Rock Climbers Grapple With Sport’s New Fame : Recreation: Longtime fans feel crowded out. Park Service, fearing environmental damage, seeks regulations.

Remember “Cliffhanger,” the Sylvester Stallone thriller that splashed onto movie screens earlier this year? Rock climbers here sure do.

“God help us,” muttered one rock jock, preparing to scale the craggy face of Yosemite Valley’s Cookie Cliff. “Now every bozo in America wants to be like Stallone and come up here and hit the walls.”

Long considered a fringe sport best left to wacko daredevils, rock climbing has gone mainstream, exploding in popularity--particularly in sport-crazy California.

While climbing pioneers lament sharing the cliffs with the new crowds, the National Park Service is worried about another consequence of the boom--environmental damage. Due to sheer numbers and the bad behavior of an irresponsible few, rock climbers are leaving their marks on the American landscape.

These impacts, experts say, are both permanent and temporary. Climbers disturb cliff-dwelling birds and animals, scar ancient rock art, uproot plants, and litter ledges with trash and human waste.

To improve their handholds, many climbers routinely scrape lichen off rock, sometimes leaving bare trails across granite walls that are visible from miles away. Others drill bolts into the rock to anchor their ropes, glue on artificial holds to traverse a tricky spot, or chip and gouge the rock to create a better “natural” grip.

“In the old days, there weren’t many people climbing so there wasn’t much to worry about,” said Dick Martin, chief of resource and visitor protection for the park service in Washington. “But we’ve got some real problems now. It’s time we took them on before it gets totally out of hand.”

Federal land managers from Maine to California are considering new rules to govern climbers and the impact of their sport. Proposed regulations could close heavily used routes, control crowds by a quota system or keep climbers off unexplored rock faces.

Already, one highly controversial step has been taken at Joshua Tree National Monument, one of the nation’s premier climbing spots. In a move welcomed by environmentalists, Joshua Tree has banned the use of bolts.

At Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming, American Indians are seeking to ban climbing on the 865-foot peak because they view it as an assault on a sacred place.

Norbert Reidy, a climber and a policy analyst for the Wilderness Society, said his group is generally supportive of the sport but believes some restrictions are needed.

“The Park Service doesn’t allow a hiker to move rocks or use a shovel to create a foot trail, so why is it OK for an individual to chip away and put a string of bolts across a smooth rock face?” Reidy asked. “There are tons of places to climb in this country, and it’s time to examine whether the use of bolts is really appropriate in national parks.”

Telling climbers where or how to climb is anathema to devotees of the sport. A prime attraction of rock climbing, they say, is the freedom to pull off the road, slip on some sticky rubber shoes and chart a new path up an unfamiliar granite wall.

Consequently, talk of rules has climbers in an uproar. In a recent newsletter, the sport’s leading advocacy group-- Access Fund--warned that “new regulations imperil climbing freedoms” and urged members to fight back. Some have discussed flouting the rules to set up a test-case court fight.

Still, most climbers concede that their sport’s new popularity has created environmental problems that need to be addressed. “We’re at a turning point,” said Sam Davidson of Access Fund, founded in 1990. “Climbing has been discovered, and we realize there are environmental consequences. It seems unavoidable that some restrictions lie ahead.”

Even so, many climbers believe that they are being unfairly singled out while environmental harm being caused by other visitors is overlooked.

“If a climber scrapes lichen off a rock,” Mark Chapman, a Yosemite climber for 23 years, said, “it’s considered a crime. But is that worse than the park service cutting down a giant tree so buses can pull over and give tourists a better view? It’s hypocritical--unequal treatment.”

Randy Vogel, a Laguna Beach attorney and author of 15 climbing guidebooks, calls his sport “an easy target” for regulation because it is highly visible and because climbers “don’t have political clout or huge sums of money to throw around.”

Vogel argues that climbers have been exemplary in their environmental sensitivity through the years. In the early 1970s, some of the sport’s leaders launched the “clean climbing” revolution, touting techniques that leave fewer scars on the rock. The principal change was the replacement of pitons--steel spikes hammered into cracks and removed--with more environmentally friendly tools.

