> With both the National Park Service and Forest Service currently challenging the ban on fixed climbing anchors on public lands, they may become more common in the near future.
This is completely backward; there is currently not a ban on fixed climbing anchors in wilderness areas, and the NPS and Forest Service are attempting to create bans through a backdoor by updating their climbing management guidelines.
There is no way via ferratas are ever going to go into wilderness areas. People can argue whether the occasional fixed rappel anchor is an impermissible “installation” under the Wilderness Act. But everyone agrees that via ferratas are.
I personally would rather not see these in the wilderness. One of the things that make the little remaining wilderness we have in the US "wild" is the friction to entry. I have some seasoned experience with mountaineering and wilderness stays and what makes it remarkable is the smaller footprint from humans. The more accessible it is the less wild it becomes.
People used to complain about Yosemite having a road built to it, because it'd detract from the natural beauty of the valley and bring in too many "lazy" tourists. To some extent those critics were right, but it's pretty undeniable in hindsight that the cause of the parks system has been better served by having parks like these accessible to the public than it would have been by keeping them pristine and largely unvisited. We still have parks like that too. Gates of the Arctic and Isla royale come to mind as inaccessible, and both are tragically undervisited / unknown as a result. It's not like you can't escape the crowded masses in busy parks either. A half hour hike towards the backcountry will free you from the bustle of crowds at almost all of them.
That's not a real via ferrata. Via ferratas in Europe require a helmet, a harness and a double hook lanyard, and being secured to a steel rope at all times.
I think it’s for worse, but NPS obviously disagrees. They seem to have essentially designated most of the Valley a sort of tourist sacrifice zone, what with all the hotels, roads, stores, paved hiking trails, etc.
There was a similar cables route up Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park for decades, but NPS took it out, leaving the Keyhole Route as the easiest (but not easy) remaining way to the summit.
The balance is that if the park doesn't let enough people in, the people stop supporting the park. America is democratic. Parks are not protected by royal proclamation. If the park is inaccessible then people don't visit. Then they don't care about it. Then one day someone wants to drill for oil in the park, and nobody cares enough to vote that down.
I really don't mind the car-camping crowd. They stay inside their gravel circles and don't impact the real wilderness much. But come time to vote they will always far outnumber the dedicated rock climbers. I want the car campers on my side. If that means giving them their parking spots then so be it.
Which is exactly the point. To ensure the national parks stay national parks in a democracy like the US it’s necessary for the parks to have widespread public support.
That work is being done constantly by companies that want access to the land or resources. The only reason it doesn't succeed is that people like parks and use them enough that it's not politically viable.
Re: your democracy comment, note that Trump and Biden have both converted public land reserves and in cases near/impacting national parks into private oil drilling sites. Not to the point of drilling inside national parks yet, but expanding and encroaching. Given the bipartisan efforts to convert public land and the reversals on campaign promises without perceptible consequence, I'm skeptical of relying on the "voting and waiting" strategy to protect our undeveloped lands. You are overstating how democratic this process is.
I don't know where you get that. Parks are old. Older than petty debates between recent presidents. They rely on support from the population over decades, even centuries. This isn't about the ebb and flow of current voting patterns. This is about keeping people on the pro-park side intergenerationally. It is about making sure that people know what a park means, even if they only visited it as a kid decades previous. Current political personalities are irrelevant to that longer perspective.
> We still have parks like that too. Gates of the Arctic and Isla royale come to mind as inaccessible, and both are tragically undervisited / unknown as a result.
Undervisited is a good thing for what remaining wilderness we have.
As a rock climber, I hope it grows. Tired of seeing these debates and fights with authorities on putting up anchors, which are far less visible than these via ferratas. If these catch on and people like them, I think it will be good for climbers.
The one counterpoint I'd like to make here is tat. Imo it's better to leave minimal high quality, long lived gear than soft goods that deteriorate over time that can make for a dangerous descent and produce a fair bit of garbage.
The stuff I saw pictured looks like rebar bent into rungs, so now you have steel left out that will deteriorate, possibly in an undetectable manner(remember, your anchor point is in the rock face).
Also you are drilling into the rock. So much for leave no trace.
