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Lame...Cave is now down and out...forever


RuMR

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Figger_Eight said:

climbers rather should seek support of groups like snowmobilers

 

I think that's the last user group I would want to be affiliated with as a climber.

 

An steel gate barring access to the cave would be the same as the Muir toilet. If a small fixture is what it takes to prevent widespread impact, then so be it. I was mostly talking about the bat populations anyway. They can still fly in and out.

F8- do you even know what are you taking about? have you even been to the place? bat population my ass. even FS biologist stated during the meetings that climbing has such a minimal impact on bats, it's neglegabe compared to everything else. as the matter of fact there are only 5 or 6 caves where bats hybrenate through the winter, hence should be avoided between november and february. hidden forest cave was not one of them. this is pure arbitrary decission, which makes no sense and goes clearly against the agreement from 8 years ago.

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babnik said:

glassgowkiss said:

babnik said:

i agree that this is an extremely sensitive habitat. saying that 'our mess' is cleaner that 'their mess' is just bull. no-one should be in there disturbing the habitat. we cannot recreate everywhere. no matter how much you can get for guano.

babnik- have you ever visited these caves, do you even know where they are? you are taking pure shit buddy. if these areas were so sensitive, I am sure everything what was sensitive died years ago with a smoke from tire fires and in a barrage of gun fire from drunk rednecks unloading boxes of ammo there. actually climbers were the one protecting these areas, cleaning fire pits, not allowing target practice. Maybe you should educate yourself first before blabing estabished slogans.

 

are there bats there? yes. is your presence detrimental? yes. again. the "their impact is greater than our impacts" thing is bull shit.

These were not the caves where the bats hybranate. so WTF are you taking about? yes "you're out of your element, so shut the fuck up Donnie"

I walked with Will Nazarian and a FS biologist a couple of FS managers through these caves. I sat through all these meetings. Bat habbitat was never an issue.

this has nothing to do with impact, it's just unilateral decission.

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babnik said:

i still think it is bull shit that they put fucking iron bars on the cave. hello!?! is it really about impact? i am sure that the drilling and shit was great for the habitat! rolleyes.gif

 

The problem is if you don't put something up really sturdy the locals will rip it out. I've see one bat cave where they went through the trouble of looping a 50ft chain around it to drag it off it's mooring. Once in the bats don't mind it and can navigate around it. Bats are good bigdrink.gif

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glassgowkiss said: These were not the caves where the bats hybranate. so WTF are you taking about? yes "you're out of your element, so shut the fuck up Donnie"

I walked with Will Nazarian, FS biologist a couple of FS managers through these caves. I sat through all these meetings. Bat habbitat was never an issue.

this has nothing to do with impact, it's just unilateral decission.

 

Whoa - someone actually informed on the issue. I was responding to the issue in general - looks like bats may not be the issue but vandalisim is(?). One note however, bats often use caves as roost areas during the day in summer (not a hibernation). But apparantly the FS says this was not the case on this. I'll bow out of this discussion. Thanks for the clarification.

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Not sure how well this applies out here, but back in the Northeast (Albany, NY area), there are a lot of gated caves. I believe this is because they were bought by the NCC (Northeastern Cave Conservancy), and is considered private access. If you're a member of a local grotto, it's not hard to learn who you need to talk to in order to get the keys.

 

Although for here in OR, if the gates are locked now, does that mean they won't open them up even in the off-season? (or are there even gates?)

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the gates we saw have a odd star shapped lug bolt that is securing entrance ot the tube. i'm sure a tool could be easily aquired to unlock this and get in. besdies that, there are no special padlocks or anything.

 

imho, its just a matter of time until some of said wrekreationists either weld these bolts off or find the right tool to open them up.

 

its reminicent of what they did at Derrik cave by turning it into a fallout shelter with rations for central oregonians, look how long that "gated" cave lasted. its like the FS has bolted the cave up, and someone's gonna come chop away.

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Dwayner said:

"Ahhh...the forest service pulled over 400 bolts from cave and permanently shut it to climbing...i think you probably can't even walk up there now???

'twas a great climbing area...oh well... "

 

A taste of the future for those whose climbing habits are utterly bolt-dependent.

 

you know the best thing about the future dwhiner, is that you wont be climbing, oh wait do you do so now? people will not be forced to listen to your jealous tirades about how sport climbing is wrong, shit man i have seen so many pitons and other types of trash that you old trad daddy left behind.

 

get a clue.

 

 

 

 

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http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=road+18+cave+climbing

 

great articles opinions from both sides of the fence. some of the editorials are written by old skewl bendites who offer a really interesting perspective on the use of this resource over the last 50 years.

 

to me, this is a knee jerk reaction by the FS, lets face it, for years the tubes were indeed exploited by the agency land mgmt for tourism, now they put a gate on the entrances to many of the tubes? The damage has already been done.

 

Anyone who has visited this part of the Deschutes NF can easily see why its called the Deschutes River Landfill by most around here.

 

Hitch up your portable meth lab, grab the 12 gauge the and the clay targets, and don't forgot yer quad, but leave your headlamp at home cuz dem tubes are off limits.

 

Anybody want to make a betting pool as to how long these gates last?

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Figger_Eight said:

GGKiss - It looks like two areas are being talked about here. I was making general statements about environmental impacts in caves - you're talking about overhanging climbing areas. Are those areas closed to climbing?

