Bay Area Climbers Coalition

Supporting your local crags just feels good – you are outdoors, you get to work with your hands, and you get to spend some time with like-minded climbers.

This was the second year we have done a major clean-up event at Indian Rock in the South Bay. Our work at Indian Rock has been primarily focused on three areas:

1. Improvement of the trail from upper to lower Indian Rock.
2. Closing of social trails and erosion control.
3. Broken glass and trash clean-up.

Last Saturday, we had 40 volunteers show up to volunteer their time to support one of their local crags. This is huge and we want to give a huge THANK YOU to all of the volunteers for coming out and showing some major love for Indian Rock. These events go a very long way with the building of positive relationships with local land managers and maintaining access.

We also had the honor of working with Mike and Amanda from the Access Fund Conservation Team – these two are amazing and a lot of the work that was completed would not have been possible without their knowledge and expertise.

Here is a breakdown of the work that we completed:

• 4 Social Trails Blocked
• 5 Rock Steps Built
• 1 Rubble Wall Built
• 1300+ Pounds of Materials Collected (logs + rocks)
• 250 Pounds of Glass and Trash Removed
• Fencing and Visual Queues Built to Guide Users into Trails

These events would also not be possible without the generous support of our partners:

• Boulder Creek Pizza and Pub + Touchstone Climbing and Fitness donated lunch for the volunteers.
• The Studio Climbing Gym and Planet Granite Belmont donated raffle prizes.
• CocoLibre donated coconut water for all of the volunteers.
• CLIF Bar donated their bars to fuel volunteers before and after lunch.

Check out some photos from the event:

All of our events start off with a “project overview” and “safety talk”.

How do you get this much glass out? One way is to use big sifting screens to separate the glass from the dirt.

The “material collection” team did an amazing job of collecting large rocks to build the new stone steps and the rubble wall.

Some of the rocks were so big we had to use a rock sling and 5 to 6 people to carry them.

The “trail building” crew did an amazing job at dry stacking the rocks into stairs that will prevent further erosion and make your approach more pleasant.

Here is the finished product – the rubble wall on the left directs users into the main trail – this will help to protect the tree roots and stop further erosion of the nearby hillside.

Down at the lower level we focused on glass and trash collection. We also built a small fence to act as a visual queue that will guide users to the established trail that leads to the boulder problems below.

In addition to the fencing we built, we also added branches to the eroding hillside to encourage users to not cut the trail and cause more erosion to this hillside. This trail that leads to the lower level boulder problems will be our next major project at Indian Rock – due to the steep slope of the trail and the multiple tight switchbacks, we will need to build the majority of it out of stone.