Watching the Potter Arches debacle unfold last month reminded me of
Peckinpah's Wild Bunch. Old, hardened outlaws clinging to a vanishing
way of life as they go down in a hail of bullets, crushed by a modern
world of cars and machine guns. Only in this case it was Potter
thinking the outdoor industry and his climbing buddies would come to his defense, and instead finding the whole lot turning on him like he
was Poland circa 1939. Even close friends were issuing condemnations
and hurling accusation long before anyone knew what had happened. Much
of the uproar, in my opinion, was facilitated by Tim Neville’s hit
piece on Outside Online. He may not have come out and said it directly,
but Neville clearly implied that Potter had damaged the Arches. I
realize Outside is the Maxim of the Outdoors, but that article got
circulated faster than Paris Hilton at the MTV music awards thanks to blogs
(the Piton and GoBlog) and message boards. Forget about the fact that
the evidence was circumstantial at best and that legally Potter did
nothing wrong, the industry pounced on him like he had blasphemed the
Pope and lynched him before he could tell anyone about the masturbating
monkeys. Thankfully I put the word out on that one.
Let me be clear. Potter screwed up. Fine. No argument. But did he deserve the ignorant, knee-
jerk reaction he received?
No way. I don’t
know
if the industry has ever been close-knit and supportive, but I imagine in the old days when the original dirt baggers were making names for themselves in Yosemite, something like this would have never have happened. They would have circled the wagons and beat back the rednecks. But times have changed. The industry has changed. The world has changed. Rednecks and republicans run the place. The only thing that hasn’t changed is my ease with cliché, however. Yeah, boy.
Now, if I wasn’t so jaded, I’d have been surprised by the ill-will, the epithets, the completely unadulterated vitriol that was hurled against a man who is one of the finest climbers the industry has ever produced. But I am jaded. I expect nothing more from my industry and my peers.
We have supported the creation of a celebrity fuelled industry that is as vacuous and money-driven as the best Hollywood as to offer. You pay people large sums of money to get press or get to the top of Everest and they will. And pity the people or objects that stand in their way. Pity the fools. It’s no surprise that Arches and the
David Sharp tragedy happened so close together. What’s surprising is that nobody makes the connection between the two. Oh wait, I did. Yay me.
There were other factors that created the feeding frenzy. The interweb no doubt sped things up. And as
Tom at TwoHeel pointed out yesterday, the interweb lets people say things they would never say in person. Believe me, I now this. It also breeds hearsay, rumor, and pure stupidity like fungus in a Petri dish. Got me again. Charlie Fowler over at
On The Loose highlights some of this stupidity:
Recently a few climbers, including some famous guys like Jimmy Dunn and Ron Olevsky, claim they know better than to climb Delicate Arch. Some of these same climbers complain about the "new" regulations, which they blame on Dean. What nonsense; everyone who knows better than to climb Delicate Arch knows better than to add fixed anchors or use hammer aid in Arches these days (but some idiots still do it anyway). I did those things a long time ago but like most climbers I recognized it is was no longer appropriate there. The "new rules" imposed by the NPS were reasonable recommendations the climb community has largely respected for quite some time.
Some short-sighted climbers think that the ban on new fixed anchors effectively means no new routes in Arches. Total nonsense; I did several new routes, also recorded in the old Desert Rock book, without adding any anchors. I used either pre-existing anchors, walked off (an option on many climbs if you top out) or based-rigged a rap anchor. And that was back in the day when I could have hammered and drilled. There are plenty of opportunities for new routes in the park but in reality few people climb there and those that do mostly repeat well-traveled lines.
The real damage from this affair hasn't been to the rock, but to the image of climbers. We can fix that.
In the end, who will care about this? Probably nobody. Maybe Outside will follow up their hit piece with “The Beefcakes Of Rock” and forget to include Potter. Perhaps Potter will find it a bit harder to get the corporate kick back. But in the end, nothing will change. People will forget. Except for me. I’ll remember. Because I care damn it. I care. Hey, does anyone think Charlie wants to come to bowling night? Yvon still isn’t showing up.
