Colorado senators add voice to debate over wilderness climbing

New political muscle is pushing back against land management proposals that climbers see as existential threats to the sport in Colorado and around the nation.

That's how Boulder-based Access Fund has described proposals from the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service. Presented last year, the proposals signaled "a new interpretation of the Wilderness Act," as Access Fund leadership previously told The Gazette — an interpretation making fixed anchors, such as bolts and pitons, "installations" banned by the 1964 act.

A letter signed by a bipartisan group of 14 U.S. senators disagreed with that interpretation. The group included Colorado's John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet.

"We believe that fixed anchors should not be considered installations in wilderness and urge the agencies to protect these fundamental safety tools," read the letter recently addressed to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.

For generations, fixed anchors have been used as protection by climbers clipping into them for ascents, descents and traverses across rock. In their letter, senators noted "iconic" and "historic" routes across El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, Zion National Park and others across the Wind River Range and North Cascades.

In Colorado, Access Fund has previously specified routes in Rocky Mountain National Park and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The nonprofit says some 50,000 routes would be impacted by land managers' proposed guidance on fixed anchors.

Access Fund views the guidance as a sweeping ban — "until an intensive bureaucratic process determines whether to remove a fixed anchor or provide an administrative exception for every existing and future climbing route that requires fixed anchors."

In determining fates of existing and new anchors, the National Park Service and Forest Service proposals call for "a Minimum Requirement Analysis, as funding and resources allow." Those would be studies into how necessary or not the placed gear was while also weighing "sensitive resources such as cultural resources or nesting bird habitat."

The letter from senators recognized land managers' intent "to provide over 8 million American climbers with clear guidance on the use of fixed anchors to maintain wilderness area protections."

But, the letter continues, "we are concerned the policy changes would unnecessarily burden our National Parks' and Forests' already strained budgets, limit access to these special places and endanger climbers."

Climbers previously countered the guidance with their own proposed legislation called Protect America's Rock Climbing Act. That proposed legislation was opposed by more than 40 wildlife and conservation groups that, in a letter, described fixed anchors as "the proverbial crack in the armor for wilderness."

Bolts and pitons were indeed "installations" banned by the 1964 Wilderness Act, the letter argued.

"Installations, including metal anchors like bolts, degrade wilderness character through lasting signs of human development and by attracting and concentrating use in sensitive landscapes," the letter read.