction instead of glue.
Were used to bolt American crags,but glue lasting forever or holes
drilled into the rock seems like asignificant alteration to me, even
if it is making climbing safer.
In order to learn more about theorigin of bolts, I met with Hugh
Driscoll, an architect in SantaFe, New Mexico, who lived through a
(03:13):
period of time called the bolt warswhen climbing ethics were in flux.
His kitchen table surroundedby white plastered Adobe.
Hugh took me back to thebeginning of American climbing.
There were a bunch of Europeans thatcame over in the thirties and introduced
mountaineering techniques that weredeveloped in the Alps back then.
In the 1930s, the Petton was king peonswere a thin five inch wedge of soft
(03:36):
steel, a little bit thicker and narrowerthan a credit card with a hole on the
end and a folded corner for rigidity.
As they climbed climbers hammered thesetetons into the cracks through the hole.
They would clip a carabiner, and then therope, the wedge petton would catch a fall.
On the way down.
Climbers hammered out their pecansknocking the metal side to side
until it came out, usually alongwith a fair number of rock chips.
(03:57):
And when you remove thepetton, you damage the rocks.
This kind of damage is known as a pettonscar, and it makes the route increasingly
unclimbable as the crack becomes flared.
Even though a petton is temporary,it leaves a permanent mark.
Back in the US the towering wallsof Yosemite National Park had
become a mecca for mountaineering.
And Tetons and their impactwere being felt hard.
(04:19):
There's like beautiful cracksin Yosemite Valley that have
all these scars from Tetons.
Yes.
Over time it, it wrecks a beautiful thing.
So that was kind of background forthis whole idea of what's ethical in
climbing, what's style is appropriate.
That question of style is a questionof how the summit was reached and
the conceptions of the sanctity ofAmerican wilderness were beginning
(04:41):
to clash with the permanentenvironmental alteration of the beton.
Contemporary to Yosemite climbers,English climbers were developing
a new method for protecting falls.
People there were using industrialnuts and hanging slings on those
and wedging those in cracks.
Imagine a loop of rope, the sling tiedinto a large nut, like from a nut and
(05:01):
bolt, wedged in a crack in a cliff face.
Pull on the protruding cord likein a fall, and the knot sticks
held by the constricting crack,but push and it comes right out.
And crucially, this new gearleft no trace in the rock.
Climbers in Yosemite took up thesenew tools with gusto abandoning
their pecans for nuts and laterother gear like hexes and cams.
(05:22):
They banded together arounda new ethical imperative.
Clean climbing leave no trace.
For a while, Americans in Yosemite Valleywere doing some of the most cutting
edge, difficult climbing in the world.
Partly they were enabled by theease of clean climbing gear and
partly by the incredible playgroundthat was the Yosemite Valley.
But there was a problem.
(05:42):
Clean climbing gear, dependson cracks and good rock.
The granite of Yosemite had bothin abundance, but many other places
weren't so lucky in some incrediblecliffs, especially those in crackles.
The European limestone cleanclimbing gear just didn't work.
As a sport, got bigger.
Climbers increasingly turned tothese places for both their novelty
and to relieve pressure on existingareas to make these routes safe.
(06:04):
European climbers use existing rock andconcrete anchors, bolts to catch falls.
Europeans, they started doing really,really heavy duty, technically
difficult, free climbs on outrageousoverhanging, limestone walls and things
that Americans already coming close to.
Some Americans impressed by the highlevel of European climbing began to push
the bolt in American climbing areas.
(06:25):
But for proponents of clean climbingAmerican evangelists like Royal
Robins, the bolt was in a front.
How could you possiblyleave no trace with a bolt?
It's drilled into the rock forever.
In that era, people would put, uh,bolted roots in different places, and
someone would decide that that was notokay, and they'd go and chop the root.
A culture war ensued between thebolters and the clean climbers
(06:48):
with battlegrounds everywhere.
In Yosemite, a wacky salt of theearth climber called Warren Harding
pushed things to a head when he usedbolts to create the route, the wall
of early morning light on a relativelytrackless face in the Yosemite Valley.
After that route went up, RoyalRobins came back with a buddy and
they just started chipping thebolts out as they climbed the ring.
Wow.
(07:08):
The story goes that he got halfwayup and decided that actually
it was a really awesome route.
It was sort of worth it.
He had to adjust his thinking.
Even though Harding's route used bolts,it was actually very fun and well within
the spirit of hard rock climbing abaseline that everyone could agree on.
This was a watershed moment where thecultural core of American rock climbing
acknowledged that sometimes a routewas just worth it, even if it required
(07:31):
bolts to make it safe at the same time.
