“You did not understand,” don Juan said patiently. “He is inaccessible because he’s not squeezing his world out of shape. He taps it lightly, stays for as long as he needs to, and then swiftly moves away leaving hardly a mark.”
– Don Juan Matus
Before
The above picture highlights a real cool time and place. The place is Little Smoke Bluffs in Squamish. This was taken at the end of a great day of climbing with friends. Playing hooky from college we did a whole mess of climbs that day. All short single pitch stuff on that amazing granite of Squamish. To me some of the finest rock on the planet. We finished off the long day with dinner and pints at the Cliffside Pub. After that it was back to the bluffs where we planned to doss. We laid out our sleeping bags and cracked open a bottle of Southern Comfort (really). Not a care in the world as we sat on the cliff top passing the bottle back and forth and planning to do it all over again the following day. The sun was going down, on a warm late-spring evening and it was a magical time.
Little did we think to the future on that night, but it turns out that the sun was also going down on this spot as well. It was not too many years later that the real estate developers got their grubby mitts onto this land and the sounds of crows and gulls was replaced by bulldozers and carpenters tools. Another special place swallowed by greed.
But it could have been much worse. The Federation of Mountain Clubs purchased some of the surrounding land and countless hours of effort by a diverse group of individuals; both climbers and non-climbers resulted in preservation of the remainder of the area and establishment of an official climbing park. Climbing which was once so counter-culture, under the radar and cool, is now much more mainstream, and believe me on this one… way less cool. Little Smoke Bluffs park alone sees over 22,000 man-days of climbing per year!
As climbers, access concerns us all. We should never take this for granted. We didn’t inherit the land; we are only borrowing it from our great grandchildren. We may not be able to solve all of the access issues but we can help by:
- Being good stewards of the land
- Leave no trace
- Minimize chalk usage
- Never place a bolt near a perfectly good crack
- Pick up trash
- Be quite and respectful. i.e. don’t be a dick
- Probably leave your dog at home
- Join organized crag clean up and trail maintenance days
- Give to the Access Fund
- Follow both the official and informal rules and regulations in areas that have tenuous or provisional access.
- Help educate others
After