I took an hour or two of yesterday to get out crimp some stone, a long winter of cranking in my home dry-tool cave leaves me a little loopy at times. From my home Land of the Overhangs is a about 10 minutes, I pull in for a little early-season. Having forgot my pads I head straight down for some inadvertant high-ball, what greets me there underneath the big overhang is sickening. Some assholes have built a fire ring right under the big overhang, not satisfied with this desecration they have broken all the bushes off in a thirty foot radius and burned them in the fire. Ah, there's more... Several 64oz. New Belgium returnable beer jugs have been left as well as other sundry trash, they have courteously thrown their Mickey's 40s away nearby so I get to pick up the green broken glass using a pair of zip-off pants legs also abandoned as gloves. After sending my routes I lug this pile of rubbish out and up.
Note: If you are reading this and these are your NB bottles please get in touch if you would like them back, getting them out of your rectum afterwards might be a problem though...
I find this a cruel cosmic prank given that I was just at the Larimer County meeting April 7 to discuss the fate of trail work at Rotary Park, there I had stood up and stated in no uncertain terms that I knew much of the destruction around the RP boulders was the direct result of climbers breaking brush, pruning and blazing trail to facilitate a more "tame" setting for their "climbing". This assertion was not terribly well received, at the meeting there was much talk about "hikers" and other incidental riff-raff being largely responsible for RP having become a complete tip. I first climbed at RP in 1992, have lived here in LaPorte since 1993 so what goes on at RP and the other bouldering areas has been the subject of keen interest for me.
In short, climber activity is a certain culprit in the profound degradation that plagues areas like Rotary Park, people using these areas for climbing simply have no respect for the land, the climbing, the boulders themselves. Having pimped-out the Rotary Park for a variety of commercial ends like magazine articles, guidebooks, and the Horsetooth Hang many "activists" move on to greener pastures (i.e., Boulder), not me though, I'm stuck here, this is my home.
For example when I brought up at the meeeting that the slopes around and below RP were the site of many nesting songbirds, a yellow-breasted chat nests there as well as spotted towhees, rock wrens, there was more than one smirk in the room. Most visitors are concerned mainly with not getting poked by a plum bush on their 400th attempt on Moon Arete or avoiding having their expensive yoga-bra hung-up on a mountain mahogany whilst sitting there looking soooo hot beneath Meditation.
Mind you I am not saying climbers set this fire, but these were not children partying here, few teenagers hang around outside New Belgium with their returnable beer jugs waiting for a likely patron to head in and score them a refill of Fat Tire. There is plenty of new chalk at LOTO, someone is climbing here which is fine, there is about 150 feet of shoreline left here so once it falls into the reservoir that's it and destroying the brush holding said shoreline in place is a pretty good way to accelerate the process to oblivion.
To call these activities VANDALISM is a good start, that way you can't say you are some sort of hero/activist clearing plum bushes from around the boulders so you and your pals can top-rope in safety problems you should probably either climb unroped or just stay the fuck off of. Rotary Park isn't a gym, no one comes by to vacum up after you, your tape, cigarette butts, plastic water bottles, your dog's shit, all this stuff is your responsibility, as they say your mom no longer works here.
The new plan of course seems to be to build yet another gargantuan trail down to the reservoir through RP, ostensibly to divert all the riff-raff away from the boulders. This will create a dog swim/party beach so wasted sorority girls in their flip-flops can readily stagger down to the water their doughy neo-con fascist boyfriends in tow, what an innovative solution to the problem of Rotary Park being converted into a suburban bouldering ghetto that is.
We have a saying around my house, anyone first arriving in Colorado faced with such natural beauty has a similar reaction, "What a great place! Let's FUCK IT UP!!!" This isn't limited to climbers who cut trails, place gobs of shiny bolts, and let their mutts defecate everywhere, where the buffalo once roamed we have Super Target, bloated mega-menopause mansions and garden-variety sphincters blasting down every road and lane in Hummers, Suburbans and F350s on the phone fairly shrieking "I'M BUSY GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!!!".
No Rotary Park is an island, the same slacker/trustafarian/gym-rat mentality has despoiled many areas, Hueco Tanks, Mount Evans, Rocky Mountain National Park, my all time favorites being the lard-asses too lazy to carry their pads up and down the trail so they leave them stashed in situ, howz about I leave my broken down '68 Ford Galaxy in your front yard "stashed" as it were hommies, huh? How would you like that?
Much of this is about having respect for the resource, if you're too much of a lame-ass to carry your rope, pad or whatever up and down the hill en-route to making your latest video then, please just stay home, go to the Spot, shave yourself, whatever. I'm not likely to come to the premier of your new bouldering video, I don't read climbing magazines so your latest test-piece does not concern me, I'm simply not impressed.
All I seek is the chance to go boulder in relative solitude amid the shade of a Squawbush, listen to a bird-song not your dumb-ass dog barking at me ("Oh, he's friendly!", really?). I don't wish to boulder in squalor for all time, I want my son to be able to climb here, maybe even his son or daughter.
Rotary Park, Land of the Overhangs, these are great places, so don't fuck them up...
