Petition for Climbing Access in Mueller State Park - PLEASE POST!

UPDATE - The Access Fund is going to take on this issue to help us restore climbing access in the Mueller State Park area! Here is the email I received this morning:

@CEN-

Hey Joshua,

I saw your post on MP and it seems there’s a good amount of interest.

The Colorado Division of Wildlife’s website has most of the information concerning the process we’d follow to get the climbing ban at Dome Rock reconsidered. Last Friday, I requested (no response yet) a Citizens Proposed Issue form to get the ball rolling, but in the interim there are a few other things we could do.

First, the next meeting of the Wildlife Commission is July 7-8 in Denver. It’s too late to get on their official agenda for July, but there is a “Public Presentations” portion of the meeting (see attachment) where we can get a chance to comment for 3 minutes on a non-agenda item.

I’m thinking we can get a group of concerned climbers to attend the meeting. Then, we need to make a game plan re who makes what comments. It may be best to elect one spokesperson (I’d be happy to do it) to comment for the entire group.

That way we can get our concerns on the Commissions radar before their next meeting which is Sept. 8 in Steamboat Springs.

Talk to you soon.

Cheers,

R.D. Pascoe
Policy Analyst | The Access Fund
Tel 303-545-6772 x113
-CEN@


R.D. Pascoe has graciously offered to be our spokesperson at this meeting so unless any of you object let's try to get a count of those that can attend in support. The Wildlife Commission meeting will be in Denver on July 7th. Keep in mind that is just the beginning stages of what could be a long process and that our presence there will be mainly to impress upon the Wildlife Commission how many interested climbers there are.

Please private message me through my profile with your contact info so we can get an idea of how many will attend and coordinate the meeting time/place, etc. Thanks!

no interest whatsoever.

Great to hear this is being addressed, I support climbing there for sure.

Thanks for being pro-active on this Joshua! Would be great if they could reopen the area to climbing. There are some classic Robertson/Aschert/Gunter routes up there.

Open it up.

+1 for climbing access

We went through this whole process 15 years ago and got nowhere. Because the Dome Rock area is a very sensitive wildlife area for bighorn sheep lambing as well as elk, it's a long shot that it will ever be opened fully for climbing. And that's where the best climbing is at...west face of Dome Rock, West Rock, West Dome, etc. Great slab climbing.

That area is called Dome Rock State Wildlife Area and is not in Mueller State Park. It's managed by the Colorado Division of Wildlife, not Colorado State Parks. We climbed there basically under the radar until the early 1990s when the fist came down; before that though we climbed illegally. Based on previous conversations with the DOW there is almost no chance that the area will be reopened to climbing.

It would be better to create a dialogue with Mueller State Park, which already has lots of recreational opportunities, notably hiking. There are a bunch of good cliffs there, some that are mostly unclimbed. They do require hiking approaches.

Leave it closed for the wildlife.
We climbed there in the early '90's under the radar, seriously the rock quality is not worth the effort to open it up.

Stewart - I am aware that Dome Rock is managed by the DOW but they will be merging back with the parks under one entity called the Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife. It is unclear at this point which person(s) the buck will stop with after the merger. Also, the woman I spoke with at Mueller State Park stated there are no general climbing restrictions in the park so assuming she is correct you could go climb these cliffs you speak of right now.

In regards to it being a sensitive wildlife area... Don't we have other crags with seasonal closures for nesting, lambing, etc. that work out just fine? Dome Rock is closed from Dec 1st - July 15th after which they allow hunting in the area. I would think the sound of rifles going off all day would be more stressful to the wildlife then some guys (and gals) climbing on rocks.

You said the fist came down in 1990's and even prior to that is was illegal to climb there. Bob D'Aontonio's guidebook came out in 96' right? Why create a guidebook for an area that didn't allow climbing? I was under the impression it was not prohibited at that time.

Part of the reason for getting the Access Fund involved with this is to help unveil some of the mystery around this place. No one seems to know exactly what happened and when. Hopefully all of the facts will come to light and the process to restore access can get underway. We may not succeed with this in end but it's worth a try. These are public resources paid for with our tax dollars after all.

There is no long term advantage for having access to every piece of chosspile along side the highway. The rock and routes are crap, no need to go there, suck it up and drive to 11 mile.

goatboy wrote:There is no long term advantage for having access to every piece of chosspile along side the highway. The rock and routes are crap, no need to go there, suck it up and drive to 11 mile.

