Leave No Trace: Lessons from Quincy Quarries
Photos of our great volunteers from our most-recent Quincy Quarries cleanup.
What is Leave No Trace?
Leave no trace (LNT) is a philosophy and set of ethics that most outdoor recreationists adhere to in order to preserve out outdoor areas. The goal of LNT is just what you would imagine—when we use outdoor areas, our goals should be to make it appear as if we had never been present. You should not leave a trace of your presence. This small rule has a major impact on the way we engage with the outdoors and in preserving out outdoor climbing areas.
Greater Boston Climbing School has been partnering with the Southeast New England Climbers Coalition (SNECC) to help protect our climbing areas where LNT has been ignored. These events are usually crag cleanups. Since we just finished another successful clean out at Quincy Quarries, I wanted to talk about LNT, why we follow it, what happens when it is ignored, and the future of climbing.
LNT has a few general rules that we all agree on to help minimize our impact on the crag. You can find a more-detailed breakdown on these rules and reasons for each on lnt.org.
Pack it in, Pack it out: Anything that comes with you to the crag needs to leave with you at the end of the day. This includes disposable water bottles and food wrappers. Leaving trash like this means that everyone that comes behind you will see your litter, and someone else will have to clean it up. This litter, depending on how biodegradable it is, can also be a major hazard to local ecology, which also increases our impact on the crag. Remember to bring your trash with you.
Be a responsible pooper: Poop is another potential hazard to local ecology. This not only applies to humans, but to your pets that you bring as well. Things that we eat can make it’s way into our waste and be left in the environment long after we are gone. For human waste, it is considered ok to walk at least 70 feet from the nearest trail, dig a hole to go in, and bury your waste. For both human and animal waste products, it is also considered ok to observe pack-in-pack-out as well. Bring a poop bag (also known as a wag bag) to carry the waste out with you.
Don’t change the natural landscape: When we come and enjoy an outdoor area, we want to leave it just as beautiful for the next person. This means that we do not deface natural surfaces with markings or graffiti. This can include spray paint on rock and trees and carving into trees. We also do not take anything naturally occurring out with us like cool rocks. Be respectful to other climbers and the area by leaving what you find. The only exception to what you can bring with you is if you see litter and want to pack it out with you, this is considered being good to the area.
Quincy Quarries clean-up participants enjoying climbing at the crag we just spent the morning cleaning.
LNT at Quincy Quarries
Whenever I take clients out to the quarries, I think that they are a fantastic example of what happens when LNT is completely ignored. People leave trash and broken bottles out—often throwing trash and glass from the top of the cliffs. People often commit vandalism on the rock faces themselves and spray paint all over large sections of rock and tree. Unqualified drillers will come and drill metal rods and unsafe bolts into the cliff themselves.
Some consider the graffiti and rods part of the artistic appeal of the quarries, but did you know this is actually illegal, not condoned by land management, and against LNT ethic? The negative consequences of these actions have already started to become apparent to anyone that recreationally uses the quarries for climbing. Spray paint is not only unsightly, but the massive layers of paint have smoothed out many of the feed and hand holds to the point that the difficulty has dramatically increased. I personally think that many routes have become unsafe to trad climb because of the increased chance of ground-fall early on. No amount of graffiti is worth having someone unknowingly climb into unknown (and previously non-existent) risk and then injuring or killing themselves.
The large amount of broken glass is not only a hazard for anyone not in close-toed shoes, but some glass has even started making it’s way into the hand holds of some of the routes. This means that those maintaining the crag will have to laboriously set themselves on rappel and bring supplies up and down with them as they look for glass to make certain routes safe to climb. This falling debris is also a hazard to belayers and climbers. I personally have had trash wiz past my head while climbing routes because someone littering did not stop to check if anyone was below before they threw glass bottles off of the cliff edge. The proliferation of glass also means that we must take extra care with our ropes in order to make sure no glass particles get into the fibers of the rope, reducing it’s lifespan. In extreme cases with large shards of glass, the glass can end up cutting our rope.
The quarries also has many unqualified people drilling into the rock to create rock protections for climbing. Aside from issues of needing permission of land management and considering the local bolting ethic, the problem is that many of these features are actually not made from climbing-grade materials and are unsafe for climbing use. Some of the materials I have not been able to identify. It is irresponsible to put up protections for climbing use in a public area without ensuring that the materials are climbing grade.
Hopefully it is obvious why observing LNT is not only preferable, but often a safer way to engage with the outdoors.
What can we do about it?
From my previous section, you may feel like the state of the quarries is already hopeless. There are in-fact many potential futures for the quarries. One future involves us continuing to make is socially accessible to litter and deface the quarries. In that future, litter and rock quality will eventually become questionable enough that only top rope is accessible at the quarries, and the quality of the routes will be greatly diminished from what it use to be. But another future involves us taking LNT seriously and doing our part to protect the quarries.
The first step is helping protect natural areas is realizing that we are part of the whole. We should make sure that we are doing our part to bring out trash with us, not leave bio-waste at the crag, and stop/not actively tagging walls with graffiti and unsafe climbing protection. The next step is to start being friendly neighbors to the crag and encouraging others that use the area to follow LNT as well. This means not actively encouraging spray paint and discouraging anyone that is tagging area without permits from the land management.
The next step is to start trying to actively make change. This means taking part in crag clean ups. You can go out alone, but this is much easier when we all work together, pool resources, and try to make an impact in a group. Our most-recent crag clean up was fantastic; and we offered free climbing to anyone that participated in the clean up with us.
If we can stop the active violation of LNT and do our part to restore this climbing area, our hope would be to get land management involved in actively enforcing rules at the quarries and investing in ecological protection for the area. We need everyone to do their part in making it known that we want resources invested in protecting this area.
Hopefully, by reading this, you fully understand the scope of LNT, why we want to encourage LNT at local crags, and how to be good stewards of our outdoor areas. I think Quincy Quarries is not only an interesting and evolving place in terms of LNT, but it is a great warning to all of us that climbing areas are a limited resources. They can be depleted. It wasn’t that long ago that protection for climbing was just a huge question for all of us. I hope that what you take away from this article is a fire to protect climbing for yourself, your fellow climbers, and those to come before us.
-Daniel Vickers