There was still a line if a spot couldbe protected with clean climbing gear.
Drilling a bolt wasgenerally frowned upon.
These ethics became solidifiedby a new generation of climbers
in the 1980s and nineties.
They began to develop new crags allacross the country in the world,
and clean climbing was rebrandedas trad climbing for traditional
(07:52):
climbing, but this European approach.
To really amazing technical difficultyand roots that were created on repel,
carefully bolted, still super bold,harder than you could even physically
imagine, but that's become absorbed.
It was this cultural shift that allowedpeople like repe to bolt places like
the green Belt, and people like meto access safe outdoor climbing.
(08:15):
One person thinking about the safety andaccessibility of climbing is Dan Erhardt.
Dan is the climbing coordinatorat Stanford University working
to make climbing more accessibleto the campus population.
Clipping bolts is a veryapproachable, more accessible style
of climbing for a lot of folks.
Getting into trad climbing just takes alot of education and is just not always
like super approachable for people.
(08:37):
Nuts and other trad gear is hard toplace well enough to trust your life to.
Clipping a carabiner through a metalring is in comparison much easier.
The route itself may have the samehard moves, but the bolt makes it
more accessible by lowering theknowledge required to stay safe.
Of course, lowering that thresholdmeans more people climbing and
more wear and tear by humanpassage in the natural world.
(08:59):
This impact is clear.
In the sandstone of the Red RiverGorge, a world-class climbing
destination in Western Kentucky.
Each year, hundreds of thousands ofpeople are drawn to climb bolted routes.
There.
The results are unsurprising.
Yeah, I mean if you look up photos ofthe Red River Gorge, you'll see these
like five year time where the base ofthese climbing areas like totally eroded
(09:20):
just from foot traffic, for example.
You know, we are constantly walking thisline of making things more accessible
for people, but the areas that we tendto recreate in are very sensitive.
For the most part.
These areas can be home to delicateecosystems or irreplaceable
archeological sites, but at thesame time, these routes can have a
positive impact on the local economy.
I, I wanna get the numbers right.
(09:40):
I wrote 'em down.
So in the Red River Gorge climbersbring in and spend about $8.7
million annually, and that's becomekind of like what their economy is.
They support climbers.
You know, it's definitely adouble-edged sword in many ways.
So there's an uneasy balance in the redbolts, facilitate, overuse, but also
(10:01):
new community-wide economic change.
I see this reflected backin the green belt as well.
The bulge was the first place Ireally fell in love with climbing.
It's a place that matters to me, butat the same time, under the route,
a tree root sits a foot above theground, left high and dry by erosion
caused by the movement of climbers.
And sure it's only one tree in onespot, but that impact multiplied
(10:23):
over all the other climbing areasaround the world is significant.
Impact by humans isn'tlimited to the cliffs either.
The trail to the crag causes impactnot only by its presence, but like the
bolts, the recreation, it facilitates.
How bad are trails to the natural world?
Yeah, they can create lots oferosion, but erosion isn't always
like a four letter word though.
(10:44):
To help me address thisdouble-edged sword, I talked to
Jane Willenberg, a professor ofgeology at Stanford University.
I.
I mean, there are some environmentswhere the soil itself is not particularly
nutritious and erosion creates lots ofyummy new minerals for plants to eat.
But that doesn't mean thattrails are always good.
You know, if people are gonna bemoving through a landscape, it's great
(11:06):
to have a trail because otherwisethey'd be stomping on moss layers,
bacterial crusts, and things like that.
And so the idea of having a.
Specific place in order toconcentrate that damage or that
change is probably net beneficial.
(11:26):
Okay, so depending on thecontext, erosion isn't always bad.
But in general, being on trail isbetter than being off of it, especially
if you're gonna go outside anyway.
It kind of gets at the pointof like a sacrifice zone.
It's a place where people have justbeen like, we're gonna trash this place.
This is where we're gonna trashit and we're not gonna trash it
outside of some kind of little area.
(11:48):
A common example of asacrifice zone is a pit mine.
All the life in this particularspot, a grove in a forest, say.
Will be destroyed, sacrificed, so wecan extract what we need while at the
same time protecting the forest fromthe impacts of a thousand little mines.
We save the whole forest bysacrificing this particular grove.
(12:08):
I don't like it, but to me thismakes a kind of high level sense.
If you're gonna make a mess, makea mess in just one spot, even if
it's pretty big, of course, whobears the burden of that mess?
Often marginalized communities andwhat the purpose of that mess is.
Industrial extraction for consumerismis a big topic, fraught with its own
set of important ethical implications.
