Charleston Gazette-Mail Article

FAYETTEVILLE - When the New River Gorge National River was created in 1978, the park's miles of sheer, 30- to 120-foot-high sandstone cliffs were valued mainly for their rugged appearance and as habitat for birds of prey.

The first climbing route up one of the canyon's hard rock cliffs was charted in 1977. Today, there are more than 1,500 identified climbing routes in the gorge itself, and another 500 routes in the nearby National Park Service-administered Gauley River National Recreation Area.

On a sunny summer weekend day, as many as 300 climbers can be found inching their way up a six-mile stretch of cliffs near Fayetteville. "It's the premier National Park Service climbing site in the East," said Gary Hartley, chief ranger for the New River Gorge.

"The New River Gorge has become a global climbing destination - all in the last 15 years," said Gene Kistler, a Lansing climber and the regional coordinator for The Access Fund, a climbing conservation group.

With overcrowding taking place on some of the gorge's easier to reach routes, with interest in climbing increasing, and with half the nation's population living within a day's drive of the gorge, the Park Service has decided that the time is ripe for completing a climbing management plan.

On Wednesday, a group of climbers and climbing outfitters met with NPS planners in Fayetteville to discuss their concerns about the future of climbing in the gorge.

The Park Service's goals for the plan include:

Finding ways to minimize climbing's impact on the ecology of the gorge's cliff areas and historic sites. Determining the appropriate role for commercial climbing outfitters in the gorge, who now number about 15. Deciding whether new parking areas and access points are needed. Setting up educational and interpretive programs on climbing to the benefit of all park visitors.

"Some of the routes are really getting hammered," said Greg Davis, a planner from the Park Service's Denver office and a recent convert to climbing, who toured the gorge and talked with climbers earlier this week.

Climbers and guides attending the meeting agreed, citing easy-to-reach beginners' routes along the Bridge Buttress and Junkyard Wall, located in the shadow of the New River Gorge Bridge, as examples of over-use.

"It can get difficult when you've got your people right over the top of another group," said climbing guide Mark Graybill.

"We could spread out the impact if we got out better information on equally good, less-used climbing routes," Kistler suggested.

Other guides suggested the possibility of reserving routes via e-mail or Web site postings, or of building sign-in stations at trailheads to popular climbs.

If a certain number of climbers has already logged in at a particular site, arriving climbers would know to go elsewhere.

While adding new parking areas and access trails could disperse climbing pressure, it could also detract from climbing aesthetics, Graybill said.

"If we make access too easy," he said, "we'd be selling out to a degree on the true climbing experience. We need to find a balance between purist values and commercial interests. Otherwise, we're in danger of becoming a theme park."

Currently, the park's 15 or so commercial guide services pay a $100 permit fee and agree to limit their groups to no more than 15, with at least one guide for every four clients.

While that policy helps assure that climbers are adequately supervised along the cliff face, it does nothing to restrict the number of climbers on the rock, since there is no limit to the number of groups an outfitting service can guide.

Some attending Wednesday's meeting said they would like to see a set of standards developed to ensure that all guides operating in the gorge are qualified to safely lead climbs. Park Service officials said they would look into whether a concessionaire approach to guiding was needed, as it is in the more popular climbing parks like Yosemite.

Virtually all at the meeting appeared to agree that some restriction should be imposed on the number of climbers using the park's most congested climbing routes.

Self-guided church groups, scout groups and climbing clubs were mentioned as major contributors to overcrowding.

Guides now doing business in the park have been cooperating with each other to ease congestion, sometimes sharing climbing rope set-ups to save each other time.

"Things have been competitive in years past, but people are working well together these days," said Graybill. "I'd like to see everybody who's worked so long to develop the business continue to get a fair share of the pie. It would be a shame to have anyone shut out."

Follow-up meetings on the climbing management plan will be held in the winter.

A draft plan, listing several possible alternatives, should be ready for review by spring. A final plan should be complete by this time next year.

To contact staff writer Rick Steelhammer, use e-mail or call 348-5169.

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