I wholeheartedly agree. I used to visit my grandpa's village every year (somewhere in europe) surrounded by beautiful mountains. The nature was accessible by everyone - warranted they'd do a 2 hour drive on rough road, get a hiking map and hike to the top. You'd also have to pack lunch and coffee. Now a new road is build, several hotels including a luxury resort with pools, coffee shops, tourist traps selling "traditional" "local" products etc. It's just terrible. Before, you'd "buy" your way there with effort, now you just pay, and you take your laziness with you all the way to the mountain top where you buy your $10 coffee and instagram snaps. If you want to sidestep the "nature" part of nature just go to a city park.
You can still find traditional unspoiled places in Europe and Alps have plenty of closed off areas. However, more accessible routes are good for old and disabled (e.g. post-COVID effects destroying one's athletic abilities etc.)
Please don't cross into personal attack, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
It's not zero, but it does feel the GP is afraid of a slippery slope.
I live in a country where that slippery slope has been completed a few hundred years ago already; we have no old forest in the Netherlands, any forest we do have has been replanted and is usually publicly accessible and managed, ideally as a protected national park like de Hoge Veluwe (https://www.hogeveluwe.nl/en) which nowadays has wolves again (that migrated in from the direction of Germany)
It is absolutely OBVIOUS why there is no old forests in Netherlands. I don't think there is any danger of the same happening to the US.
US is 237 times larger than Netherlands. Netherlands also is 17.5M people. If US had the same population density, there would have to be over 4B people in the US.
And that is not including the area that Netherlands had to recover from the sea.
Let them spend a weekend in the woods then. There’s no reason to spoil a very rare commodity so that someone with no experience or appreciation can make use of it. There are many, many “close enough” experiences, and very few that haven’t been tainted by improper use. We should preserve these priceless spots, not sacrifice them to the lowest common denominator.
It’s not a rare commodity. People complain because it’s the best/iconic spots that become accessible, but there’s a near endless supply of almost as good locations in the national park system that nobody visits.
Who's selfish? Can we not reserve some wilderness for those truly able to make it into the back ranges self supported? Why does everything have to be available to everyone?
Hate to say it, but agreed. This easily turns into a "tragedy of the commons" situation, where a place that used to be special to some is now special to no one.
The general public has proven time and time again that they are incapable of respecting natural areas and following rules and accepted etiquette. We should not be spending money increasing access so the worst of the worst can ruin even more of the country's special places.
The problem with gatekeeping like this is that it also becomes an obstacle to preservation, once the initial gatekeeping has failed. Consider the scenario where climbers descend by rappelling from trees, or using an informal climbers' trail. If sufficient quantities of people use that place, the trees will die and the trails will become significant erosion channels (where the Glacier Trail ascends out of Bomber Basin in Wyoming's Fitzpatrick wilderness is basically a groove in a steep hillside because the traffic it receives far exceeds the maintenance).
Its certainly the case that installing bolted rappel anchors can encourage more people to climb a route, but the presence/absence of bolted belay/rappel anchors is far less of a deterrent than the presence/absence of protection bolts (which is why few people are disputing the the long-standing ban on power drills in wilderness areas). Put another way, if you claim the only reason you've never attempt Rocky Mountain National Park's Casual Route is because you're not good at building anchors, then I would argue you'll have a dangerously hard time with the rest of the route too.
The right balance between access and preservation is a difficult one to strike, but I would argue that land managers should err on the side of enabling more access because it allows them to proactively direct traffic into areas that are more durable to greater traffic, and stave-off potentially preventable accidents like this one:
and this one:
https://gripped.com/201304/rock-climber-dies-on-rappel-from-...
(I've rappelled from the anchor that killed Heung, and the fact that it must be somewhere where tat can be wrapped/tied is, I think, a major factor in why it was so exposed to rockfall. Its also a cautionary tale about backing up and testing tat anchors before fully committing to them, a lesson that people don't seem to learn even in the absence of "fixed" anchors. Consider this accident as well: https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2023/6/7/the-prescriptio...)
There's a balance to be struck. If wilderness areas end up like Yellowstone, then the experience is destroyed and the whole point of it remaining wild dies. Some things are more important than some human's desire to turn the planet into their amusement park.
The most amazing thing about Yellowstone (or any of the famous National Parks) is that, as busy as it is, if you get 1/2 a mile from the road, it is still very wild.