But to solve the sacrifice zone issue,maybe we should just designate some
(12:32):
areas as permanent, no mess zones.
Maybe calling them somethinglike National Park, but Jane
showed me, it's not that simple.
Are you okay with, for example, a marineprotected area or like a national park?
Absolutely everybody is okay with that.
Well, doesn't that then mean that therest of the world is a sacrifice zone?
(12:52):
If we are okay with protecting certainareas from not being affected by
people like preserves, then we shouldbe okay with the opposite, right?
Philosophically, Jane's argumentfeels frustratingly right to me.
By designating some areas of theworld is special, we effectively
say that the rest are up for grabs.
Sacrifice able and ready to be trashed.
(13:15):
That's not to say we shouldn'tcreate areas for low impact use.
We can't hope Unique areas arejust protected from the forces
of our extractive market economy.
But that dichotomy that someplaces are worth saving and others
not just rubs me the wrong way,like every ecosystem is unique.
How can we possibly decide which tosave and which to sacrifice, and why
are we the ones to make that choice?
(13:37):
You know, you always hear people wholike have a respect for the environment
and there's a different thing.
It's very subtle, but the thingthat I feel is like in awe, the
respect is like something elsethat is aside from you, that is
not part of you and in awe is like.
Part of what you are experiencingand part of all at once.
(14:01):
Yeah.
Well, and it has so much greaterimplication about what we should
do about the natural world.
Exactly.
Like not coordinate off, but actuallyhave it be part of our lives in awe.
We're not separate from the natural world.
The reframe begins to break down the ideaof a landscape as an object for our use.
Changing it to something that we havea relationship with, something we
take from, but also must give back to.
(14:24):
In my experience, climbing putsme in that perspective of awe.
It makes the landscape part of mylife, and as such, I become part
of the landscape's life as well.
Even though my actions are small, theyare meaningful, and I know that I'm
only a small part of a bigger hole.
After our conversation, Jane putme in touch with Emma Harrison.
(14:47):
Emma is a former PhD student ofJane's and a climber herself.
She now works in oceanography andadvocacy for the rights of indigenous
groups all around the world.
I met her over Zoom before she wasslated to travel to the Arctic for work.
When I was living in Arizona, I wouldgo in the winters to Waco Tanks.
Cuco Tanks is a collection of naturalgranite pools and alcoves in the
deserts of Far West Texas, which havedrawn people for tens of thousands of
(15:10):
years, many of whom left rock art thatis unlike anything else in the world.
There's like all of these reallyimportant spiritual cultural sites
that are continually used for ceremony.
There's this huge military bombingrange, like right north of the park,
and so you're constantly hearingall these bombs go off while you're
sleeping there, and it's bizarre.
(15:31):
It's also an internationally renownedclimbing spot where the V grade
was invented and the likes of ToddSkinner and Royal Robins created
hard climbing routes, test piecesfor climbers to test their metal.
In the nineties, after years of increasinguse and misuse by climbers and everyone
else, Texas Parks and Wildlife decidedthat they had had enough and put a 60
person limit on entries to the park.
(15:53):
The decision was a compromise betweendifferent park users, including
climbers, but also environmentaland cultural conservationists.
Today, climbing and huerco requiresa guide who acts not only as a
steward of the art, but also as aninformed local, showing climbers the
best of what Hu Cuco has to offer.
I went to Cuco tanks on a whim.
(16:13):
I was driving from Californiato Austin, saw a brown US park
sign, Cuco tanks two miles.
I turned later and I was told thatI was the last entry for the day.
The ranger at the visitor center, seeingmy interest in the local history and
ecology, leaned over the counter and askedconspiratorially if I wanted a quest to
see the very best rock guard in the park.
(16:34):
He told me, go until you see a rockthat looked exactly like an alligator.
And then walk west untilyou come to an alcove.
That is where you will find the masks.
After a few hours of doubting, I came tothe alligator rock and followed it west.
When I crawled into the alcove andlet my eyes adjust, I saw three
geometric faces, masks painted inreds and yellows onto the rock.
(16:59):
I sat on the cool stone face toface with a figure painted by
another person a thousand years ago.
I was in awe totally andcompletely on my way out.
Seeing white chalk marks on someof the rocks, trail closure signs,
and other rock art, I felt acomplex compromise at Waco tanks.
I can only imagine that the differentstakeholders felt a similar awe and
(17:22):
deep love for the site and everythingit stood for in their world.
It's an interesting example ofthe land co-management system.
You have like a deep love and respectfor the land, and you want it to be
respected and used and part of your lifein like a really big and important way.
