Argument vs bolting bans?

[Al_Pine]

OK, I was up hiking yesterday thinking about this.

 

Say the government bans bolts in some FS land (non-wilderness). Has this happened? It seems like this would be preferential to one type of resource extraction (logging, mining) versus another (guiding). Could a valid constitutional argument be made along these lines? It seems like the courts are usually quite interested in adjudicating disputes that involve people making money.

[mattp]

I believe the Forest Service has extensive rulemaking powers on Forest Service lands and there would be no Constitutional issue as far as I can tell. It would be a political matter. In Leavenworth, for example, the rangers told us that they don't want to get involved in climbers' bolt wars. If some mandate comes down from Washington, they'll enforce it but I don't blame them if they don't want to get mired in the internal politics of any user-group and I bet they largely take the same approach to questions about logging practices or horepacking or other activities in the District.

[Al_Pine]

I'm not talking about the FS. This would be going over their heads.

 

It just seems like basically the FS is involved in managing resource extraction. "Land of many uses". Remember a couple of years back when a conservancy group outbid the logging companies for rights to log a certain parcel, but the bid was rejected because they actually had no plans to log? In one respect that made sense, because the FS is there to facilitate use of the forest to help our economy and provide jobs.

 

Thus, if the FS banned bolting or climbing somewhere, couldn't a guiding company say that that inhibits their ability to use the national forests to make their money? It's obviously less destructive than mining and logging. Hell, maybe they could even get a road built for them, or at least one maintained.

 

Maybe this whole point is moot though if bolts or climbing have not been banned in any national forest.

[Dru]

mattp said:

horepacking

 

But seriously I am surprised someone hasn't tried chucKpine's argument already with regard to National Parks, arguing bolts make the wilderness more accessible to Americans of different abilities, and that banning them is exclusionary - isn't that the argument that was used in favour of snowmobiles in Yellowstone?

[Cpt.Caveman]

I only use pitons. Bolts debates are boring.

[Dru]

I only use rock chockstones because they can be trundled in a pinch.