There is a certain tension in that the nature of the experience of wilderness areas is necessarily exclusionary. For example wheeled and mechanical transportation is excluded with limited exemptions for the disabled, the current limitation is that wheelchair users MUST use chairs that are 'Suitable for indoor pedestrian use'. Indoor use chairs are notoriously shit on natural surfaces, but should we allow ATVs? Probably not. Should we allow handcycles so disabled people can go through mud? I think so, but purists think otherwise.
"Very wild" only if you don't mind a bunch of views of roads and the noise of vehicles. You need to put a good day's trek behind you before things start getting separated from civilization, and even then you're on a trail designed for you by other humans.
The best wilderness I've ever experienced is the Mojave Wilderness. A place the size of Rhode Island, with 4 roads, a handful of trails, and a visitor's center. Otherwise, it's basically untouched desert. Absolutely gorgeous.
IMO, there's one fundamental difference between a park and wilderness: a park is a curated experience, and as such is a product of, and a part of, human civilization. That intrinsically means you are at the whims of others, perhaps benevolently so in the case of National Parks, but manipulated nonetheless. Wilderness means freedom from that omnipresent force of human intention, because the wilderness has no intention for you: it is ambivalent to your presence. The desert won't help you survive, but it's also not going to try and kill you or rob you, either. That's freedom you can't find on a trail overlooking a tangle of roads.
This sort of illustrates my point! You must not be very familiar with Yellowstone past the road system.
Except in the busiest parts of the park, you don’t have to stay on trail, and there are hundreds of square miles of roadless areas of the park. It is 3x the size of rhode island. There is no “tangle” of roads as there are only 5 roads that enter it. Like I said: once you are 1/2 a mile from the few roads in the park, you have it to yourself, and it is not a forgiving environment.
Yellowstone offers the full spectrum of experiences from stroller friendly boardwalks to multi day wilderness through hiking routes that never cross another trail, let alone come close to roads.
Wilderness and parks are two very different things. Yellowstone is a fantastic park, which by all means is worth the trip to go see. But it's not wilderness. It is a designed and curated experience, by and for humans.
Right, and not only that, but Yellowstone has a long history of being fucked with by humans and the ecology basically falling apart, because humans just wanted it the way they wanted it. And because it's so accessible, people continue to dump their trash, play loud music, fuck with the animals, etc. It's not nature anymore, it's Disneyworld with animal exhibits.
There's room enough for both man-made parks and wilderness areas, but to keep wilderness wild we need to stop making them human-accessible. I mean the whole point of wilderness is that it's not accessible, helpful, friendly, easy. The wild is harsh, dangerous, remote, unkempt, challenging, but also beautiful, tranquil, awe-inspiring, soul-filling.
The OP means Wilderness (capital W), not wilderness. The former is federally designated as protected from just about any development. The latter is just undeveloped backcountry without the restrictive regulation.
And I tend to agree that the designation should not be loosened.
Mountaineer with a bunch of via Ferrata experience here, mainly in Europe. What's often forgot in discussions about these is that in spite of you being anchored to steel ropes, the consequences of a fall on these are pretty severe when compared to falling into a normal dynamic climbing rope (which is pretty normal and done all the time without problems in sports climbing). The physics of shock absorption by via ferrata equipment is not your friend here, a fall with a vertical slide to the next anchor 6ft below you is a ticket to the hospital, likely with permanent damage.
Via ferratas can be fun, but you really don't want to fall, and if in doubt, do your research and get really good equipment.
Is this still true if you use the appropriate shock links?
Those are set up to limit the force up to a certain height, wouldn't they design those to limit the force to one less likely to cause permanent damage?
Don't use these. They are generally one-use affairs. They have a place in climbing but only as part of a larger system. The issue is multiple falls. Say you slip and cause an impact. The link does its thing and extends. Now you are on the side of a cliff without proper equipment. A proper dynamic climbing rope, used properly, will safely take repeated falls.
They are absolutely the right equipment for the job. If you take a bad fall on your shock link, you likely need medical attention anyways. You won't keep climbing far with it.
Exactly, and taking anything more than a fall-factor 2 even on dynamic rope will probably break your back. Here's an interesting video testing similar setups used in caving (without the obviously required via ferrata shock absorber): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWaDh6-roMI
It all depends on how you fall, what you hit and when, and what position your body is in at various stages of this.