There has to be a balance, andwe have to know what those other
(17:42):
kinds of relationships look likein order to be able to respect
them, that that's something that weshould strive for as a community.
Wco Tanks shows us that there'sno right way to modify our world.
It's not a binary yes or no sacrificedor not sacrificed, but rather a
spectrum of more or less intensity,which will vary from place to place.
(18:03):
Seeing the land from a perspective of aweallows us to understand that our actions
are part of an ongoing relationship thatwe have with the land, and it's not like
climbers or environmental scientistsare the first to think like this.
The idea of an interconnected landscapeis very much the biocentric animism of
the indigenous peoples of North America.
People who have a deep love and respectfor their place making land use decisions
(18:26):
since they arrived some 10,000 years ago.
Of course, just like any relationship,there isn't a single template
for our participation with it.
Rather, each place will have a differentchorus of voices and perspectives
which balance in a different way.
On a smaller scale at the scale ofa bolt rep offered his own insight.
I think when I was younger, theclimb felt so important and if I saw
(18:49):
a sweet line, it's gotta be bolted.
But you know, now it's more like, hey,if this is a place where the cliff
swallows go, like don't bolt it, orthere's a beehive there, don't bolt it.
Our hubris as humans as we're notpaying attention to all the other
species that we're coexisting with.
The climb is less important.
(19:10):
Having a place for othercreatures to live is, is
on a visit home.
I returned to the bulge withmy mom who graduated from the
local high school in 1984.
I asked her if she evercame down to the Greenbelt.
No, she said, but she remembered thatbefore the climbers were here, no
one really took care of the place.
After clandestine parties by the creek,people would leave their beer cans behind.
(19:33):
What struck her most while we werethere was just how much had changed.
Carefully constructed trails,took conscientious paths and
erosion control measures helpedtrailside vegetation thrive.
Even though climbing hadbecome the primary human use
and modified the cliff side.
In the process, those humansmade room for the lives of the
other creatures to unfold too.
Their interventions had set thestage for a positive change.
(19:56):
With all that in mind, I askedEmma where the end goal is.
What might success for climbers andour broader society actually look like?
In her response, she brought up theperspective of a group fighting for
indigenous rights in southern Mexico.
The Zapatistas have this really greatphrase, they're fighting for a world in
which many worlds fit, and I think that'sa very nice way of dodging your question.
(20:20):
By saying that there wouldn't be just oneoutcome, one way of saying, oh, this is
how we've created equality or balance.
There won't just be one outcome.
How could there be?
The world is too complex and nuanced forsuch an easy answer, and while that feels
daunting to me, doing the hard work tobuild and honor an ongoing relationship
(20:41):
with the landscape around us feels right.
That kind of work is ultimatelylocal and place-based.
How could it be any other way?
(21:05):
This episode was produced andedited by me, Alex Strong with
Music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to the StanfordStorytelling Project for all their help
through the messy middle, especiallyLaura Joyce Davis and Megan Kafu.
Funding for this project was provided bythe generous donation of Bruce Braden.
You can find this and other worksby me and the Stanford Storytelling
project@storytelling.stanford.edu.
(21:28):
Thanks for listening.
I'm 20 feet above the ground holdingonto a narrow ledge of polished rock.
In a cliff of gray limestone, I take abreath and with my free hand, I grab a
carabiner, hang out my waist, and clipinto the bolt, cemented into the rock.
At around eye level.
It might just save my life.
I love this about climbing.
(00:22):
It's a sport that forces me totrust myself even when I'm afraid.
And because of that bolt, a ring ofpinky thin stainless steel sticking
out of the rock, I'm perfectlysafe with that bolt clipped.
I dust my sweaty hands into a bag ofbright white chalk and catch my breath.
I'm on a route called The Bulge in Austin,Texas's Barton Creek Greenbelt, just three
(00:44):
miles from the bustling center of town.
It's a place of grotto's, clearflowing creeks and a history of halted
development ranching and indigenous lifeuse that goes back thousands of years.
But around me, the cliff is bareexcept where a single green fern hangs
from a pocket, despite the onslaughtof thousands of other climbers
who've ascended the route before me.
(01:05):
As I look around bolts feel tome like they've crossed some
invisible line of land use.
Like our impact as humans has gonetoo far, especially in areas set
aside for nature like the green belt.
And it raises the question, canI be a truly environmentally
minded person and climb on bolts?
How can we justify permanently changingthe cliff face for our own use?
(01:27):
And even if a sport like climbingmatters to me, does that outweigh
the cost of those glimmering ringsof steel sticking from the rock?
