Does Climbing Need Gatekeeping to Save Itself?
This article originally appeared on Climbing
Gatekeeping: The activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.
All I remember is the deep, almost unshakeable feeling of frustration. I wanted nothing more than to climb in Hueco Tanks, Texas, but the New Mexico Mountain Club trip leader in charge of the outing seemed to think I wasn't up to the task. I was only 16, in my second year of rock climbing, and I'd learned from the club one year earlier in their Intro to Rock Climbing course. For an Albuquerque kid with no car, the club was my only way to the rocks, especially on weekends when my busy parents could just drop me off in the morning at a meet-up spot.
I was so overstoker that, during the week when I came home from school, I'd make up boulder problems on the brown stucco exterior of my father's home, traversing window ledges, dynoing to the little row of red bricks that limned the roof, and hand-traversing our tall cinder-block privacy wall. I even nailed a 4×8 sheet of plywood to our backyard mulberry tree and put scraps of wood on it to crimp: It was like one-third of a woodie, but turned vertically. In Albuquerque, there was no rock gym, though I could occasionally get a ride to the boulders with a parent or older kids.
"We need you to be able to climb 5.9 for this trip," said Bill, the leader, when I phoned him up. "But are you there yet? I'm not sure you are, Matt."
I stammered, "Uh-uh-uh," just a dumb, pimply, gumby kid seeing his big road-trip hopes getting crushed before his eyes. I'd only ever climbed on the local granite and basalt, and now here was a chance to go to this exotic-sounding place outside El Paso. At that time, Hueco was a backwater, and the club was headed down to do multi-pitch moderates. It was somewhere new, and I had to go! But this gatekeeper was saying I couldn't.
Now, looking back 35 years later, I can see that Bill had valid concerns. He'd been one of my instructors the year before when I could barely climb 5.6, and now, just a year in, I was still an inexperienced leader. On a two- or three-pitch 5.9, I could easily become dead weight if unable to second a pitch, which would impact the experience for everyone. And the trip description in the club bulletin clearly stated, "Must be able to climb 5.9."
Still, all my backyard buildering plus lifting weights had made me strong, and I could scrap my way up 5.10 on biceps power alone. But Bill, who hadn't seen me climb in months, had no way of knowing this. And so, his question was valid.
Or was it?
To gatekeep or not to gatekeep? It's a dilemma that's more pressing than ever, in today's era of massive gym chains pumping out new climbers, destination areas being loved to death, climber accidents ever more prevalent, social-media and Mountain Project documenting areas that in the past stayed off the radar, and a US population that, at 332 million, is nearly 100 million people more than when I started climbing. Perhaps there is no real answer, but the question remains: Does climbing need gatekeeping to protect the rock, as well as to protect newer or clueless climbers from endangering themselves, other climbers, and access?
***
Once upon a time there was a great little, pocketed cliff at the Red River Gorge, Kentucky, called Roadside Crag, with a densely packed array of aesthetic sport and trad routes from 5.7 to 5.13- right above Highway 11, the main artery through the southern gorge. One of the Red's original crags, with routes going back to the mid-1980s, Roadside quickly became a victim of its own convenience and high quality. The crag was always on private property and had been closed in the 1990s, but in the early 2000s the local climbers Grant Stephens, John Haight, and April Reefer pooled their money and bought the land, with the goal of preserving it for its ecological value and for recreation. However, ongoing overuse impacts like hammocks, stereos, dogs, cliff-base trampling and erosion, human waste, renegade bolting and permadraw installation, massive groups cultivating a party atmosphere, and so on on led the fed-up landowners to reclose the area in 2011. Roadside would not reopen for some years; it's now part of the Graining Fork Nature Preserve, which is accessible to climbers and visitors on a permit-and-donation basis. Also, you need to follow some basic rules.
These rules are pretty simple: no hammocks, no dogs, no drones, no music, no free soloing, no drugs or alcohol, no smoking, no fires, no groups larger than nine, no camping. And, if you break the rules, you will be asked to leave. What's more, repeated bad behavior could result in the crag being closed again, as well as the offenders having their "photograph and other information posted on the internet." In other words, screw up at Roadside and you may get it closed--and possibly be doxed for your trouble.