If you spend any time on a via ferrata, it’s pretty easy to see where the answers to one or more of these will be ‘not great’, and sometimes ‘really bad’.
For instance, hitting a rung on the way down. Or getting an appendage caught behind something.
But unlikely you’ll die.
And honestly, you shouldn’t fall unless you screwed something up pretty bad to begin with, which is your primary protection anyway.
You’re literally climbing a ladder, this isn’t wilderness trad climbing or developing some new route on loose rock.
Death at Via Ferratas are extremely rare (with proper gear ofc).
But the falls are notoriously hard. Force can get really high and the chance of injury is high, even in cases where the fall zone is free of any metal etc..
If you don't use them and just run some webbing or similar, dynamic forces in a factor >2 fall will either snap your spine or the webbing, whichever gives in first.
The answer IMO is using two prusik friction hitches. Easy to slide along the cable by hand when slack, but holds you in place via friction when taut (i.e when you slip).
Of course these would be a pain to tie and untie at each anchor point
the dangerous part in falling when mountain climbing is almost always hitting the rock (and not the bottom) too. At least for via ferrata you're supposed to wear a helmet which few climbers do
The difference is that in actual mountain climbing, people are usually experienced and equipped to gauge the risk of a fall and operate well within their range of capabilities.
Via Ferrata is technically easy enough to attract less experienced people and steel ropes and ladders offer a false sense of security vs being the lead climber on an alpine climbing route with 60ft of run out above an anchor you built yourself.
"Telluride Via Ferrata in Colorado has been on our bucket list for quite some time. So when our cousin Anh asked if we want to make a trip there, of course, we said yes. Telluride Via Ferrata has to be one of the most exciting and unforgettable adventures. It combines mountain hiking with the traditional Via Ferrata cable system and breathtaking scenery. There is nothing more thrilling than traversing across a sheer cliff, 600ft above ground, with only safety tethers, a steel cable, and metal rungs to support you. Besides the spectacular views, this amazing adventure also challenges your physical and mental fortitude while giving you an incomparable sense of accomplishment."
If you're ever in south-east France, there's a bunch of nice via ferratas of varying difficulty. A nice one to start is in Lantosque, it's very easy and low and beautiful with river a few feet below (except a vertical climb at the end followed by a zip line / bridge very high above, but you can quit before that point if you're scared).
Good news, but if this is anything like other mountain activities in the USA, I bet it costs an arm and a leg
And... yep, I just opened a random one (Estes Park?) - prices starting at 199USD a head! About 4x the price of a french one (30-50e per adult depending on how big it is and how expensive the location is)
I imagine it's a combination of novelty + everything being managed privately (whereas in most of europe there are a lot of subsidies to keep mountain areas thriving)
As I understand it, you can access them for free with your own equipment, or rent the gear, or go with a guide. Most tourists are going to go with a guide at least the first time and probably rent gear afterwards. They might ask for donations for the maintenance, although generally I think that's paid from the equipment rental/tour income, subsidizing it for people going on their own.
$200 sounds about what you'd pay for a guided tour (gear included) in Switzerland.
Honestly, what real benefit does a guide bring to most reasonable people? I know, the stereotypical American will travel to Iceland with norhing but shorts, but those aside, most everything to learn/understand here can be explained in an 2-5 minute introduction of the equipment. I mean, both me and my brother managed without problems (under paternal guidance) starting around age 6 two decades ago. Nowadays, most seem to be super crowded in the high season (meaning well, you have to wait often on a route), but its always been a fun activity.
It's still unfamiliar terrain, and a guide will help you find the start of the route, will help you get through a difficult spot and can perform first aid if needed. So if you're not an experienced hiker and climber, going with a guide will make everything go smoother the first time.
30-50€ in France?? Try 5.50€ !! Or 25€ with gear rental. And this is for La Colmiane, one of the most beautiful, or Lantosque, where you are 10m above an epic bowel of water.
indeed a lot of them are "free" but they clearly state the correct equipment must be worn (which is of course available for rent at various approved outlets) , or else any accident will get you into a world of financial trouble
What do you mean by "financial trouble"? You certainly risk getting hurt or killed without the right equipment, but I don't see how this is related to "financial trouble".
