National Park Service kills controversial plan to ban climbing bolts in wilderness areas

The National Park Service is killing a controversial plan that would have allowed local land managers to ban climbing anchors in wilderness areas.

The agency on Wednesday said it was ending a nearly two-year process to create a policy that called on local land managers to inventory fixed climbing anchors in wilderness areas. The draft guidance issued last year by the Park Service outlined a process for local land managers to designate climbing anchors as “permanent installations,” which are prohibited in the 1964 Wilderness Act. 

The overhaul of climbing policy on public lands would have impacted more than 50,000 climbing routes in wilderness areas on both National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service land in 28 states. Climbers called the plan “a war on wilderness climbing.” Wilderness advocates saw a process that allowed permanent installations in wilderness areas “the proverbial crack in the Wilderness Act and a harbinger of what’s to come.”

The Park Service process drew more than 12,000 comments, making it among the top 1% of any plan or proposal floated by the agency. 

“The NPS has discontinued the development of this proposed guidance,” Park Service spokeswoman Cynthia Hernandez said in an emailed statement. “Park leaders will continue to manage climbing activities in wilderness on a park-by-park basis consistent with applicable law and policy, including the Wilderness Act.”

It is unclear if the Forest Service will follow suit and end its participation in what has been a Park Service-led process.

Climbers and wilderness advocates cheered the sudden reversal.

“Excellent,” said George Nickas, the executive director of the Montana-based Wilderness Watch group that urged its members to oppose the Park Service plan. “The existing laws and regulations for wilderness do prohibit fixed anchors so hallelujah they are dropping the policy. It was a misguided policy.”

Wilderness advocates feared that creating a process for allowing climbing bolts would lead to mountain bikers pedaling on wilderness trails, hunters landing planes on wilderness airstrips and anglers motoring boats through wilderness rivers. 

Climbers argue they already follow strict rules prohibiting machines to install anchors in wilderness and often work with local land managers to limit the impact of bolts. For example, in  the climbing mecca of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, climbers are limited to installing only 15 new bolts a year on all climbing routes in the 30,750-acre park. 

Erik Murdock with the Access Fund said the reversal by the Park Service demonstrates that the agency “clearly listened” and adjusted its thinking. 

Particularly persuasive, Murdock said, was the letter sent in September by 14 U.S. senators, including Colorado Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, that urged federal land managers to not “unnecessarily burden” already strained agencies with the new rules.

The senators said the proposal could “limit access to these special places and endanger climbers.” They specifically asked that the Interior Department and Forest Service not officially designate fixed anchors as “permanent installations.”

It was the third letter Hickenlooper sent to Interior Sec. Deb Haaland since April 2023 advocating for protection of rock climbing on public lands. Hickenlooper also sponsored the Protect America’s Climbing Act, or PARC Act, which would direct both the Forest Service and Park Service to adopt a uniform policy for wilderness areas that allows climbers to place and maintain fixed anchors. 

The PARC Act is included in the first-of-its-kind Expanding Public Lands /Outdoor Recreation Act — or EXPLORE Act — that wraps several pieces of outdoor recreation legislation into a single bill. The U.S. House in April unanimously approved the EXPLORE Act and the outdoor recreation industry is holding out hope that senators will include the legislation in a year-end stopgap funding bill. 

Passage of the PARC Act would assure that land managers cannot float another plan to ban climbing bolts. 

The Forest Service in the late 1990s decided to prohibit the use of new bolts in about 40 of its roughly 400 wilderness areas and climbers protested that decision, too. And just like the most recent go-round, a wilderness group joined in the protest, arguing that all fixed anchors should be removed. 

The Forest Service in 1999 gathered the 23-member Fixed Anchors in Wilderness Negotiated Rulemaking Advisory Committee. The group met a handful of times and, while agreeing that wilderness areas should not have tracks of bolts up rock faces, allowed local land managers to approve climbing management plans that allow “a small number of bolts.” 

But without clear direction, there is an array of management policies where some locations prohibit bolts and some allow limited use.

Jonathan Jarvis, the director of the National Park Service from 2009 to 2017, waded into the bolting brawl with a 2013 order — Director’s Order 41 — that described climbing as “a legitimate and appropriate use of wilderness” but said it must be managed. The order said the “occasional placement” of fixed anchors do not “impair the future enjoyment of wilderness or violate the Wilderness Act.” Jarvis tasked park managers with crafting climbing management policies as part of required Wilderness Stewardship Plans.

Most parks, like the Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain and Black Canyon of the Gunnison, have climbing management strategies inside each park’s wilderness and backcountry management plans. 

That Director’s 41 order allows local park superintendents to approve or deny bolts in particular areas of the wilderness. Climbers wanting to install anchors in wilderness areas must secure approval of a land manager. The climbing community worried that an overhaul of policies that could ban bolts would isolate one of the most ardent supporters of wild places. 

“We want to make sure that the climbing community continues to climb in the wilderness with humility and restraint and that climbers are part of the solution for how to improve and protect wilderness,” said Murdock, the head of government affairs for the Access Fund.