Climbing to Agreement

The conflict at Joshua Tree National Park followed an increasingly familiar pattern, typical of how the growing demand for outdoor recreation puts new pressure on the nation’s parks and wild lands. At Joshua Tree, a sprawling 800,000-acre wonderland in the Mojave Desert, the superintendent heard complaints about the proliferation of rope-anchor bolts being seated in the park’s rocks by a growing army of climbers. The park chief issued an edict banning any new bolts. The climbers protested and threatened to sue. Thus the issue was joined with little or no prospect of settlement except through a protracted court struggle.

There was a similar situation in Yosemite Valley last year over relocating buildings to a previously undeveloped area after the destructive floods of January 1997. In the eastern Sierra Nevada, another conflict involves the rights of high-country hikers versus those of horse packers who lead groups into the mountain wilderness. In Idaho, it was climbing bolts in wilderness cliffs, triggering a proposed bolt ban for all national forest wilderness, with little regard for possible safety consequences.

In Joshua Tree, however, the bolt fuss never reached the courts. Cooler heads began talking. And from a year’s negotiations evolved a compromise that satisfies most of the parties. The plan, scheduled to become official this summer, allows climbers to replace bolts when they become aged, loose and unsafe. Permits for placing new bolts will be issued on a limited basis in consultation with an advisory board that will include both climbers and environmentalists. The proposal also deals with other problems that were, in fact, more damaging to the environment than the bolts, including the trampling of vegetation along the bases of the rocks.

The Joshua Tree issue was a classic example of the conflict between the protection of the environment and the public’s right to enjoy an area for recreation. Joshua Tree, with its giant granite boulders scattered over hundreds of square miles, has been an internationally renowned climbing area for years.

The bolts, a quarter to half an inch in diameter, are used to safeguard a climber’s progress up vertical and even overhanging walls. If the lead climber slips, the fall is checked by the climbing rope linked to the bolt. Bolts also are used as anchors for sliding down a rope from the top of a climb, often the only safe means of descent. The park chief saw them as degrading the rock; the climbers as a means to climb safely. The gap in perception was closed by talking through the problem.

In Yosemite, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt stepped in to order a comprehensive new planning effort that will involve environmentalists and other park users. The Forest Service, surprised by the level of protest, withdrew its proposed national ban on climbing bolts, pending further study and consultation with wilderness users. In these cases, solutions can be negotiated with a reasonable chance of satisfying the opposing parties.

Most important, new solutions can help reconcile the conflicting mandates of Congress to protect parklands while making them available for the people’s enjoyment.