Activist Tries to Scale Down Red Tape : Access Fund wants to maintain areas and access in environmentally sound ways.

The squeeze is on. With rising demands on public lands, recreational user groups are getting organized in defense of that magic word, access .

Motorized off-roaders are battling environmentalists for the right to lay their tracks across the desert. Mountain bikers are fighting to keep riding on trails in parks and forests.

And climbers are doing their best to stay on the rocks.

One of the most active Southern California voices in defense of rock climbers has been Randy Vogel, a Laguna Beach resident who practices law in Irvine and goes climbing wherever and whenever he can.

“If I could climb every day, I’d be very happy,” says Vogel, 38, who has been climbing for 21 years. He did climb full-time as a guide for four years before entering law school, and he is probably best known in the local climbing community as the author of several popular climbing guides to such areas as Joshua Tree, in the high desert, and Tahquitz and Suicide rocks, near the resort town of Idyllwild in the mountains above Palm Springs.

Much of his work in recent years, however, has been as Southern California point man for the Access Fund, a national organization that lists as its goals the protection of climbing areas, the preservation of climbers’ access to those areas and the promotion of environmentally sound climbing practices.

The sport of climbing took some knocks in the ‘80s, primarily on the issue of placing permanent bolts on climbing routes. The bolts are drilled into the rock and used and reused as anchor points for a climber’s rope (the rope is used as protection in a fall, not as a climbing support).

There are removable anchors that fit into natural cracks in the rocks, but they can’t be used where the wall is too smooth. Bolts are used only when there is “no other form of anchoring protection,” Vogel says.

Some opponents of the practice say it defaces the rock, but Vogel argues that is a view held mostly by “desk-bound people” who haven’t seen the areas in dispute. Vogel has often taken groups out to view bolted climbing areas.

“You have to point (the bolts) out to people. They’re standing 10 feet away from the rock, and they can’t see them,” Vogel says. These days, also, climbers are beginning to use bolt hangers that match the color of the rock, rendering them almost invisible from more than a few feet away: “It’s almost a problem for the climbers,” Vogel says.

Vogel believes that the bolt debate is “really a non-issue” that diverts attention from the genuine environmental impacts that climbing can bring to an area. These include the disposal of human waste and trash in areas remote from restrooms and trash receptacles and the trampling of vegetation on the approach to climbing routes.

An example of the Access Fund’s activist approach to these issues is at Joshua Tree, which some consider the most popular climbing location in the world. Just two hours from Orange and Los Angeles counties, Joshua Tree National Monument has more than 3,500 established climbs and, because of its desert setting, can be climbed almost year-round.

The Access Fund has funded construction of restrooms (with trash receptacles) at three popular climbing sites within the monument. The organization also has funded the construction of formal trails to climbing locations and has printed an information brochure with climbing tips and regulations for park visitors. The fund also sponsors trash cleanups of the monument.

Climbers are “probably the most responsible user group out there,” Vogel claims, and it seems to be paying off in Joshua Tree. The monument is developing a climbing management plan, as are all sites in the National Park Service, and Vogel is happy with the way the plan is progressing.

“We’re hoping that what’s being done there will be a model for other parks,” Vogel says.

One place where things aren’t going so well is a Los Angeles County park called the Devil’s Punchbowl, where park officials and climbers are at loggerheads.

“They really have a fixation . . . on bolts,” Vogel says. “They say bolts are rock defacement and constitute a crime. They are threatening to remove bolts.”

So far, Vogel says, there doesn’t seem much room for compromise. “That’s a problem area,” he says, “and I’m not sure how that’s going to be resolved.”

Access has not been a big issue within Orange County, which does not have much in the way of great climbing, although climbers have sometimes been restricted from the boulders at Corona del Mar State Beach during busy summer days. Lifeguards there have been concerned about climbers falling on sunbathers or their presence encouraging untrained climbers to try their luck on the rocks.

The overall problem with climbing-access issues, Vogel says, is educating land managers who have perhaps learned misconceptions about climbing from TV and movie depictions of the sport.

“Climbing itself has been vilified . . . . Climbers don’t have a lot of money. They don’t have a powerful lobby,” he says. “I think it’s appropriate that climbing be managed. I think a lot of the decisions are sound ones. But there have been a lot of unsound decisions, too.”

One of the weirdest access issues in the rock-climbing arena cropped up about a year ago, when Caltrans decided to crack down on the practice of constructing climbing walls on freeway underpasses and bridges. In one well-publicized event, the agency removed bolts and glued-on artificial handholds from pillars supporting the Arroyo Seco bridge near Pasadena.

Fear of liability in case of accidents or injuries was Caltrans’ stated reason for the move, but Vogel says that the state is immune from any liability. The use of freeway underpasses for climbing (always out of sight from traffic) is a way to bring recreational opportunities to urban areas without cost to the government, Vogel says.

Even some within the access movement disagree. “Some people say, ‘We shouldn’t devote our attention to this. It isn’t very good climbing.’ I think that’s very elitist. It’s just snobbery,” Vogel says.

If people are getting something out of it, “it’s worth protecting,” he says. “Everybody needs some kind of outlet.”

The situation with Caltrans is at a stalemate. The agency isn’t likely to allow climbing, although local officials often look the other way. Meanwhile, climbers keep climbing. Vogel estimates there are about 50 clandestine climbing routes on overpasses, bridges and culverts in Orange County alone (not all of them under Caltrans jurisdiction).

“There’s a place about five minutes away (from his office in Irvine) where I can get a good half-hour workout. I don’t have to drive all the way to Joshua Tree,” Vogel says. But don’t expect any guidebooks--for now, at least, the locations are a closely guarded climbers’ secret.