Yeah, that's true. But I always assumed you need to be really inconsiderate with your equipment to get fined. At least this is what the local stories about tourists getting fined told :)
Most US medical insurances (definitely the one I have from work) will cover rescue (including helicopter) if it was medically necessary. There is nothing specific about via ferrata in Europe that changes financial situation compared to for example hiking and breaking the leg or something like that.
the big risk is third party risk - if you fall on someone else, or bring down a power line, or drop a rock on someone below you. not having paid for the session means you won't have paid the 2-3 euros for the third-party insurance
We must be talking about completely different things, because in no way shape or form is a "power line" associated with any via ferrata I've done in Italy or Austria.
Further, equipment depends on difficulty. Some via ferratas are really just some metal cables to help keep your balance over small crossings, while others are traversing sheer cliffs and peaks with obviously fatal safety implications. It would be silly to require safety equipment for the former, while it'd be silly not to for the latter.
Oh yes for sure, I just meant there is no one to physically stop you at any point (neither for money nor gear check). The equipment rental was very often in the closest city, a ~10 min drive away
I assume the US experience would be quite different
Yeah, we did caminito del rey near Malaga Spain back when it was closed to the public, people were still doing it but I think officially you weren’t supposed to, this was years before they recently fixed it up and officially reopened it to the public
If you think nature must be left unspoiled then do not go.
If you think only those like you with your specialized equipment and your physical fitness should be able to go, you do still ‘spoil nature.’
There’s no need to point fingers at others for going an inch beyond your intrusion by leaving equipment in place. Popular routes are visited so often than the average condition for the area is climbers with equipment. Any peaceful absence of human presence is entirely imagined.
I started practicing last summer and went on a few via ferratas in Switzerland and Italy. The hardest one was in the Dolomites and required climbing knowledge and upper body strength because there were no easy anchors.
The scariest one was in Switzerland, called Mürren where there's a 30m horizontal section with a 400m vertical drop with nothing to hold on to other than the steel cable and some metal inserts in the wall, see https://www.sac-cas.ch/processed/sa2020assetsprod/9/0/csm_15... .
Looks scary but horizontal sections of via ferratas are usually the safest part, because you’ll come tight to your leashes right away if you slip.
It’s the vertical sections, where you could free fall and pick up speed before your leash catches on the next anchor point, which can cause the worst injuries.
So we did the Via Ferrata in Ouray and it was AMAZING! They did offer guided runs but we just rented gear for pretty cheap and went on the course. I’m not understanding the costs here as we paid no money for course access.
For those interested it would be beneficial to have some understanding of rock climbing mechanics - how to strategically prop yourself and rest, how to transfer weight, how to grip efficiently. You can definitely “muscle” your way through the courses but it will get tiring and then dangerous.
Highly recommend for those who have some beginner rock climbing experience and want to give it a shot!
I hiked Via Ferrata in Telluride, CO and it's an amazing experience. Search on YouTube for videos. In the past few years there's been another via ferrata opened in Ouray, CO (neighbors Telluride) that looks even more intense - sadly I haven't made it to this one quite yet.
We went with a paid guide in a small group and I thought it was money well spent. However, in Telluride it's public access so anyone can hike it completely free if they want. Make sure you know what you're doing though - follow the rules and I think it's quite safe.
The Ouray one now has two tracks. Both were excellent! We did the more advanced one this time around with just my climbing-experienced brother leading us.
>> A via ferrata is essentially rock climbing. It provides all of the same sensations,” says Michele Van Hise, managing partner at Zion Adventures, a guiding service and outfitter based in Springdale, Utah. Between 2018 and 2022, the company built three via ferratas near Zion National Park, including Shorty Town, which snakes up and down across a cliff suspended over the flowing water of Oak Creek.
I cannot express how strongly I am against this. The first rule of most every outdoor activity is "take only pictures, leave only footprints". That applies for everything from scuba diving to mountaineering. Hammering in rods and installing ladders on otherwise perfectly climbable rocks is just wrong. There is a time and place for fixed protection, and regular climbers have huge debates about this, but installing ladders so people can more easily "climb" in hiking boots doesn't meet anyone's standard. I've known many climbers who, if seeing any of this, would actively destroy such installations if anywhere close to existing routes. And in Zion? I guess it isn't halfdome or dawn wall but this is still a climbing mecca that that should be left unaltered.
