(Photo Credit: Daga Dygas)
Note. The IRB-approved research study described has been accepted for academic publication in the International Journal of Wilderness (Carol Lee & Tanya Dreizin, in press).
Climbing is the reason I became interested in the outdoors. As I fell in love with the sport, I began to connect deeply with, and gain reverence for, the natural world around me. Seeing the sport grow since I began climbing over a decade ago has been exciting and positive. With new members in our community come new opportunities for folks to connect and fall in love with the outdoors.
Although outdoor climbing is (and should be) available to everyone, growing numbers of new climbers also come with new challenges, including the potential for negative environmental impacts at popular outdoor climbing areas. For example, many climbing areas face environmental issues such as erosion, increases in micro trash, poor disposal of human waste, along with social impacts, including overcrowding and excessive noise.
Having already witnessed some of the above issues at my home crag (Mokuleia, on the North Shore of Oahu), I began to think more about how to mitigate these impacts. In one of our daily text conversations, my friend Carol and I began thinking about how we could use our academic backgrounds (Carol with a PhD in clinical psychology and myself a Master’s in sustainability), love of research, and love of climbing to encourage better stewardship among climbers. We have both observed environmentally unfriendly behavior at our respective crags, and discussed what we think could be the different factors that affect whether or not climbers will act as good crag stewards. This lead us to eventually create a climber survey, but we began with identifying questions that interested both of us:
Although outdoor climbing is (and should be) available to everyone, growing numbers of new climbers also come with new challenges, including the potential for negative environmental impacts at popular outdoor climbing areas. For example, many climbing areas face environmental issues such as erosion, increases in micro trash, poor disposal of human waste, along with social impacts, including overcrowding and excessive noise.
Having already witnessed some of the above issues at my home crag (Mokuleia, on the North Shore of Oahu), I began to think more about how to mitigate these impacts. In one of our daily text conversations, my friend Carol and I began thinking about how we could use our academic backgrounds (Carol with a PhD in clinical psychology and myself a Master’s in sustainability), love of research, and love of climbing to encourage better stewardship among climbers. We have both observed environmentally unfriendly behavior at our respective crags, and discussed what we think could be the different factors that affect whether or not climbers will act as good crag stewards. This lead us to eventually create a climber survey, but we began with identifying questions that interested both of us:
- Does social pressure from climbing partners result in better adherence to Leave No Trace behaviors?
- Does outdoor vs. indoor climbing or preferred type of climbing impact Leave No Trace behaviors?*
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Leave No Trace (LNT) is a common framework used by land managers and educators to promote minimal impact practices for outdoor recreation. The seven principles of LNT are as follows:
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Photo Credit: Daga Dygas (Common Climber featured photographer for the February 2020 edition)
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LNT is often used for hiking, backpacking and camping, but has also been adapted for rock climbing to address the impacts that climbers have on the natural environment by creating guidelines such as:
- be considerate of others
- stay on trails whenever possible
- respect wildlife, sensitive plants, and soil
- park and camp in designated spaces, and
- pack out all trash.
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We chose to focus on social pressure for a few reasons. Not only is climbing an inherently social activity (unless you prefer soloing) but the climbing community is one that often self-governs our own sets of rules and ethics. A recent example of climbers self-governing is the incident with a climber bolting over petroglyphs in Moab. In this circumstance climbers identified the action, posted on Mountain Project and found the guilty party (who has since apologized), and opened more discussions within the community around cultural awareness and LNT practices.
Eventually Carol and I created and implemented a survey asking about demographics, climbing experiences, and general LNT knowledge. For the core of our survey, we presented a series of scenarios that could take place at a crag, and then asked participants how likely they were to take a climbing LNT behavior related to each scenario. Participants were randomly assigned to either receive scenarios in which climbing partners were neutral about the LNT behavior, or receive scenarios in which climbing partners encouraged the LNT behavior. |
Example scenario from the survey.
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FIGURE 2: Situations presented in the survey and response options (likeliness and pressure)
Results and Discussion
Now, the fun part! We received around 370 responses to our survey, which gave us a great sample size to work with and allowed us to determine statistical significance.
The strong response is due to groups such as the Access Fund, Western Massachusetts Climbing Coalition, Kānaka Climbers and the Hawaiʻi Climbing Coalition (to name a few) sharing our survey link on their social media pages.
Although it is possible there may be sample bias because respondents followed or are members of groups that promote LNT, we still found that respondents were more likely to adhere to LNT behaviors when their climbing partners encouraged positive LNT behaviors. Interestingly, we also found that whether an individual climbs predominantly outdoors or indoors did not indicate significant likelihood of participating in LNT behaviors.
The strong response is due to groups such as the Access Fund, Western Massachusetts Climbing Coalition, Kānaka Climbers and the Hawaiʻi Climbing Coalition (to name a few) sharing our survey link on their social media pages.
Although it is possible there may be sample bias because respondents followed or are members of groups that promote LNT, we still found that respondents were more likely to adhere to LNT behaviors when their climbing partners encouraged positive LNT behaviors. Interestingly, we also found that whether an individual climbs predominantly outdoors or indoors did not indicate significant likelihood of participating in LNT behaviors.
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An interesting take-away from this survey is that if we know that climbers are more likely to practice environmentally friendly and pro-LNT behaviors when others around them are also doing this, we need to continue encouraging this behavior.
