As rock climbing gains popularity, it’s important for climbers to represent ourselves as responsible stewards for the environment in order to maintain access to some of our favorite climbing areas.
Touchstone Climbing offers FREE Outdoor Education classes at a number of facilities. These outdoor education classes are required for anyone taking a, outdoor climbing clinic such as crack climbing, how to build climbing anchors, rappelling, or bouldering outside. But, they are also open to anyone and everyone who is thinking about climbing outside!
We’re lucky to be surrounded by talented climbers helping to teach our outdoor education program. At Berkeley Ironworks, Matt Ulery, founder of Bay Area Climbers Coalition, teach the Outdoor Education class every month. Has has played a huge role in developing the program, and is a wonderful voice within out community. At Mission Cliffs, Brandy Barnes teach the Outdoor Education Class. Brandy is a bouldering area developer from Arkansas and was heavily involved in local crag clean-up. At Diablo Rock Gym, Banning Lyon is our Outdoor Education instructor working to spread the good word on outdoor ethics and beyond. He has played a large role in the Bay Area community for years, working with the outdoor programs at REI.
On Wednesday, November 11th, we enlisted the help of professional climber and Adidas athlete Carlo Traversi to help us teach the important of outdoor ethics. Carlo joined us at Dogpatch Boulders to give an awesome presentation on outdoor awareness and ethics. Fresh from a send of the Eiger North Face with Sasha DiGualian, Carlo had a huge amount of content to share with event attendees about his travels worldwide and locally.
Although there are some overlapping ethics that should be followed in just about any climbing area such as noise, erosion, and traveling in large groups, it was clear that his experience as a globe-trotting climber gave him the unique perspective of the importance of local ethics. “Almost every area he highlighted had some ethic specific to the region and culture,” said event organizer Ryan Moon.
On top of beautiful photographs, exclusive unreleased videos, and crag beta, Carlo reached out to attendees to hear some stories of their experiences climbing outside. By sharing stories about what people have seen and done, the group was able to learn from these mistakes.
The event rounded out with general questions about Carlo’s sends and travels. It wasn’t certain whether the smiles everyone was wearing were because of Carlo’s presentation or the free beer provided… but we’d like to think it was a little of both.
Be on the lookout for upcoming Outdoor Education events popping up at your local Touchstone Climbing gym.
After all, they’re FREE.
And please take into consideration your role in the climbing community and your impact as an individual or group. If you are interested in getting involved with clean-up projects at Bay Area crags we recommend volunteering with the Bay Area Climbers Coalition. These folks work hard every month to run events at crags throughout the Bay Area to keep our local crags clean and accessible.