I was once at a very popular toproping area when an army unit of about eight people showed up. They were about to hammer pitons into the cracks to "practice". The word when quickly around the crag and they were basically run out of town by a hundred climbers. You don't damage rock casually, not established climbing routes.
I've come to believe that there's a place for the more accessible enjoyment of the outdoors that the via ferrata seems to represent. Every park represents a different place on the spectrum of accessibility vs true wilderness -- from Manhattan's Central Park (millions of visitors of all types, requiring hard paths, railings etc) to Denali National Park (other than the road, limited to very small dispersed groups, kept few enough that it can remain a "trackless wilderness").
I don't begrudge someone who is not a very skilled climber their use of a via ferrata, provided that impact to the area (e.g. sightlines) is kept to a minimum and other options for more purists remain. I'm not a climber per se but this is the same attitude I have towards hiking, skiing, mountain biking, etc. I'm careful not to gate-keep casual folks using the Mt Washington cog railway because they get a lot of enjoyment out of it and it's a small blip in my Prezzie Traverse -- if carefully managed, there's enough nature for everyone.
Climbing is different. It is about very rarified and somewhat delicate places. Climbing is also always about balancing safety with ability. Anyone can hammer in ladders and assent a cliff. That isn't climbing. Make a route too "accessible" to the masses, make it easy, and the masses will loose respect. They will destroy it. Have a look at Everest base camp. It is effectively a landfill of garbage and human waste.
Accessibility is not the issue. Prestige is. A lot of people have heard of Everest, and many think it would be cool to climb it. Other equally accessible mountains in the region see much less human activity.
Also, the waste issues in the area are mostly due to serious climbers who go to less accessible places. Casual tourists stick to settlements, some of which have existed for centuries. Because the settlements are relatively wealthy and connected by decent paths, there seems to be less waste than in the average rural area in a third-world country.
I'm not against making something more accessible but I against destroying nature in order to do so.
If in order to provide access to a waterfall; you have to cut a road through a mountain and then clear out the trees at the base so you can construct a ramp for wheelchairs, you have disfigured the very thing that you wanted to preserve by having a park.
What is the difference, if any, between hammering these iron rungs and jack hammering steps into the rock face?
Why would we say that "via ferrata" is an acceptable amount of defacement while jack hammering is not?
My point is that it's a spectrum, not a bright line. We do, in fact, have roads that go into parks. Some parks even have trails; some even provide bathrooms and campsites, with varying degrees of amenities. All of these things increase accessibility at the expense of the nature and wilderness of an area, so it's important to have lots of diversity in degree of hardening: does every waterfall need an ADA ramp? Probably not; should no waterfall in the world have an ADA ramp? No, that's needlessly cruel to disabled folks who deserve reasonable access to natural beauty.
There should be (and are) sites of natural beauty you can take pubic transit to, drive to, roll to, bike to, ski to, hike to, climb to, ice climb to, and yes, even cannot access at all, each category with it's own sub spectrum of difficulty (eg some one mile hikes, some weeks long treks). To me a via ferrata seems like the left hand side of this spectrum -- something in an already heavily impacted area that gives casual users access to something they otherwise wouldn't. If someone starts proposing putting them there they don't belong (real wilderness, serious climber spots) I'll be with you in advocating against that.
I don't have any particular objection to via ferrata, and all of my first ascents have eschewed fixed protection. I'm pretty sure one's never seen a repeat because of that.
Its certainly worth pointing out that both Half Dome in Yosemite and Angels Landing in Zion feature VERY popular quasi-via ferrata as the primary descent route for famous and historic routes like the Regular Northwest Face of Halfdome, or Prodigal Sun on Angels Landing. And we're completely ignoring the role artificial holds play at Mesa Verde, both the ladders and hand rails installed by the NPS, and the surviving Anasazi installations.
The environmentalist argument against fixed gear or chipping, or via ferrata, always seemed pretty hollow to me, given that not many people are objecting to the trail building to get to the crag, or the frequently heavy cleaning that happens to remove loose rock and lichen and things to make a climb safer during the development (which happens even with routes completely bereft of fixed equipment). Nobody complains about the establishment of descent trails, or leaving slings to strangle trees, even as those have a much greater impact on the environment than a few dozen bolts, or even a few hundred pounds of metal handles and steel cable.
