for Squamish
written by Peter Winter
From:www.accesspanamerica.com
Acesso Pan América / Accès PanAmériques
Access Pan America is the first ever campaign to keep climbing areas open and protect the climbing environment in all the Western Hemisphere. Just forming in 2009, it is a grassroots effort of individual climbers, climbing organizations and federations, outdoor clubs, and corporate supporters. The network will meet for the first time during the Squamish Mountain Festival, presented by ARC'TERYX , August 12-16, 2009.
Protecting mountains environments and maintaining climbing access is a growing problem throughout the Americas. In response climbers have organized in some countries, but in the majority of the Americas there simply is no organized effort to protect access or the areas.
Access to and conservation of the climbing environment for current and future generations is fundamental, whether to rock climbing, ice climbing, mountaineering, or bouldering. Climbers from the North America and Europe have long explored all the Americas. Now, their numbers are strengthened by local climbers in almost all countries with mountains and stone. The surge of climbing in the North is spreading to all the Americas.
However, governments, private land owners, development, even war and banditry restrict access and threaten environments crucial to the future of climbing in the Americas. For example,
•Valle Cochamó, in Chile's northern Patagonia, is a alpine wilderness, and it may have some of the longest ice-free granite routes on earth. Cochamó is legally unprotected, and local utility companies have applied to dam the Valley.
•Northern Mexico is emerging as one of the best winter rock climbing destination in the world, a paradise of untapped stone. However, it is almost all threatened with development, claimed by various levels of government and usually at least one private owner.
•Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, with perhaps the most climbing rock, has more closed climbing areas than all the U.S. and Canada combined.
Where climbers have organized, they have learned that to secure the freedom to climb and protect sensitive environments require all the tools of advocacy, stewardship and conservation projects, grassroots activism, climber education, and, at times, land acquisition.
Moving right now is timely. The Western Hemisphere runs the organizational gamut from local climbing clubs to the the recently launched nationwide access organizations in Brazil and Canada, to the almost 20-year old Access Fund in the US and the well established British Columbia Access Society. A critical mass of organizations and interest exist to create local, regional, and national climbers access networks in most of Latin America.
Preserving or creating access to climb must be done by locally organized climbers and their supporters. Access Pan America hopes to be a network of resources, organizers, and communications to foster the process of local climbers organizations.
