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Cached Pads to be Confiscated by NPS
June 24th, 2008
In what may be viewed by some as a confrontational move by the National Park Service in Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), park rangers will be collecting "cached" bouldering pads from the RMNP backcountry left behind by boulderers, who are prone to leaving these large, foam-filled protective devices hidden for later use under rocks in the alpine zone of the park. The park service would like to return these "abandoned" pads to their rightful owners and so anyone missing a pad that was left behind in RMNP should contact the park dispatch at 970-586-1399 for a stated "no-hassle" return of their equipment. Park rangers are hoping that an educational outreach to boulderers will help correct this misuse of an important protected natural area.
National park regulations state that disposal or caching overnight of any equipment for any purpose is forbidden under park rules and violate the leave no trace guidelines which are used in the management of this pristine wilderness area.
The National Park Service along with local climbing communities have been aware of the issues surrounding the increase in bouldering in the more vulnerable alpine zones for a few years, especially in regard to pad caching along with larger crowds that have also left behind trash, altered talus landscapes, broken branches, and created numerous "user trails".
 Upper Chaos Canyon, just southwest of Bear Lake on the eastern side of Rocky Mountain National Park.
Many bouldering areas in RMNP are nearby roadways and so the desire to cache equipment in these locations has never been an issue. In recent years, the above-treeline zone of the park has been inundated with a flood of young boulderers, many of whom are new to the national parks and to the ethics and guidelines in place for the management of these pristine areas. The Tyndall and Chaos Canyon drainages are two of the closest alpine zone areas to the popular Bear Lake trailhead where bouldering has taken off and the boulders above Lake Haiyaha and Dream Lake are seeing dozens of daily visitors armed with pads, chalk, and often a group of like-minded friends.
Since the sport of bouldering has been done in Rocky Mountain National Park since at least the 1950's if not before, this is not a precedent in regard to regulating this type of visitor use in a national park. Caching of equipment or disposal of any items in the backcountry of this and every other U.S. National Park in "backcountry areas" is illegal and enforced by regulations and fines plus confiscation of the "abandoned items".
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