There's a fair argument, amongst climbers, about whether or not fixed anchors, or chipping, or via ferrata is sporting, but "sporting" is only a valid restriction for people playing the same game as you. But if there are no established routes on that rock, and you own the rock in question, who has a right to complain? I don't want to see them on public land, certainly, but on the continuum of human impact to rock faces, via ferrata is a lot closer to leaving only footprints than the roads through Zion or Yosemite, or Mt. Rushmore, or an open pit mine.
Pitons are something I think are already controversial enough. Necessary in some rock types to enable climbing...but that's a debate for another day. I would say I lean to, only if necessary. Via Ferratas make me cringe and am wholeheartedly opposed.
> would actively destroy such installations if anywhere close to existing routes. And in Zion?
Your claim is contradicted by the fact that the most popular hike at Zion, Angels Landing, has an established set of fixed heavy chains to guide people up and down. Not to mention Walter's Wiggles, without which most people wouldnt be able to reach Scout's Lookout, the base of Angels Landing.
Also, these via ferratas you're objecting to are located outside Zion NP.
I can see the opposition here if a via ferrata is built such that an existing climbing route is altered or reduced in difficulty.
> would actively destroy such installations if anywhere close to existing routes
"anywhere close" implies visible but not interfering. Would it really ruin the climbing experience if the 5.12b route you are attempting happens to have an accessible option within view?
I am neither a climber nor someone who would use a via ferrata, but I do see parallels to my mountain biking hobby here, where skilled riders (and more often "expert beginner" types) are threatened when newbie-friendly trails are created.
How is this any different from, say, a gravel hiking trail? I see plenty of those in state parks all over the place. Makes things far more accessible with a very minimal impact on the overall environment.
A gravel trail isn't there to make the user's life easier. It is there to prevent damage to the park. The gravel prevents people cutting a deep trench through the mud, which inevitably become a series of parallel mud trenches across the terrain. A gravel trail or even a pavement allows for more people to transit an area without doing damage. A ladder on the side of a cliff is just about making life easier and does nothing to protect the cliff.
What is blowing my mind in this thread is the amount of comments giving advice NOT to use a via ferrata set. One commenter even said to use two prussic hitches… let me keep this short: you will die.
Use a via ferrata set. Any ‘climbing bro’ that gives you any other advice is a dangerous person and you probably shouldn’t have them belaying you, as they value their ego more than your life.
USE THE CORRECT EQUIPMENT: Only via certified via ferrata set with a rip shock absorber.
After visiting Austria and Germany, I'm "hooked" on Via Ferattas. It's astounding the number and variety of them available... I'm going to make a vacation next year where that's all I do
However, Colorado needs to do some soul searching. Currently Colorado has exactly TWO free-access Via Ferattas: Ouray and Telluride. Allowing commercial companies to build exclusive access theme parks on public lands is a gross misuse of public lands.
Private land owners can charge if they want for all I care, but the most obnoxious thing about this model is even an experienced climber often must "hire a 'certified' guide" at absurd rates.
Because of that, all ski resorts on US public land aren't actually "exclusive". A lift ticket just buys you access to the lifts, you can hike up during the winter or summer, with restrictions during the winter mainly around everyone's safety (designated uphill routes, don't go where they're doing avalanche control).
Sure, so if there is a via feratta on public land I imagine there will be similar access, although controlling access to a via feratta would be much easier than a ski run.
I guarantee you that it's NOT used in more formal registers, now that you showed me that Wikipedia article maybe I already read the term on some history book, but no, it's never used now.
Looking it up a little it appeared to have been used initially, but it was probably already obsolete by the end of the nineteenth century.
I'm trying to recall where my memories come from. Might be this: https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strade_Ferrate_Sarde . Apparently there were called like that till the late '80s, it is possible my family might have mentioned them even after that.
This is completely backward; there is currently not a ban on fixed climbing anchors in wilderness areas, and the NPS and Forest Service are attempting to create bans through a backdoor by updating their climbing management guidelines.
There is no way via ferratas are ever going to go into wilderness areas. People can argue whether the occasional fixed rappel anchor is an impermissible “installation” under the Wilderness Act. But everyone agrees that via ferratas are.