Have you been to the green belt?
That is where I tend to go.
Yeah, the green belt is insane.
Hi, my name is Rupe Chuin.
I'm a central Texas rockclimber since about 1995.
(01:48):
To understand how bolts got placedinto my neck of the woods, I wanted
to talk to someone who put them in.
Okay, so you're at the placewhere you wanna put the bolt.
You take out a rock hammer, and youhit the surface of the rock, and you're
listening to hear if it's hollow.
Rupe finds solid stone.
Then he gets out his drill.
It's a cordless hammer drill,and drills into the rock.
It's three to threeand a half inches deep.
Then he fills the hole withglue and takes out a bolt.
(02:10):
Imagine a grocery store twist high,but made of quarter inch stainless
steel, forming a ring for a carabineron one end with the tails twisted
together on the other, stick itin the hole and then smooth it
over and then you can't even see.
It just looks like rock.
It's hard work.
You're carrying a ton of gear.
It truthfully, when I started, I didn'tlove that there were bolts in the wall.
(02:31):
I thought it was ugly.
It took me a while to now appreciateit and not really think about it
anymore, but I mean, I get it.
Like an environmentally minded person.
Some weird glue.
How long is that gonna stay in there?
Oh, forever.
The glue ends are the next bigthing in bolting and our intended
to last at least 50 years withoutmaintenance or replacement.
(02:53):
Historically, other kinds of rockanchoring bolts like sleeve bolts,
which rely on friction instead of glue.
Were used to bolt American crags,but glue lasting forever or holes
drilled into the rock seems like asignificant alteration to me, even
if it is making climbing safer.
In order to learn more about theorigin of bolts, I met with Hugh
Driscoll, an architect in SantaFe, New Mexico, who lived through a
(03:13):
period of time called the bolt warswhen climbing ethics were in flux.
His kitchen table surroundedby white plastered Adobe.
Hugh took me back to thebeginning of American climbing.
There were a bunch of Europeans thatcame over in the thirties and introduced
mountaineering techniques that weredeveloped in the Alps back then.
In the 1930s, the Petton was king peonswere a thin five inch wedge of soft
(03:36):
steel, a little bit thicker and narrowerthan a credit card with a hole on the
end and a folded corner for rigidity.
As they climbed climbers hammered thesetetons into the cracks through the hole.
They would clip a carabiner, and then therope, the wedge petton would catch a fall.
On the way down.
Climbers hammered out their pecansknocking the metal side to side
until it came out, usually alongwith a fair number of rock chips.
(03:57):
And when you remove thepetton, you damage the rocks.
This kind of damage is known as a pettonscar, and it makes the route increasingly
unclimbable as the crack becomes flared.
Even though a petton is temporary,it leaves a permanent mark.
Back in the US the towering wallsof Yosemite National Park had
become a mecca for mountaineering.
And Tetons and their impactwere being felt hard.
(04:19):
There's like beautiful cracksin Yosemite Valley that have
all these scars from Tetons.
Yes.
Over time it, it wrecks a beautiful thing.
So that was kind of background forthis whole idea of what's ethical in
climbing, what's style is appropriate.
That question of style is a questionof how the summit was reached and
the conceptions of the sanctity ofAmerican wilderness were beginning
(04:41):
to clash with the permanentenvironmental alteration of the beton.
Contemporary to Yosemite climbers,English climbers were developing
a new method for protecting falls.
People there were using industrialnuts and hanging slings on those
and wedging those in cracks.
Imagine a loop of rope, the sling tiedinto a large nut, like from a nut and
(05:01):
bolt, wedged in a crack in a cliff face.
Pull on the protruding cord likein a fall, and the knot sticks
held by the constricting crack,but push and it comes right out.
And crucially, this new gearleft no trace in the rock.
Climbers in Yosemite took up thesenew tools with gusto abandoning
their pecans for nuts and laterother gear like hexes and cams.
(05:22):
They banded together arounda new ethical imperative.
Clean climbing leave no trace.
For a while, Americans in Yosemite Valleywere doing some of the most cutting
edge, difficult climbing in the world.
Partly they were enabled by theease of clean climbing gear and
partly by the incredible playgroundthat was the Yosemite Valley.
But there was a problem.
(05:42):
Clean climbing gear, dependson cracks and good rock.
The granite of Yosemite had bothin abundance, but many other places
weren't so lucky in some incrediblecliffs, especially those in crackles.
The European limestone cleanclimbing gear just didn't work.
As a sport, got bigger.
Climbers increasingly turned tothese places for both their novelty
and to relieve pressure on existingareas to make these routes safe.