This has all worked out so far, save a closure in 2019--again for climber shenanigans. Says Reefer, around this time "[it] was not at all unusual to check permits, and over 50 percent of the people did not have them. It was also not unusual for these folks to yell at me, argue with me, or initially refuse to leave." Given that the permits are free and the suggested donation for a day's visit is only $5 (Graining Fork barely breaks even), this rotten and entitled behavior is incomprehensible. The last straw came when a local climber posted an Instagram image of night climbing at Roadside, without a permit. As has so often happened, climbers were their own worst enemies, and couldn't follow a few simple rules in exchange for access to one of America's best moderate crags. Fortunately, the closure was only temporary--this time.
***
I give Roadside as an example because it's so emblematic of the many issues at hand, but plenty of other climbing areas have seen closures or access restrictions due to overuse impact and/or poor or uninformed climber behavior.
These include Hueco Tanks, Texas, where swelling climber-visitor numbers and social trails, coupled with graffiti on the rocks (not the work of climbers), led in 1998 to new rules and restrictions, including a cap on visitor numbers and guided-only access to two-thirds of the park; Torrent Falls, also at the Red, where you must register to climb unless you're staying in one of the cabins (guests got tired of looking out their windows only to see climbers going pee-pee in the woods, plus climbers were ignoring the paltry, $2 day-use fee); and Ten Sleep, Wyoming, where internecine ethical squabbles led to the Bighorn National Forest shutting down all new-routing while they formulate a climbing-management plan. And there are cases where access certainly could have exploded but somehow didn't, such as on Bureau of Land Management land north of Moab, Utah, where a climber bolted a 5.3 sport route over a panel of ancient petroglyphs.
Today, per the Climbing Business Journal, there are 600-plus rock gyms across North America. Even if most of the people who climb there never venture outside, treating these places like the social centers or exotic health clubs they've essentially become--and not as springboards to outdoor climbing--these gyms are still creating new climbers by the tens of thousands. And, of course, some of these climbers will eventually want to go outside, with their main destinations being cliffs near population centers.
From my own purely anecdote perspective, I've seen this influx play out on the Front Range of Colorado, in particular Clear Creek Canyon (CCC), a steep, scruffy river canyon bisected by a highway west of Golden. When I moved here in 1991, Clear Creek was a cragging obscurity, with maybe 30-odd routes, many of them put up in the "experimental" style of the day: drilled pockets and even bolted-on gym holds were not unheard-of. Over the years, climbers kept filling in the blanks, but CCC was never that busy, even on weekends; the scrappy rock and constant, grating road noise made CCC, at best, a plan B. In the early 2000s, more routes began to go in, as did boulder problems, and CCC became more of a thing. In 2009, Movement Climbing & Fitness opened in Boulder. It was the first in what would become a nationwide chain of gyms that also has multiple locations across the booming Denver Metro Area, some of them, like Englewood, being truly massive. Now, in 2023, Clear Creek Canyon is hopping with climbers all the time, parking is often an issue along the busy road, and the crags have seen myriad climbing accidents and even fatalities, mostly at the moderate teaching/beginner zones at the top of the canyon.
One of the last times I went to Clear Creek was two summers ago, early on a Saturday. My friend Clayton and I ended up at Wall of the Nineties, where I'd climbed once or twice before. It was hot, humid, and greasy, and even at 7 a.m. there were already other parties; the popular routes on the 30-meter cliff were soon slammed. I got on a less-traveled pitch, but it was flaky and uninspiring, plus the belay was out on a ledge where everyone goes to piss. The experience literally stank. Later, as we tried a final climb, a guy was rope-solo-toproping some random chosspile above the heedless urban-hipster crowds, with their music and high-end snacks and ironic facial hair and dogs, while inexperienced leaders redlined on runout, old-school 5.10s, fumbling the clips. People were screaming and cheering like kids at a clown show, making it even harder to hear your belayer over the highway. Wall of the Nineties was an utter junkshow, reminiscent, perhaps, of Roadside Crag back in the day--before there were rules.
Finally, I just came out and said it: "Dude, this sucks," I told Clayton. "Let's go home."
This scene wasn't my jam. Who'd let all these barbarians through the gate?
