All visitors to an area will have an impact: climber
Editor:
I’m writing in response to the letter by Andrew Monahan Time for boundaries that align with protecting Devil’s Glen and Trina Berlo’s article Rock climbing traffic exposes impact on rare cliffs. I share Bianca Perren’s feeling that the article paints climbers in an unnecessarily negative light.
The picture that accompanies Trina Berlo’s article (on Creemore.com) shows two vehicles encroaching on the roadway. Upon closer inspection, it is clear that they are occupied and have their headlights on. They are either climbers moving cars that had been parked on the east shoulder or they are motorists having turned on to concession 10 that have pulled over to yield to the farmer. Cars parked legally and off of the roadway are described as creating a hazard. They may present an inconvenience, or even make a section impassible for a vehicle that is wider than the paved surface. But a hazard; a danger or risk? That is simply not true. If anyone is endangered by the current parking situation, long overdue to be addressed, it is the climbers and hikers who walk nearly a kilometer along the shoulder of County Road 124.
Climbers park on Concession 10 north of County Road 124. On many days this is limited to the first 30m but is surely closer to 200m on weekends in peak season. Despite climbing extensively at Devil’s Glen for the last decade I have never encountered farm equipment (I spend my time at the cliff, not the parking) and was unaware that parked cars created an issue for farmers. I was certainly aware when, in 2011, residents voiced concerns that cars parked along 124 opposite the trailhead were reducing the sightlines for two properties and like most climbers was amenable to relocating to Concession 10. Refraining from parking on the east side of Concession 10 seems like a sensible solution for farm equipment and can be implemented proactively by climbers without waiting for legislation and official signage.
Monahan describes having had “the harrowing experience of driving along 10th Concession when there have been so many cars parked that it creates a hazard at an already sight-limited intersection.”
This is a hyperbolic statement that I believe is intended to fool anyone who is unfamiliar with the intersection in question. If Monahan is driving southbound he is approaching a T intersection at which he will stop. If he is driving northbound he has justturned off of 124. If his experience is harrowing in the first or last 200m of roadway it is because he is driving recklessly at a high rate of speed.
The stop sign on Concession 10 is set back 10m from 124 and parked cars do not encroach on the intersection nor do they exacerbate the poor sightlines that are the result of Concession 10 intersecting Highway 124 on the apex of a curve.
Monahan refutes the OAC’s position that “we climb on vertical trails. It is not different than the use of trails on the Bruce” by saying “I don’t know anywhere along the Bruce Trail where the trail splits into 130 different routes and includes permanent hardware inserted into the landscape.”
Climbing routes as vertical trails is an imperfect analogy meant to convey that our use is relegated to the vertical realm. By suggesting that the trail splits into 130 different routes Monahan is again attempting to mislead by evoking images of braided social trails and an area suffering chronic overuse. If we assume an average height of 15m we’d see that 130 climbing routes is just under 2km of climber-specific trails.
If Monahan is unfamiliar with permanent hardware on the Bruce Trail I have to question where he has ever been on it. It is of course, just another conscious falsehood meant to disparage climbers. There is an absolute abundance of hardware on the Bruce Trail in the form of signage, bridges, stairs, ladders, benches, handrails, cables, memorial plaques, and countless blazes hammered into trees.
Berlo’s article points out that climbers establish “routes” by bolting into the rock-face, despite having a leave-no-trace policy. Additional context is useful to understand this purported inconsistency. Leave-no- trace is an ethical framework that outdoor enthusiasts use to consciously minimize their impacts, not the mere sum of the words suggesting an unattainable ideal of no impact at all. When used as a metric, leave-no- trace can be useful for differentiating between hikers that widen a trail by avoiding a wet or muddy section, and those that get their boots wet and walk single file. If we attempt to use it by pointing out the very existence of a trail, or infrastructure associated with any user group, we will always conclude that those professing that they practice leave-no-trace fall short. Such infrastructure is often implemented to deal with user traffic. While the primary role of a climbing bolt is safety, the bolts that are placed atop most climbs are there specifically to prevent climbers from anchoring to trees. Conservation Halton has installed hundreds of bolts at Rattlesnake Point to this end.
All visitors to an area will have an impact. Pearce and Monahan choose the language of destruction to describe climber impacts. Do they use this same language when describing the adjacent ski hill, the quarries, the 900 km long Bruce Trail, all of the properties – including the Pearces’ – that encroach upon the gorge, or Monahan’s own development of mountain bike trails?
I do agree with Monahan on the following point: “legislation is needed, but it also needs to align with the mandate given to the land managers by the taxpayers of Ontario along with all park users and neighbours, not just the most vocal, or those who lobby most.”
The Pearces have been quite vocal, and while they may not appreciate the influx of visitors to Devil’s Glen, it is neither their backyard nor their park to manage.
Ben Iseman,
Port Elgin.