(06:04):
European climbers use existing rock andconcrete anchors, bolts to catch falls.
Europeans, they started doing really,really heavy duty, technically
difficult, free climbs on outrageousoverhanging, limestone walls and things
that Americans already coming close to.
Some Americans impressed by the highlevel of European climbing began to push
the bolt in American climbing areas.
(06:25):
But for proponents of clean climbingAmerican evangelists like Royal
Robins, the bolt was in a front.
How could you possiblyleave no trace with a bolt?
It's drilled into the rock forever.
In that era, people would put, uh,bolted roots in different places, and
someone would decide that that was notokay, and they'd go and chop the root.
A culture war ensued between thebolters and the clean climbers
(06:48):
with battlegrounds everywhere.
In Yosemite, a wacky salt of theearth climber called Warren Harding
pushed things to a head when he usedbolts to create the route, the wall
of early morning light on a relativelytrackless face in the Yosemite Valley.
After that route went up, RoyalRobins came back with a buddy and
they just started chipping thebolts out as they climbed the ring.
Wow.
(07:08):
The story goes that he got halfwayup and decided that actually
it was a really awesome route.
It was sort of worth it.
He had to adjust his thinking.
Even though Harding's route used bolts,it was actually very fun and well within
the spirit of hard rock climbing abaseline that everyone could agree on.
This was a watershed moment where thecultural core of American rock climbing
acknowledged that sometimes a routewas just worth it, even if it required
(07:31):
bolts to make it safe at the same time.
There was still a line if a spot couldbe protected with clean climbing gear.
Drilling a bolt wasgenerally frowned upon.
These ethics became solidifiedby a new generation of climbers
in the 1980s and nineties.
They began to develop new crags allacross the country in the world,
and clean climbing was rebrandedas trad climbing for traditional
(07:52):
climbing, but this European approach.
To really amazing technical difficultyand roots that were created on repel,
carefully bolted, still super bold,harder than you could even physically
imagine, but that's become absorbed.
It was this cultural shift that allowedpeople like repe to bolt places like
the green Belt, and people like meto access safe outdoor climbing.
(08:15):
One person thinking about the safety andaccessibility of climbing is Dan Erhardt.
Dan is the climbing coordinatorat Stanford University working
to make climbing more accessibleto the campus population.
Clipping bolts is a veryapproachable, more accessible style
of climbing for a lot of folks.
Getting into trad climbing just takes alot of education and is just not always
like super approachable for people.
(08:37):
Nuts and other trad gear is hard toplace well enough to trust your life to.
Clipping a carabiner through a metalring is in comparison much easier.
The route itself may have the samehard moves, but the bolt makes it
more accessible by lowering theknowledge required to stay safe.
Of course, lowering that thresholdmeans more people climbing and
more wear and tear by humanpassage in the natural world.
(08:59):
This impact is clear.
In the sandstone of the Red RiverGorge, a world-class climbing
destination in Western Kentucky.
Each year, hundreds of thousands ofpeople are drawn to climb bolted routes.
There.
The results are unsurprising.
Yeah, I mean if you look up photos ofthe Red River Gorge, you'll see these
like five year time where the base ofthese climbing areas like totally eroded
(09:20):
just from foot traffic, for example.
You know, we are constantly walking thisline of making things more accessible
for people, but the areas that we tendto recreate in are very sensitive.
For the most part.
These areas can be home to delicateecosystems or irreplaceable
archeological sites, but at thesame time, these routes can have a
positive impact on the local economy.
I, I wanna get the numbers right.
(09:40):
I wrote 'em down.
So in the Red River Gorge climbersbring in and spend about $8.7
million annually, and that's becomekind of like what their economy is.
They support climbers.
You know, it's definitely adouble-edged sword in many ways.
So there's an uneasy balance in the redbolts, facilitate, overuse, but also
(10:01):
new community-wide economic change.
I see this reflected backin the green belt as well.
The bulge was the first place Ireally fell in love with climbing.
It's a place that matters to me, butat the same time, under the route,
a tree root sits a foot above theground, left high and dry by erosion
caused by the movement of climbers.
And sure it's only one tree in onespot, but that impact multiplied
(10:23):
over all the other climbing areasaround the world is significant.
Impact by humans isn'tlimited to the cliffs either.
The trail to the crag causes impactnot only by its presence, but like the
bolts, the recreation, it facilitates.
How bad are trails to the natural world?
Yeah, they can create lots oferosion, but erosion isn't always
like a four letter word though.
(10:44):
To help me address thisdouble-edged sword, I talked to
Jane Willenberg, a professor ofgeology at Stanford University.