***
We all get into climbing in different ways and for different reasons. For me, one of the big ones was that I don't like being told what to do--and, I suspect, neither do you. I was bad at team sports both because I'm not coordinated that way nor am I naturally competitive, but also because I hated having some sweaty-tryhard of a coach yelling at me from the sidelines. I left youth soccer when I was 12 and got into street skating, then switched to climbing when I was 15. (It's a lot safer to fall rock climbing, with a rope on, than to slam the concrete.) Traditionally, that has been the anarchical heart of our sport: Don't tell me what to do and I won't tell you what to do either. Rock climbing emerged from the counterculture as a way to drop out of society and be left alone up in the hills. Sure, some might label this avoidant behavior rooted in privilege, but these are our origins nonetheless, love them or hate them.
When our numbers were fewer, this ethos worked. You could get away with whatever you wanted to up through the 1990s, when the crags were empty and felt off the beaten path, and land managers barely registered climbing as an activity--or saw us as a low-impact, low-hassle user group, compared, say, to dirt bikers or redneck partiers. This unfettered freedom led to great things, like entire areas such as Smith Rock, Rifle, the Red, the New, Red Rock, the City of Rocks, American Fork, and Joshua Tree coming into their own as destination venues, helping give birth to American sport climbing. But it also led to misfires, with things like wholesale manufactured climbs and routes with gym holds popping up as climbers experimented with the "new wave" style.
Imagine doing that today, in a time when your actions can be livestreamed by anyone with a phone. Imagine going into climber-packed Smith Rock on a busy autumn Saturday with a backpack full of gym holds, rapping in, and bolting them to the rock right in front of the crowds. You would be crucified, canceled out of the sport before you'd even hiked back to your car.
But, as we saw above, climbers still do this kind of boneheaded shit, because climbers can be dumb, shortsighted, and selfish; climbers are human, and humans behave erratically and make mistakes. Factor in our swelling user numbers, and more of these things are statistically bound to happen. Which brings us back to the original question: Do we need gatekeeping to save the rock, and to save us from ourselves?
I asked a host of friends, pro climbers, and climbing partners this question. The consensus seemed to be that we need to do something to address our impact issues, but that "hard gatekeeping" in the form of trying to ensure that all climbers meet some minimum standard of competency, awareness, and care for the environment was neither desirable nor feasible in such a vast, geographically wide-ranging sport rooted in personal freedom. In fact, most of these folks argued, it smacked of exclusivity and elitism--a controlling, country-club mindset that is antithetical to our you do what you want and I'll do what I want spirit. Having seen firsthand just how odious such holier-than-thou policing can be, and how often it leads to intra-climber squabbles that then attract negative attention from land managers, I tend to agree. (For me, it's a long story that involves measures I took to reinforce a flexing flake on a first ascent and that other climbers took umbrage at; the matter was eventually resolved, but not without acrimony on both sides.)
Perhaps the philosophy professor and longtime climber Bill Ramsey phrased it best: "I am generally opposed to any sort of 'hard gatekeeping' in climbing, analogous to the sort of restriction you might see with the certification required for scuba or skydiving. [One] of the things that is both a desiderata and yet potentially negative about climbing is that you are allowed to proceed at your own risk--to make mistakes and learn the hard way. I'm not a hardcore libertarian, but I do think it is good that there are still a few activities where paternalism and 'safety-first-isms' are minimized, and people are still almost entirely self-reliant and self-regulating." And a strong Colorado climber, citing the ways in which this "Karen" mindset limits the sport, put it this way: "I do view most 'enforcement' as elitist. This leaves no adventuring to any of us seeking something different. When there was no trail to the cliff, someone walked up to climb the cliff. Someone [else] wanted to do it, too, so they built a trail. The area seemed dangerous for many, so bolts were placed in the wall, and many rejoiced. None of the things like this would happen if [Karen] was in charge; you cannot build new trails or build landings under boulders, or put slightly off-colored bolts in the wall, because it damages Karen’s eyes."
Instead, folks proposed, we should keep taking the proactive steps we're already implementing to address our impacts, things we might label "soft gatekeeping." These include work the Access Fund, American Alpine Club, and local climber organizations are doing around interfacing with land managers, bolt replacement, building sustainable trails and staging areas, and raising awareness through signage, kiosks, informational videos, literature at gyms, fundamental classes, guide-service advertisements, and so on. As the pro climber Sasha DiGiulian phrased it, "I think that encouragement rather than force is the way to go--encouraging safe practices, safety checks, knowledge, and responsibility in outdoor spaces." In other words, our best bet is to make the tools to be a good, safe, responsible climber as accessible as possible, and then hope that people use them.
