Joe's Valley Adopt a Crag Re-cap

This past Saturday, a few climbers took the morning off from climbing to volunteer their time along with folks from the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, SLCA, and the Access Fund to clean up New Joe's camping areas. This was the second Adopt a Crag for Joe’s Valley this year. A total of fifteen people came out and spent five hours cleaning up the camp fire rings at New Joe’s Camp and the Coal Camp. About one ton of burnt trash and ash was carted off from fire rings. WHY spend time shoveling out fire rings? Because as fire rings become full, people build MORE fire rings and the footprint of camp becomes larger and larger. This impacts the vegetation and increases erosion. Think urban sprawl at camp.

YOU CAN HELP prevent camp sprawl by shoveling out full fire rings and taking the ash to a dumpster. Please think twice before dispersing the ash into the desert because a lot of plastic and other trash is often burnt at camp. Keep plastic out of the desert.

WE NEED YOUR HELP to keep our climbing areas open and environmentally sustainable. Stay tuned for another at Joe’s Valley Adopt a Crag in mid March 2015. The land agencies do not have the staff or resources to focus only on climbing areas. When we show a desire to mitigate our impacts on the land, it increases the land agencies' willingness to partner in keeping climbing areas open. Volunteer hours are documented and used by the agencies to ask for federal funding for their districts as well, which can mean more funding for climbing areas.

We would also like to thank The Food Ranch for their out of this world donuts and coffee and Moab Brewery for the apres-work appreciation brews.