I.
I mean, there are some environmentswhere the soil itself is not particularly
nutritious and erosion creates lots ofyummy new minerals for plants to eat.
But that doesn't mean thattrails are always good.
You know, if people are gonna bemoving through a landscape, it's great
(11:06):
to have a trail because otherwisethey'd be stomping on moss layers,
bacterial crusts, and things like that.
And so the idea of having a.
Specific place in order toconcentrate that damage or that
change is probably net beneficial.
(11:26):
Okay, so depending on thecontext, erosion isn't always bad.
But in general, being on trail isbetter than being off of it, especially
if you're gonna go outside anyway.
It kind of gets at the pointof like a sacrifice zone.
It's a place where people have justbeen like, we're gonna trash this place.
This is where we're gonna trashit and we're not gonna trash it
outside of some kind of little area.
(11:48):
A common example of asacrifice zone is a pit mine.
All the life in this particularspot, a grove in a forest, say.
Will be destroyed, sacrificed, so wecan extract what we need while at the
same time protecting the forest fromthe impacts of a thousand little mines.
We save the whole forest bysacrificing this particular grove.
(12:08):
I don't like it, but to me thismakes a kind of high level sense.
If you're gonna make a mess, makea mess in just one spot, even if
it's pretty big, of course, whobears the burden of that mess?
Often marginalized communities andwhat the purpose of that mess is.
Industrial extraction for consumerismis a big topic, fraught with its own
set of important ethical implications.
But to solve the sacrifice zone issue,maybe we should just designate some
(12:32):
areas as permanent, no mess zones.
Maybe calling them somethinglike National Park, but Jane
showed me, it's not that simple.
Are you okay with, for example, a marineprotected area or like a national park?
Absolutely everybody is okay with that.
Well, doesn't that then mean that therest of the world is a sacrifice zone?
(12:52):
If we are okay with protecting certainareas from not being affected by
people like preserves, then we shouldbe okay with the opposite, right?
Philosophically, Jane's argumentfeels frustratingly right to me.
By designating some areas of theworld is special, we effectively
say that the rest are up for grabs.
Sacrifice able and ready to be trashed.
(13:15):
That's not to say we shouldn'tcreate areas for low impact use.
We can't hope Unique areas arejust protected from the forces
of our extractive market economy.
But that dichotomy that someplaces are worth saving and others
not just rubs me the wrong way,like every ecosystem is unique.
How can we possibly decide which tosave and which to sacrifice, and why
are we the ones to make that choice?
(13:37):
You know, you always hear people wholike have a respect for the environment
and there's a different thing.
It's very subtle, but the thingthat I feel is like in awe, the
respect is like something elsethat is aside from you, that is
not part of you and in awe is like.
Part of what you are experiencingand part of all at once.
(14:01):
Yeah.
Well, and it has so much greaterimplication about what we should
do about the natural world.
Exactly.
Like not coordinate off, but actuallyhave it be part of our lives in awe.
We're not separate from the natural world.
The reframe begins to break down the ideaof a landscape as an object for our use.
Changing it to something that we havea relationship with, something we
take from, but also must give back to.
(14:24):
In my experience, climbing putsme in that perspective of awe.
It makes the landscape part of mylife, and as such, I become part
of the landscape's life as well.
Even though my actions are small, theyare meaningful, and I know that I'm
only a small part of a bigger hole.
After our conversation, Jane putme in touch with Emma Harrison.
(14:47):
Emma is a former PhD student ofJane's and a climber herself.
She now works in oceanography andadvocacy for the rights of indigenous
groups all around the world.
I met her over Zoom before she wasslated to travel to the Arctic for work.
When I was living in Arizona, I wouldgo in the winters to Waco Tanks.
Cuco Tanks is a collection of naturalgranite pools and alcoves in the
deserts of Far West Texas, which havedrawn people for tens of thousands of
(15:10):
years, many of whom left rock art thatis unlike anything else in the world.
There's like all of these reallyimportant spiritual cultural sites
that are continually used for ceremony.
There's this huge military bombingrange, like right north of the park,
and so you're constantly hearingall these bombs go off while you're
sleeping there, and it's bizarre.
(15:31):
It's also an internationally renownedclimbing spot where the V grade
was invented and the likes of ToddSkinner and Royal Robins created
hard climbing routes, test piecesfor climbers to test their metal.
In the nineties, after years of increasinguse and misuse by climbers and everyone
else, Texas Parks and Wildlife decidedthat they had had enough and put a 60
person limit on entries to the park.
(15:53):
The decision was a compromise betweendifferent park users, including
climbers, but also environmentaland cultural conservationists.