If you don't want to climb there then shut your fking mouth and climb somewhere else. Just b/c you don't care to have access to more climbing doesn't mean other people share your opinions.

Andrew Shoemaker wrote: If you don't want to climb there then shut your fking mouth and climb somewhere else. Just b/c you don't care to have access to more climbing doesn't mean other people share your opinions.

lol, Isn’t the op asking for opinions? Now you hear one you don’t like and call for censorship.

Are we all supposed to join arms and lockstep over every wildlife area in the state just so the ”OMG I WANT TO CLIMB THERE” attitude persists until every crappy 1star rock route has been catalogued on MP?

Seriously the rock is choss and unworthy.

Joshua1979 wrote: Please show your support for this cause by posting on this thread.

Actually, the OP was not asking for opinions, he was asking for people who SUPPORT this topic to chime in on the thread to form a petition of sorts.

Secondly, no one is calling for "censorship" as you stated. You gave your opinion and then I gave my opinion on what you should do with your opinion and then you gave your (misinformed) opinion again and so on and so on...ahh...the joys of america right? Your allowed to say whatever you want to say and likewise I am allowed to say that whatever you wanted to say should never have been said.

I'm all for it as long as they protect the bighorn first and foremost. Keep it closed for the lambing season then open it up to climbers in the off season, just like the bird closures. It's always good to get more mileage out of those State Park passes.

I guess some folks have no taste, enjoy your slabby choss climbs.

The rock there is actually quite nice. I've been hiking in that area plenty. I suppose Old Stage, Emerald Valley, Mt. Big Chief, and the other areas around Pikes Peak are all choss as well. Come on, it's not like opening access to Mueller is going to make a huge crowd of people come from around the state. It's a nice local area that could stand to be opened to climbing.

Elk calving and Bighorn sheep lambing doesn't go on all year round so why shouldn't climbing get to occur when it's not going to interfere with those objectives. There's obviously a balance that can be reached that preserves the wildlife area but allows recreation opportunities.

When the Chockstone book for Elevenmile Canyon came out, Bob D'Antonio added the Dome Rock section at the back as a sort of afterthought but it was illegal to climb there at the time. He included the info in the hopes that perhaps it could be reopened to climbing. We had a dialogue with both the local DOW folks in Colorado Springs as well as the state ones in Denver and they pretty much unequivocably said that climbing was incompatible with the resource and that it would not be opened to climbing.

There is no mystery about what Joshua1979 calls a mystery about the Dome Rock area. The area was set aside in the 1970s as a natural preserve since it was a critical lambing ground for the bighorn sheep herd on the west side of Pikes Peak as well used by other species including elk. At that time the Peak's west slope was beginning to be developed with subdivisions and divided by new roads so the acquistion of what is now Mueller State Park as well as the designation of Dome Rock as a natural area was crucial to ensure that all the wildlands behind Pikes Peak were not developed with trophy homes and double-wide trailers.

Resource managers always have to balance preservation against recreation and sometimes the recreational aspect gets the shaft. That was the case here. The good news is that there is lots of similar climbing in the South Platte area.

Colorado Springs climbers, including Earl Wiggins, Pete Gallagher, Bob Robertson, Richard Aschert, and Kerry Gunther, climbed there in the late 1970s and into the 1980s before the DOW became aware that the area was used for climbing. That was when the no-climbing mandate came down. Some of us did continue to sneak into the area, usually in the late summer and early fall when it wasn't closely monitored, and continued to climb and establish routes. That is difficult to do now.

I agree, however, that a plan could be made to open the area to climbing for part of the year. And some of the climbing is excellent there. I've done many of the routes and bolted a few obscurities and climbed on all the named formations and I'll tell you that these routes will not be climbed much except by SPlatte aficionados. Most of the routes, except a few put up in the early 1990s, are bolted old-school-style on-the-lead so there are lots of runouts above 1/4-inch bolts.

The Dome Rock area is also accessed by hiking between four and five miles down Fourmile Creek from the east. This long approach will also limit the number of climbers that will visit the area.

As I noted above, it would be better to establish a dialogue with Mueller State Park to create a climbing management plan there first. That would open some new cliffs, albeit cliffs with stiff hiking approaches, to climbing. From that point, if climbers show they are a responsible user group in the area, it might be possible to have the Dome Rock regulations amended...

+1 for climbing access

I think this is a great idea!

how did the meeting go?