So what about when, while out at the cliffs, you see other climbers doing dangerous or destructive things, or doing something heedless like filming themselves for the 'Gram at an access-sensitive area? Should you intervene, taking on a gatekeeping role? One friend who lives in the Northeast takes a pessimistic view of the efficacy of this approach (and of the new generations of climbers in general), worrying that it could backfire, with your actions perhaps put on blast on social media, being called "the token 'tag word' of the moment" so that the offending climbers can get their way and continue their antics. "The ones who enforce it need to have proverbial 'balls' and not be afraid of pushback or potential canceling on social media," he said. "Trying to educate in a 'nice way' would be our best first option, but as time has shown it's just not working. I'm not advocating for violence, of course, but telling some gumbo to knock it the 'eff' off seems to be an option worth exploring."
So, if you see something, say something, being as direct and polite as possible--if you're willing to get into a confrontation or take a hit to your reputation. This is probably about as far as any individual should go. Go any further into hard gatekeeping and you risk being a dick. Yes, we may see stuff at the cliffs that annoys us, but it's probably only worth calling out practices that place lives and access at immediate risk. There is no way to police all the bad climber behavior, just like there's no way to police every shitty, reckless driver on the highway.
***
All those years ago, I ended up going on that New Mexico Mountain Club trip to Hueco Tanks. I arranged with the trip leader, Bill, to first come toproping with the club at Bernalillo Cliffs north of Albuquerque and demonstrate I could climb 5.9. This "audition" was nerve-wracking, but I over-delivered and even pulled off a 5.10. Down at Hueco, I was able to second the 5.9 cracks just fine, while Bill ended up being a very supportive partner, even letting me lead a pitch or two on easier ground--contributing to our efforts to top out these climbs on the Front Side. He opened the gate for a kid full of rock-climbing dreams, and that trip remains one of my fondest memories.
A year later, Bill's trust in me would come full circle on another club outing, this time on the pink multi-pitch granite of the Sandia Mountains above Albuquerque. There, four of us, climbing in two ropeteams, set out to climb Warpy Moople, a seven-pitch classic up the 800-foot face of Muralla Grande. A massive, pie-slice-shaped roof looms halfway up the wall, an intimidating feature that presents an unmistakable obstacle to climbers. However, no obvious crack goes around it, and the route-finding gets tricky. The two climbers in the lead team took a hard left over the roof, hand-traversing along a tempting horizontal crack that promptly ended, stranding them above the void. Another club member and I were climbing in our own rope team behind them.
"Don't come this way!" they yelled over to me and my partner, waiting at our belay. "It's a dead end."
It was then that I recalled a photo from the guidebook of the crux lead, showing a climber moving up and right along the scooped face above the roof, an R-rated face pitch, it turns out, but one that looked to take the occasional small pro in the horizontals and tips seams spider-webbing the rock.
"I think I know where the route goes," I shouted over. "I remember a photo from the guide."
"OK, go for it, Matt," one of the climbers hollered back. "And then, once you get up to the belay, drop us your rope"--saving them from having to reverse the strenuous hand traverse--which I did after completing the pitch, my hardest traditional lead to that point.
I only had a year-and-change of experience on the sharp end, but it had been Bill's confidence in me and allowing me to come to Hueco that had let me cultivate the skills to lead Warpy Moople. Had Bill locked me out of the Hueco trip, I might have given up on climbing altogether in those early, impressionable days. This, of course, would have meant I wouldn't have been there that day on Warpy Moople. It's something to consider next time you see a newbie or seemingly clueless person screwing up at the crag: maybe they are a hopeless case and a liability and an irredeemable idiot, but then again, maybe they're just taking the first steps in their climbing journey and need someone to help point the way. You never know. The only thing that is certain is that gatekeeping restricts the possibilities for us all.
Matt Samet is a freelance writer and editor based in Boulder, Colorado. He is the author of the Climbing Dictionary and the memoir Death Grip.
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