I often find myself incapable of turning down any opportunity to explore the land around me. At age fourteen I found myself with a plane ticket to New Zealand and Australia. This began what might have been my first meaningful introduction to the environmental ethos of outdoor recreationists that is so often wrapped up in the phrase “take only photographs, leave only footprint.” I refused to go to the Great Barrier Reef and not scuba dive. I wanted to experience such a marvelous place as closely and intimately as I could. This meant training, equipment and an understanding of how to not harm the delicate reef or myself in the process. So began my connection to the idea of how fleeting a resource and life can be without proper considerations.
Nine years later and I find myself in another locale and partaking in yet another form of outdoor recreation that is just as fleeting and demanding of consideration as scuba diving, canyoneering in Utah. My thoughts wondered to the environmental ethics of the sport. First, let me draw some borders around what is meant by the word “canyoneering” and where in the world it occurs. Canyoneering in a general sense is any exploration of a canyon anywhere in the world. The traditional understanding of leave no trace that existed long before the organization of the same name came into existence stands there as much as it does in any other area receiving outdoor recreation. For the purposes of the more interesting ethical discussion I will use the narrower definition of canyoneering, which takes place in slot canyons requiring some combination of scrambling, downclimbing and repelling.
The technical aspects of canyoneering make canyons with large vertical drops possible to explore. An anchor is an essential element of any descent. The anchor provides the attachment point for the repel rope. It is either pre-existing or made on the spot. Canyoneers make anchors by attaching webbing and a ring to almost anything. Anchors have been made using live vegetation, rocks buried in sand or a pile of rocks with an appropriate amount of friction. Following standard canyoneering practice the repel rope is pulled when the canyon floor is reached and continues with the canyoneer for the next repel. The anchor does not continue on. This becomes the source of the ethical debate.
If you think of slot canyons as staircases, really large staircases, then it becomes easy to see how canyoneers cannot, under normal circumstances, get back up the canyon once the rope has been removed from the higher step in the staircase. Until the slot canyon opens up the canyoneer can only move one direction, down. It is because the anchors are not removed from the canyon that much has been done to minimize the visual impact. Anchors are often made using webbing that blends with the color of the rock. This helps minimize the visual impact the anchors have on other visitors to the canyon. Removing the webbing from the top of the canyon often is possible once the canyoneer makes it out of the slot. Most canyon explorers do remove this first anchor.
There is a rising contingent of canyoneers that have started doing what is called ghosting canyons. The idea behind ghosting a canyon is to transverse the canyon and leave no evidence of human touch. This is possible by using different approaches than traditional anchors. One device that works for this is called a sand trap. Sand traps have two attachment points. The first is located in the front where the most friction and weight from the sand is exerted on the rope. Another is in the back. Pulling this rope allows the sand to escape out the sides and the tarp to continue on each repel. Another method is to carry sandbags into the canyon. The sandbags are separated by set distances of rope. The repel is done with the weight of all the sandbags. Then the pull rope is used to get the bags to come down separately.
The question then becomes why is every canyon not done using these methods? The answer is that these methods provide marginal anchors. There is a higher degree of safety in more traditional anchors done properly. Another reason is that some canyons such as a few in Zion National Park are already bolted. This provides a permanent, if unsightly, anchor. Only the future will tell if the ethic of canyoneering will stay the same or move to a lower impact and less safe alternative.
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