Climbing rocks is an activity that began long before pitons were invented and the first national parks were set aside. Obsidian chips atop many Yosemite summits attest to the climbing skills of the Miwoks and other indigenous Americans.

Until recently, recreational climbing was strictly the province of the few. Despite a relatively good safety record, the sport was viewed as downright treacherous, its practitioners seemingly insane.

Not anymore. Today, climbers flood into the desert to scamper up the boulders of Joshua Tree or wait in lines to begin the multi-day trip up Yosemite’s famed El Capitan.

Although solid numbers are hard to come by, Access Fund estimates that there are half a million rock climbers in the United States. Some believe that number is double the figure of just five years ago.

Aside from temporary closures of routes inhabited by nesting peregrine falcons or other sensitive species, climbers have essentially been free to roam where they pleased.

But several years ago, evidence of damage began to surface. A Yosemite-wide survey of climbing areas found that 60% suffer environmental damage judged moderate or worse; in the valley, which has the park’s busiest climbing routes, that figure was 84%.

Seeking to lighten their packs during ascents, some climbers toss garbage off cliffs or leave it at the summit. The same goes for human waste; on El Capitan, it is common practice for climbers to defecate on bivouac ledges or in small paper bags, which they toss to the Yosemite Valley floor.

“The responsible climbers pick up their trash and waste,” said Michael Kennedy, editor and publisher of Climbing magazine, “but not everyone does. There are places on El Capitan that stink like an outhouse.”

Other problems include “gardening,” the oddly named practice of scraping soil, plants and small trees from rock cracks to make handholds clean and safe.

Officials at Joshua Tree say the mushrooming number of climbers has led to a proliferation of trails to the base of rocks, trampling of vegetation, threatening bighorn sheep and other species, as well as creating traffic and parking troubles.

Climbing has had a visual impact as well. Chalk from climbers’ hands leaves streaks across rock faces, colored ropes are sometimes abandoned on cliffs and, in Yosemite, the signature “glacial polish” left on some domes by shifting glaciers is occasionally chipped.

These aesthetic factors “are important because visitors come here to see a natural scene,” said Yosemite ranger Gary Colliver, the park’s climbing coordinator. “We need to look at how much intrusion by climbers--and how many signs of their presence--should be allowed to clutter up that scene.”

Believing that most climbers are eco-lovers, national park officials hope to use persuasion and education to reduce the sport’s environmental impacts. Already, they note, many climbers police the rocks on their own, reporting damage and condemning irresponsible behavior when they see it.

Still, some restrictions are expected at Yosemite, including a ban on the forcible prying off of rock to create holds and a requirement that climbers pack their waste off the peaks.

Leaders of Access Fund say they endorse those ideas. But they oppose Joshua Tree’s ban on bolts, ordered this year by Supt. David Moore.

Moore says that for now, the ban is temporary, pending studies of climbing’s wear and tear on the flora, fauna, petroglyphs and other cultural resources. But he said bolts should not be permitted.

“Wilderness should be a place untrammeled by man, a place where footprints are the only thing left behind,” he said. “So why do we allow someone to take a stainless steel bolt--something that will last a million years in the desert--and pound it into a natural feature we’re supposed to protect?”

Moore argues that instead of using bolts, climbers could use a “top rope” to ascend most of Joshua Tree’s rocks. In this manner, a climber scales the back side of a rock, anchors a rope on the summit and then retreats and starts up the face.

Climbers scoff at that suggestion. Top roping, they say, removes a key appeal of the sport, which is to ascend a rock with as little aid as possible. Climbers also view bolts as fundamental to their safety. They say the ban on new bolts--and the replacement of old, weakened ones--has put climbers in jeopardy.

“I propose that picking a dandelion causes greater environmental damage than placing 1,000 bolts on a rock wall,” said Randy Vogel, who calls bolting part of today’s “general hysteria” about climbing.

“A dandelion is part of the biosphere, a living thing. . . . But a rock? This just isn’t the evil thing people are making it out to be.”