Where've you been? This thread is about climbing at Cave Rock - several overhanging crags by Lake Tahoe http://www.achp.gov/casearchive/casessum01NV.html

Lot's of damagebable stalagtites there.....

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gapertimmy said:

glassgow- so the reason for gating was to prevent vandalism then?

Tim- this is the scoop. Climbing in the caves started in about 1990. the first one was bouldering area at the entrace to Skaleton Cave. This cave was used for years as local teen party scene. climbes cleaned up the broken glass, moved ash and fire pitts out. in 91 first routes in Hidden Forest, Charcoal caves went up. There was another initial cave, which by the way WAS a bat hybrenating cave, so I will not mention it. Climbers voluntarly agreed during these meetings to stop climbing there. Even more, they proposed to remove and block the entrance road.

There were about 18 to 20 routes (bolted) between the 2 remaining caves (3 in Charcoal and the rest in Hidden Forest).

The motor behind this cave closure was a guy- Larry King. He is Portland resident, works as legal aid in some ambulance chasing office. It had nothing to do with habbitat, bats or any of that. He was just bent on banning ANYONE out of the caves. I admire his lobbying, esentially he made FS life a living hell. letters, constant phone calls.

in 94 and 95 FS started public meetings. There were 4 meetings. During them we thought a compromise was reached. The deal was that the climbing will stay, no more new bolting. Then the whole shit stared. FS issued a ban on usege of "drying agents" (read chalk). A couple of the climbers were issued a ticket. In the meantime Larry King was showing up at Portland rock gym. Somewhere about '97/98 bolts were removed, under a blind eye of the forest service.

The conclussion: no more climbing in the best climbing area in North America!!!!!!

There were other meetings with FS representatives during that time, also with FS biologist. Bat habbitat was never an issue as far as Charcoal, Hidden Forrest and Skaleton Caves go.

The problem was with the whole picture Larry King - he was bent on banning climbing from HIS pissing territory. As rule #1 any govenment pencil pusher doesn't want a pain in the ass as his/hers job, hence they started accomodating this fucker. My take on this is simple. First you remove user group out of the area and then you can do whatever you want. I would not doubt that any legal action would reverse several FS roules in this matter. Their decissions were unilateral and go clearly against the agerrents made in mid '90s. The problem is this was a marginal climbing area for majority of climbers. Access Fund doesn't want to spend money on defending this area due to minimal number of users. In my opinion Access Fund is a very inefective organization at this moment. It lost EVERY major battle with land managers. I would say there must be a major shift in thier strategy. They had some sucess back East, mostly by doing land swaps, but they were mostly issues with private land.

There is also a VERY DANGEROUS TREND among the climbers. Any time there is "protection" word involved climbers start to repeat useles slogans. We are shooting ourselves in the foot by blindly ageeing to so called "envirormental protection". Most climbing bans have nothing to do with resource protection.

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Dwayner said:

"Ahhh...the forest service pulled over 400 bolts from cave and permanently shut it to climbing...i think you probably can't even walk up there now???

'twas a great climbing area...oh well... "

 

A taste of the future for those whose climbing habits are utterly bolt-dependent.

oh you're so, so little minded my friend. I've got some BAD news for you- you are next. FS is still debating a ban on ALL fixed anchors in the wildrness areas. That includes pitons, bolts, slings on horns. So my friend next time you rap down some chunk of rock in the storm you might find yourself paying a hefty fine, just because some deepshit with pornoculars was watching you from the road. Let's leave bolting/ non bolting issue aside. This should be an internal climbing issue. As far as I know if you climb you need to protect it somehow. Pretty soon that won't be possible....

Edited by glassgowkiss
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cj001f said:

Figger_Eight said:

GGKiss - It looks like two areas are being talked about here. I was making general statements about environmental impacts in caves - you're talking about overhanging climbing areas. Are those areas closed to climbing?

Where've you been? This thread is about climbing at Cave Rock - several overhanging crags by Lake Tahoe http://www.achp.gov/casearchive/casessum01NV.html

Lot's of damagebable stalagtites there.....

 

Ummmm...what? confused.gif

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glassgowkiss said:

Dwayner said:

"Ahhh...the forest service pulled over 400 bolts from cave and permanently shut it to climbing...i think you probably can't even walk up there now???

'twas a great climbing area...oh well... "

 

A taste of the future for those whose climbing habits are utterly bolt-dependent.

oh you're so, so little minded my friend. I've got some BAD news for you- you are next. FS is still debating a ban on ALL fixed anchors in the wildrness areas. That includes pitons, bolts, slings on horns. So my friend next time you rap down some chunk of rock in the storm you might find yourself paying a hefty fine, just because some deepshit with pornoculars was watching you from the road. Let's leave bolting/ non bolting issue aside. This should be an internal climbing issue. As far as I know if you climb you need to protect it somehow. Pretty soon that won't be possible....

If that happens we should leave Dwhiner's bolt issues aside and start lobbying. If we get the entire climbing community to write letters/make phone calls we can raise a stink that the FS will not like.

 

Petty bolt squabbles will not help anyone.

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Sphinx- i think we should start with a change of Access fund aproach. They are have losing track record and their strategy doesn't work. I stared where it hurts the most= no more money for them. As a matter of fact a couple of major outdoor corporations started scaling back their support. We need someone with good legal background and who will stand up for climbers.

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