As a community, we need to include intersectional, pro-environmental practices into our norms and ethics. This will, and should, look different at each crag and within different communities around the world, but Leave No Trace can be a great place to start. As our sport continues to expand, the leaders in our community need to include environmental stewardship in their mentorship. Climbing gyms, local climbing organizations (LCOs) and land managers in national and state parks should collaborate on outreach efforts to encourage positive social pressure that promotes adhering to LNT behaviors, and educate community members about climbing-specific LNT behaviors. Climbing gyms are often where new climbers are introduced to the sport, cultivate relationships within the community, and provide educational opportunities focusing on safety and climbing etiquette. |
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As climbing gyms grow in number, and as more climbers recreate and train in gyms, these often become spaces where social norms, attitudes and ethics in the climbing community are created and perpetuated. It is crucial that gyms take on a leadership role in encouraging minimum impact climbing and promoting LNT to the broader climbing community.
To do this, we suggest that gyms prioritize education programs (i.e hosting talks or classes discussing minimal-impact climbing and increasing education about local, fragile ecosystems), increase indoor signage and posters that highlight appropriate and inappropriate LNT behaviors, and provide workshops or classes for new and experienced climbers alike to learn about climbing-specific LNT behaviors. By combining efforts and coordinating strategic messaging with climbing gyms, LCOs can emphasize education of climbing-related LNT behaviors on their websites or through various marketing materials.
It is important for groups to collaborate on messaging, because our results indicated that while many climbers understand the LNT principles, that understanding becomes less clear when it comes to specific climbing-related behaviors. For example, many individuals feel that leaving tick marks or cleaning plants is acceptable LNT behavior, when it actually does leave a trace.
Of course, sport climbing and bouldering leave traces - we know that bolts are placed and that rocks/trees/bushes are cleared to create safe landing zones or even the chalk from our hand that we leave behind on the rock. We also understand that it’s unlikely individuals will remove all the bolts or re-create unsafe landing zones - instead, we want to encourage future pro-LNT and environmentally friendly behaviors to prevent more harm.
While climbing gyms are often an entry point for new climbers and space where norms are shaped in the climbing community, there are also numerous platforms specifically for climbers on the internet. Forums, such as those on Reddit and Mountain Project, are spaces for climbers to chat with one another, find partners, and discuss climbing ethics.
With the ability to reach mass numbers of outdoor rock climbers, we also would love to see land managers, LCOs and climbing advocacy groups specifically approach influencers for partnerships to promote and model climbing-specific LNT behaviors through photos, captions, videos, and conversations on online platforms. Groups like The Access Fund and Protect Our Winters do a great job hosting influencer takeovers, but it would also be helpful to see climbing influencers more frequently post about pro-environmental behaviors and LNT while climbing.
We know that climbers care and want to preserve the special places that we love. We also know that there is more work to do to make this happen. As a large and growing community, now is the time to look at what we can do individually and collectively to ensure that we don’t destroy the fragile ecosystems that are critical not only to preserving our favorite climbing areas, but to the health and wellbeing of this planet.
To do this, we suggest that gyms prioritize education programs (i.e hosting talks or classes discussing minimal-impact climbing and increasing education about local, fragile ecosystems), increase indoor signage and posters that highlight appropriate and inappropriate LNT behaviors, and provide workshops or classes for new and experienced climbers alike to learn about climbing-specific LNT behaviors. By combining efforts and coordinating strategic messaging with climbing gyms, LCOs can emphasize education of climbing-related LNT behaviors on their websites or through various marketing materials.
It is important for groups to collaborate on messaging, because our results indicated that while many climbers understand the LNT principles, that understanding becomes less clear when it comes to specific climbing-related behaviors. For example, many individuals feel that leaving tick marks or cleaning plants is acceptable LNT behavior, when it actually does leave a trace.
Of course, sport climbing and bouldering leave traces - we know that bolts are placed and that rocks/trees/bushes are cleared to create safe landing zones or even the chalk from our hand that we leave behind on the rock. We also understand that it’s unlikely individuals will remove all the bolts or re-create unsafe landing zones - instead, we want to encourage future pro-LNT and environmentally friendly behaviors to prevent more harm.
While climbing gyms are often an entry point for new climbers and space where norms are shaped in the climbing community, there are also numerous platforms specifically for climbers on the internet. Forums, such as those on Reddit and Mountain Project, are spaces for climbers to chat with one another, find partners, and discuss climbing ethics.
With the ability to reach mass numbers of outdoor rock climbers, we also would love to see land managers, LCOs and climbing advocacy groups specifically approach influencers for partnerships to promote and model climbing-specific LNT behaviors through photos, captions, videos, and conversations on online platforms. Groups like The Access Fund and Protect Our Winters do a great job hosting influencer takeovers, but it would also be helpful to see climbing influencers more frequently post about pro-environmental behaviors and LNT while climbing.
We know that climbers care and want to preserve the special places that we love. We also know that there is more work to do to make this happen. As a large and growing community, now is the time to look at what we can do individually and collectively to ensure that we don’t destroy the fragile ecosystems that are critical not only to preserving our favorite climbing areas, but to the health and wellbeing of this planet.
* We use Leave No Trace as a framework for this study, but also refer to pro-environmental and environmentally friendly behaviors, as LNT is not always applicable. Some culture’s traditional ecological knowledge may not follow the LNT framework, but protects and stewards the environment while preserving cultural practices and knowledge.