Across the border from Dinosaur, Colorado, the northeastern corner of Utah looks like a barren wasteland to the undiscerning eye. In fact, this region is filled with ancient treasures hidden among craggy outcrops that protrude from the wide, ocher expanse. Dinosaurs once ruled these lands; much later, they were inhabited by the so-called Fremont people, a loosely cohesive pre-Columbian-era culture that existed some 700 to 1,700 years ago throughout Utah.
For an archeologist like Jared Rowland, this region is prime real estate.
On November 8, Rowland, who works for the BLM office in Vernal, Utah, made a trip out to visit some petroglyph sites in nearby Cocklebur Wash. He and a small team were training the area’s new “site steward,” a volunteer position that helps the BLM manage key locations throughout the millions of acres managed by the bureau. Cocklebur Wash contains some relatively notable petroglyphs, including one that’s been dubbed “Pregnant Sheep.”
“We picked this site to train the site steward because it’s such a significant petroglyph panel. … And that’s when we saw the bolts,” says Rowland. “It was crushing to find any kind of new vandalism on a site, especially a significant site like this one. I took photos and made a report. I immediately wanted to begin working towards getting the bolts removed.”
With various exceptions, placing bolts on BLM lands is generally OK and doesn’t require a permit. But this site was registered under the Archeological Resources Protection Act of 1979. In 2023, the state of Utah went a step further in protecting petroglyphs by designating them as official state works of art. For these reasons, the bolts were deemed to be illegal, and the act of installing them, a crime of vandalism.
On December 26, the Uintah County Sheriff’s Office posted to Facebook a request for the public’s help in finding those responsible for installing these bolts. The BLM made a similar post on December 30.
Both posts described the bolts as “climbing bolts.” The media picked up on this story, and numerous headlines across local and national websites utilized this description. Some examples include:
“Climbers damaged ancient petroglyph by driving anchors into rock face, Utah authorities say” in the New York Post.
“Petroglyph panel damaged by climbing bolts, official searching for subject” by KTVX Salt Lake City.
“Climbing Bolts Illegally Placed On Prehistoric Petroglyph Panel In Utah” by Unofficial Networks.
“Historical Site in Utah Damaged by Climbing Bolts, Authorities Seek Help” on Sports Illustrated.
These headlines would lead any reader to believe that rock climbers were to blame for the bolts. A brief review of some of the comments on these stories confirm as much, including: “Climbers are some of the worst. It’s an entitlement culture through and through,” and “Someone saw a challenge and his/her ego demanded they conquer the climb,” and “Why I dislike climbing, it is out of control bolting anywhere.”
The fact that this news followed on the heels of an incident in 2021 in which a climber did, in fact, bolt a rock climb in the middle of a petroglyph panel, maybe helps explain why the BLM and media jumped to the conclusion that these were bolts for rock climbing.
The only problem, of course, is that no legitimate climber could look at these bolts and call them as “climbing bolts.” For the purposes of rock climbing, they’re functionally useless.
In these photographs, you can see six threaded metal rods sticking out of the rock—three on a vertical panel directly beneath the petroglyph, and three jutting out of a slab below.
The rightmost upper bolt, however, contains what appears to be some kind of homemade bolt hanger: a hunk of bent iron with drilled holes.
Rowland, who isn’t a climber, confirmed that the only reason that the bolts were described as “climbing bolts” was due to this homemade hanger.
From these photographs, it was hard to immediately rule out climbers as the culprit. Could the bolts be some kind of hatchet-job top-rope anchors, placed by an inexperienced noob? Was there any real rock climbing located beneath the petroglyph? Indeed, there appeared to be a cliff of some kind beneath the bolts in Rowland’s photograph, but it was difficult to say exactly what kind of cliff it was without more context.
In our interview, Rowland described a “vertical cliff, about 75-100 feet tall” beneath the Pregnant Sheep panel, but given that he’s not a climber, he wasn’t able to describe it to me very well. He said he saw no evidence that anyone had been climbing on the lower cliff (no other bolts, no chalk, etc.). I asked him to send me a picture of the site, and, well, here it is:
I added the text to the photo because it’s hard to see otherwise. The first circle shows where the Pregnant Sheep petroglyph lies; the bolts are just below it. To the right of the Pregnant Sheep are even more petroglyph panels on the ruby rock. This photo shows what’s below the bolts: choss. No climber would describe this pile as a “rock climbing cliff.” It looks like you could weave your up to the ledge at 5.3, maybe even at a fourth-class scramble. Many competent rock climbers would be comfortable navigating this terrain without a rope. It’s certainly possible that some “climber” chose this location, of all locations, as the place they absolutely needed to drill six bolts so as to set up their 5.3 top-rope … but to me this seems very unlikely, especially as there is no other rock climbing nearby.
No chalk. Bolts that look like they came from any hardware store and are functionally useless for climbing purposes. An uninspiring choss pile that no climber would bother with. I feel pretty confident concluding that these bolts were not placed by a climber.
But if climbers didn’t do this, who did?
Into the Wilderness
The misinformation that climbers were to blame for damaging a rare and important petroglyph site with their unconstrained bolting habits hit the national headlines at a precarious moment in American climbing.
