Should wilderness areas have bolts for climbers?

[Monte Meals]

The Federal PARC Act seeks to simplify federal regulations for the use of fixed anchors for climbing in wilderness areas.

https://www.vaildaily.com/news/should-w ... into-vail/

[jfm3]

We're gonna have to dust off the TallGrass Sunlight Spire thread for this one.

[XterraRob]

We're gonna have to dust off the TallGrass Sunlight Spire thread for this one.

We should also un-ban Tallgrass.

[dubsho3000]

I think I agree with Mike Browning, a local Vail Valley resident quoted in the article:

“Every special user group wants to get their sport, their use allowed in wilderness. The wilderness values — in the Wilderness Act — trump all these special interests that people want to have,” Browning said.

I personally don't understand why paragliding isn't allowed in Wilderness areas. If the law is going to be changed, I would start with that, not drilling holes into rocks. The idea that humans and our creations don't remain permanently in Wilderness is one of the wilderness values, I suppose, that are codified into the Wilderness Act. Bolts remain, but paragliders don't.

[Dave B]

Bolts? God no, we should have metric tons of old degraded webbing at rap stations instead.

[shays_days]

I personally don't understand why paragliding isn't allowed in Wilderness areas. If the law is going to be changed, I would start with that, not drilling holes into rocks. The idea that humans and our creations don't remain permanently in Wilderness is one of the wilderness values, I suppose, that are codified into the Wilderness Act. Bolts remain, but paragliders don't.

As a paraglider, we get the short end of the stick when it comes to Wilderness Areas, Wildlife Areas, National Parks and more despite having arguably the least impact on the environment of any user group. It sucks.

We just lost access to flying a state wildlife area that’s been flown for decades, that allows hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, hiking and more, due to impact on the wildlife…like what? Apparently non motorized, silent modes of transportation are more impactful to wildlife than literally killing it

[LURE]

As a paraglider, we get the short end of the stick when it comes to Wilderness Areas, Wildlife Areas, National Parks and more despite having arguably the least impact on the environment of any user group. It sucks.

We just lost access to flying a state wildlife area that’s been flown for decades, that allows hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, hiking and more, due to impact on the wildlife…like what? Apparently non motorized, silent modes of transportation are more impactful to wildlife than literally killing it

which SWA?

in large part every SWA has unique regulations because the exact motivation of the purchase or lease is different. sometimes the main motivation for the land is to preserve wintering habitat for wildlife as available winter range. winter range and critical winter range is among the most significant controlling factors in sustaining an ungulate population. sometimes they are purchased/leased by CPW with the primary motivation to provide fishing and hunting access.

every user group experiences restrictions or complete bans on certain uses on SWAs because they are all unique in what they're trying to accomplish. for those in winter range, restrictions tend to be most primarily focued on pregnant deer and elk and the subsequent calving season where many studies exist to show that disturbance from anything, be it hikers, runners, bikers, drones, dogs, anglers, and yes even a paraglider that causes pregnant deer and elk to move to place they otherwise wouldn't have felt the need to move to. such a seemingly innocuous disturbance that can occur a half dozen or more times a day in a recreated area through late winter and early spring can absolutely be the difference in calorie starved deer and elk that are hanging on nearing the end of winter aborting fawns and calves or not. it's becoming a much better understood phenomena. studies are readily available across the web with quick google searching.

which is why many of the SWAs close to basically any use through winter and into may. further, they are nearly all purchased or leased with dollars from hunting and fishing alone, so in that respect one user group does tend to take preference in the regulations and also why they require posession of a license or SWA pass to acess now.

long story short there's a ton of places to paraglide and SWAs even put a lot of restrictions on hunters and anglers, some are pretty open for whatever, it just depends. i'm aware of one SWA that still explicitly allows paragliding. SWAs are great, but they are nuanced in their regulations for a lot of largely very good reasons. maybe this instance you are referring to seems to have no bearing on deer and elk calving cycles, but nonetheless, each SWA is evaluated differently and absolutely not all uses are treated equally on them. it's the way they work.

[Wildernessjane]

Bolts? God no, we should have metric tons of old degraded webbing at rap stations instead.

Right? On the west ridge of Forbidden, which was the site of a high profile accident that stirred up a lot of debate around this topic, there was a ridiculous amount of old webbing littering the mountain across multiple descent lines when we did it.

https://www.rockandice.com/tuesday-nigh ... 1690395191

[dubsho3000]

I personally don't understand why paragliding isn't allowed in Wilderness areas. If the law is going to be changed, I would start with that, not drilling holes into rocks. The idea that humans and our creations don't remain permanently in Wilderness is one of the wilderness values, I suppose, that are codified into the Wilderness Act. Bolts remain, but paragliders don't.

As a paraglider, we get the short end of the stick when it comes to Wilderness Areas, Wildlife Areas, National Parks and more despite having arguably the least impact on the environment of any user group. It sucks.

We just lost access to flying a state wildlife area that’s been flown for decades, that allows hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, hiking and more, due to impact on the wildlife…like what? Apparently non motorized, silent modes of transportation are more impactful to wildlife than literally killing it

That is wild! Do you have any idea what the arguments are against paragliding? I mean, you said impacts on wildlife, but what specifically? I can't think of anything. (edit: I now see Lure's point about elk calving - seems extreme to ban paragliding all year for that but that is a valid issue.)

[dubsho3000]

Bolts? God no, we should have metric tons of old degraded webbing at rap stations instead.

Seems like a false choice. Which fallacy is this, Straw Man?

[XterraRob]

Right? On the west ridge of Forbidden, which was the site of a high profile accident that stirred up a lot of debate around this topic, there was a ridiculous amount of old webbing littering the mountain across multiple descent lines when we did it.

https://www.rockandice.com/tuesday-nigh ... 1690395191

I want to do that peak one day. I thought Forbidden had bolted rap stations going back down to the glacier?

[seano]

Bolts? God no, we should have metric tons of old degraded webbing at rap stations instead.

Right? On the west ridge of Forbidden, which was the site of a high profile accident that stirred up a lot of debate around this topic, there was a ridiculous amount of old webbing littering the mountain across multiple descent lines when we did it.

https://www.rockandice.com/tuesday-nigh ... complicit/

Not mentioned in that article is that there's a class 3-4 walk-off from Forbidden. Giant unnecessary nests of tat are a PNW tradition. In 2014 I removed 25 slings from Bonanza Peak, which is maybe 3-4 "pitches" of class 4 scrambling:

bonanza16.jpg