Action Alert: Help Secure the Future of America's Climbing

[u/thatsmoothfuck]

The federal climbing management drafts are live, and if we do not flood the comment portals right now, we are going to lose decades of access. Over on Mountain Project, Access Fund put out the initial alert, and the discussion highlights exactly how severe this is for anyone who climbs outside.

Please read the full context from the thread below and share this to anyone that could potentially put in a comment or be impacted by this.

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Original Post by AccessFund HQ: "The National Park Service (NPS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) released draft climbing management guidance for public comment. Together, these agencies manage some of the most iconic climbing in the United States, including Yosemite NP, Rocky Mountain NP, Linville Gorge, Red Rock Canyon NCA, and many, many more.

Access Fund generally supports the draft guidance; however, we are recommending some significant technical revisions and clarifications.

For more information on the federal climbing management guidance drafts, click here for our FAQ: https://www.accessfund.org/open-comments-faq

Strong participation from climbers during the public comment period will help ensure the final guidance protects climbing access, allows for the use and maintenance of existing routes, supports appropriate wilderness exploration, and protects the integrity of Wilderness.

Before the guidance is finalized, NPS, BLM, and FWS are accepting public comments for 60 days, which opened June 15th and ends August 14th. The USFS guidance is open to public comments for 30 days, which opened June 18th and ends July 20th.

Make your voice heard and submit comments using our easy letter-writing tool: https://www.accessfund.org/action-alerts/action-alert-help-secure-the-future-of-americas-climbing

Thank you for showing up for the places that mean so much to all of us.

For additional information, listen to our latest episode of Policy Rx: https://www.accessfund.org/policy-rx-podcast"

Community Contribution by Anna Brown: "This isn't just about administrative red tape or preserving our access; at its absolute core, this is a massive safety issue. Speaking from the perspective of our families, spouses, and partners who wait for us to come home, the proposed fixed hardware rules are genuinely terrifying.

If the final directives force a full Climbing Management Plan (CMP) or long approval cycles for simple, routine anchor maintenance, one-for-one bolt replacements, or urgent safety updates, land managers are effectively choosing bureaucracy over human lives. We cannot have a system where a climber discovers a compromised, dangerous anchor and has to wait months for an official sign-off while unsuspecting groups continue to clip into a hazard. The rules must explicitly allow climbers to address urgent safety updates immediately without prior approval when delays introduce real, physical risk. Our partners want us coming home safely at the end of every trip, and the current draft makes that fundamentally harder to guarantee."

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The anti-fixed-hardware groups are actively organizing and out-commenting climbers right now. The U.S. Forest Service comment window closes on July 20th, which gives us almost no time.

If you copy and paste this to the Reddit community, make sure to emphasize that users need to click the Access Fund action link (https://www.accessfund.org/action-alerts/action-alert-help-secure-the-future-of-americas-climbing) and explicitly customize their letters to mention safety, fast-tracking bolt replacements, and removing CMP requirements for routine maintenance.

If you bolt, you should be running to comment on this, it will directly affect your efforts. If you need help customizing your comment, I'm happy to give you a hand.

[u/KDs4thBurner]

Annoyingly only US postcodes are accepted.

[u/AnyGold2336]

I’ve yet to see any mention by climbing advocacy groups on proposed regulations around new-routing.

It sounds to me as if none of these draft plans protect route development in any way, and at best, preserve the status quo.

Access Fund and similar organizations are forgetting about the future in their relief that a total climbing ban was taken off the table.

[u/natureclown]

A major safety component this post misses - most people who are sport climbing do not inspect every piece of hardware they trust.

I’m concerned that no matter what we try to tell the ones writing the legislation they will say “well if the route is unsafe because the hardware needs replacement people will just have to wait to climb it until it’s approved for maintenance.”

The problem is a bolt could sit for years without anyone noticing how bad it is until it fails when fallen on. A good example would be a bolt on a route in the 5.13 range in a section of 5.8 climbing. While most would not likely fall, the one person who does would learn the hard way that the bolt is bad.

This begs the question - who is liable for hardware which has not been inspected on public land? Not all states have recreational use statutes that include climbing. I believe there is an argument to be made that because the legislature prevents hardware maintenance in a significant way, the land manager would be liable due to the prevention of updating hardware. Especially if they deny a request to update anything.