Today, climbing and huerco requiresa guide who acts not only as a
steward of the art, but also as aninformed local, showing climbers the
best of what Hu Cuco has to offer.
I went to Cuco tanks on a whim.
(16:13):
I was driving from Californiato Austin, saw a brown US park
sign, Cuco tanks two miles.
I turned later and I was told thatI was the last entry for the day.
The ranger at the visitor center, seeingmy interest in the local history and
ecology, leaned over the counter and askedconspiratorially if I wanted a quest to
see the very best rock guard in the park.
(16:34):
He told me, go until you see a rockthat looked exactly like an alligator.
And then walk west untilyou come to an alcove.
That is where you will find the masks.
After a few hours of doubting, I came tothe alligator rock and followed it west.
When I crawled into the alcove andlet my eyes adjust, I saw three
geometric faces, masks painted inreds and yellows onto the rock.
(16:59):
I sat on the cool stone face toface with a figure painted by
another person a thousand years ago.
I was in awe totally andcompletely on my way out.
Seeing white chalk marks on someof the rocks, trail closure signs,
and other rock art, I felt acomplex compromise at Waco tanks.
I can only imagine that the differentstakeholders felt a similar awe and
(17:22):
deep love for the site and everythingit stood for in their world.
It's an interesting example ofthe land co-management system.
You have like a deep love and respectfor the land, and you want it to be
respected and used and part of your lifein like a really big and important way.
There has to be a balance, andwe have to know what those other
(17:42):
kinds of relationships look likein order to be able to respect
them, that that's something that weshould strive for as a community.
Wco Tanks shows us that there'sno right way to modify our world.
It's not a binary yes or no sacrificedor not sacrificed, but rather a
spectrum of more or less intensity,which will vary from place to place.
(18:03):
Seeing the land from a perspective of aweallows us to understand that our actions
are part of an ongoing relationship thatwe have with the land, and it's not like
climbers or environmental scientistsare the first to think like this.
The idea of an interconnected landscapeis very much the biocentric animism of
the indigenous peoples of North America.
People who have a deep love and respectfor their place making land use decisions
(18:26):
since they arrived some 10,000 years ago.
Of course, just like any relationship,there isn't a single template
for our participation with it.
Rather, each place will have a differentchorus of voices and perspectives
which balance in a different way.
On a smaller scale at the scale ofa bolt rep offered his own insight.
I think when I was younger, theclimb felt so important and if I saw
(18:49):
a sweet line, it's gotta be bolted.
But you know, now it's more like, hey,if this is a place where the cliff
swallows go, like don't bolt it, orthere's a beehive there, don't bolt it.
Our hubris as humans as we're notpaying attention to all the other
species that we're coexisting with.
The climb is less important.
(19:10):
Having a place for othercreatures to live is, is
on a visit home.
I returned to the bulge withmy mom who graduated from the
local high school in 1984.
I asked her if she evercame down to the Greenbelt.
No, she said, but she remembered thatbefore the climbers were here, no
one really took care of the place.
After clandestine parties by the creek,people would leave their beer cans behind.
(19:33):
What struck her most while we werethere was just how much had changed.
Carefully constructed trails,took conscientious paths and
erosion control measures helpedtrailside vegetation thrive.
Even though climbing hadbecome the primary human use
and modified the cliff side.
In the process, those humansmade room for the lives of the
other creatures to unfold too.
Their interventions had set thestage for a positive change.
(19:56):
With all that in mind, I askedEmma where the end goal is.
What might success for climbers andour broader society actually look like?
In her response, she brought up theperspective of a group fighting for
indigenous rights in southern Mexico.
The Zapatistas have this really greatphrase, they're fighting for a world in
which many worlds fit, and I think that'sa very nice way of dodging your question.
(20:20):
By saying that there wouldn't be just oneoutcome, one way of saying, oh, this is
how we've created equality or balance.
There won't just be one outcome.
How could there be?
The world is too complex and nuanced forsuch an easy answer, and while that feels
daunting to me, doing the hard work tobuild and honor an ongoing relationship
(20:41):
with the landscape around us feels right.
That kind of work is ultimatelylocal and place-based.
How could it be any other way?
(21:05):
This episode was produced andedited by me, Alex Strong with
Music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to the StanfordStorytelling Project for all their help
through the messy middle, especiallyLaura Joyce Davis and Megan Kafu.
Funding for this project was provided bythe generous donation of Bruce Braden.
You can find this and other worksby me and the Stanford Storytelling
project@storytelling.stanford.edu.
(21:28):
Thanks for listening.
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