Say That

Another perfect sunrise in Seattle.

 Just another perfect summer day at the World Wall. 

When you find something amazing it’s hard not to want to share it with other people.  It must have been kind of mind blowing to find a crag like equinox.  I’m not sure how they went about discovering this small sport crag (google earth??) but having it tucked up in the hills just off a perfect access road (a logging road) and overlooking the small town of Mt. Vernon I’m sure gave it a remote feel and yet a closeness to the city that only an activity like sport climbing carries with it.  This crag only has handfuls of each 5.11/5.12/5.13 graded climbs and just a few 5.14’s.  But what it lacks in volume it makes up for in quality and the area itself is such a chill place to hang out and enjoy climbing and friends.  The locals and the people who discovered this crag put a very decent amount of work into it to make it a perfect escape for climbers looking to get away from the other more popular crags and it also offers a very dense concentration of power endurance climbs that seem to be somewhat lacking in the NW.  The style is bouldery and power endurance oriented with all manner of grips to tickle your fancy. 

I haven’t been coming to Equinox for a long time by any means but it has become quite a tradition in the last few years every time we look for a place with cooler temps and a different feel.  Of course nothing is perfect, as I understand it Equinox is located on DNR land, land that is leased to a logging company (hence the access roads).  The land is bordered by an outdoor Boy Scout camp that also has an access road that leads to a trail that has approx. 20-25 minute approach to the crag. 

Via the logging road it is approx. a 20 min drive to a pull out just 5 mins from the crag.  Via the boy scout approach it was roughly a 5 min drive to the trail mentioned above.  The local climbers and developers of the crag had an agreement with the owners of the Boy Scout camp in order to access the trail to the crag, it involved an exchange of a lock combo to a gate that guarded the access road.  Everything was fine in that regard until the Boy Scout camp changed ownership and the new owners no longer wanted climbers or anyone for that matter who wasn’t associated with the Boy Scout camp to use the access road and they also changed the combo to the lock on the gate.  At this point, with the Boy Scout camp access being sketchy, the logging road remained the only way to gain access to the crag without hiking for hours.   

Over the seasons more and more people got wind of a ‘new’ crag and wanted to check it out, and for good reason, Equinox is awesome.  With the increased traffic comes the increased use of an access point that wasn’t necessarily cleared as an okay access point to the crag.  In other words, the increasing popularity of the crag lead to increased traffic and instead of two to three cars in the pull out by the crag it turned into 7-8 cars crammed into the pull out and various people camping alongside the road for the weekend.  This of course raises the hairs on the back of the logging company who leases the property, because they certainly don’t want cars driving on a road they made and possibly interfering with logging operations.  Enter the county sheriff and a very disappointing text from one of my friends this past Sunday that went like this: “We just received our first and last warning from the county Sheriff who told us if he finds any motorized vehicles on the logging road he will ticket and tow them.”

The short and bittersweet of it all: no more driving on the logging road, PERIOD, unless of course you don’t mind fines and possible towing of your car (which would be kind of a feat in and of itself).  So I guess the only access point at this time is maybe parking outside of the boy scout camp and making the trek up to the trail and to the crag.  I’ve heard this takes about 45 minutes but I’m kind of skeptical of that quote.  I guess the only way to find out is to do it because honestly, I’ve got business up there I would very much like to take care of. 

In the end, I guess I shouldn’t be shocked about this outcome.  And it’s not anybody’s fault.  Crags are meant to be shared and climbing is something we all enjoy.  However, it would have been prudent to contact the logging company, maybe DNR, and the local authorities and work something out before this happened.  It’s too easy to point the finger and get mad at the fact that too many people had found out about this little gem, but the crag doesn’t belong to anybody.  Even a local crag doesn’t belong exclusively to the locals, and again climbing is something we do as a community and want to share with our friends.  Our accomplishments are validated when the whole community has access to them, not when we hoard the vectors of them like precious jewels.  We just need to have a better head when it comes to communicating the delicate nature of access and use to the community and to the players involved.  It’s awesome that they (the sheriff, the logging company, and DNR) doesn’t necessarily care about us climbing on the parcel of land Equinox is on, but we now need to come to agreement with the Boy Scout camp in order to regain an ease of access to this wonderful little crag.  If anybody has any suggestions as to foster a better relationship with these guys please let me know.