Throughout 2024, the National Park Service seemed serious about adopting a controversial fixed-anchor policy, which would have allowed local land managers to inventory and potentially ban climbing anchors in Wilderness areas, from Joshua Tree and El Capitan to more than 50,000 other routes across America. This proposal was the handiwork of Wilderness Watch and its army of anti-climbing zealots, who cynically sought to weaponize language from the 1964 Wilderness Act in order to re-classify bolts and anchors as “permanent installations,” which would therefore make them illegal under the Wilderness Act.
But the Wilderness Act specifically names rock climbing as a legitimate use of wilderness lands. And as I’ve argued here, here and here, if climbing is allowed in Wilderness, then so, too, must bolts and anchors.
In response to this policy, the Access Fund helped draft the Protect America’s Rock Climbing (PARC) act, which sought to ensure legal protection for climbing in Wilderness areas, including codifying fixed anchors as appropriate. The Wilderness Watch folks called this act an “imminent threat,” “anti-Wilderness,”and a “war on Wilderness.”
Wilderness advocates believed that the Wilderness Act was about to be “re-written” in order to accommodate climbers, which could pave the way for further degradation of Wilderness safeguards by other groups, from bikers to pilots. In other words, to them, this was a serious threat with a lot on the line.
Given the stakes, would it be worth considering for a moment that it was a Wilderness zealot who placed these bolts beneath the Pregnant Sheep petroglyph as a sort of false flag operation? After all, a big national news story about climbers recklessly placing bolts wherever they want, including beneath a priceless archeological site, is just the sort of press that might just generate enough outrage for Congress to kill the PARC act.
According to Rowland, the Pregnant Sheep bolts were placed sometime between October 21, 2023—the last recorded date a team from the BLM had visited this site—and their most recent trip on November 8, 2024. This time frame perfectly aligns with the national debate over what the National Park Service’s policy toward bolting would be.
Unfortunately, as much as I can’t stand these Wilderness prigs, I must admit that this theory—which we casually entertained on the most recent episode of The RunOut podcast—is almost certainly incorrect. First, as Rowland pointed out, this petroglyph isn’t even located on “Wilderness” lands. Second, if someone is crazy enough to engage in such a false-flag operation, they probably wouldn’t just sit around waiting for an official to stumble upon their vandalism; they’d want to get it in the news as soon as possible. Indeed, by the time the BLM and the Uintah sherif’s department had made their public posts about the bolts’ appearance, the PARC act had already passed Congress and was en route to the President’s desk. Further, by that time the NPS had also pulled their fixed-anchor proposal, thanks to such widespread opposition from climbers, including over 12,000 public comments that we sent their way. (Go climbers!)
With a heavy sigh, I admit it’s unlikely some priggish Wilderness wacko false-flagged these bolts. So if it wasn’t them, then who?
Petroglyph Hunters
To call petroglyph hunters a “community” might be too strong of a word. While enough of these kinds of people certainly exist, they’re perhaps too disparate in interest, and too solitary in nature to coherently lump together. Still, there seems to be a code among this cohort. Rock art is not to be touched, for example. But most importantly, directions to petroglyph locations are taboo—though hints about regions, trailheads, and starting points are seemingly OK.
Though the name “Pregnant Sheep” was widely used to describe this petroglyph, the site is better known among archeologists and petroglyph hunters as the Cocklebur Wash Petroglyphs, which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Uintah County, Utah Wikipedia page. (Ed note: I’ve only seen Cocklebur spelled with two r’s at the end, which is technically a misspelling of the cocklebur plant, presumably the wash’s namesake. I don’t understand why people are using two r’s to spell this word and it bugs me enough to not give in to what I’m assuming must certainly be a mistake repeated into existence by those who are less vigilant with their etymology.)
According to Rowland, these petroglyphs have appeared in rock art books over the years. Maarten van Hoek referenced the Pregnant Sheep petroglyph in “The Potash Sheep Shifters: Bighorn Petroglyphs of the Southwest,” highlighting both how rare it is to find depictions of female sheep in general, while also observing that this particular panel curiously shows a pregnant female with male horns and a legless embryo inside, all drawn at the same time, likely by the same artist.
Despite being a well known site, finding it doesn’t seem to be particularly straightforward, at least as evinced by the one and only YouTube video I found documenting the experience of getting here.
This video, filmed by a young boy, delivers an interesting window in the kind of person drawn to this pursuit: outdoorsy people who like thrashing around the bush with their binoculars, compasses, and canteens.
The video also captures the difficulty many would encounter in getting up close to the panels themselves, which are located halfway up this scrappy little cliff. The kid and has dad appear to be resigned to simply admiring the artwork from the trail on the ground, using binoculars to admire the petroglyphs.
According to Rowland, there is evidence that the Fremont people of this region used ladders to access cliffs. In Southern Utah, they were also known to have constructed yucca ropes for the same purposes. Some ancient Fremont guy or gal probably spied this ruby-red rock face, sheltered from the elements by the architecture of the overhang above, and that blank canvas called to them like a shining natural billboard, a glorious location for their message, something that an approaching person could see from a mile away clear across the wash. I imagine that spark of inspiration set off a whole process: finding the materials to create a ladder that would help them access the panel, perhaps taking weeks to do so. Or perhaps this individual was just super bold, a proto free soloist who was comfortable with the exposure, smearing their bare feet on crumbly sandstone while literally chipping away at their masterpiece.
The ledge in the BLM’s photo can be accessed by hiking around the backside and dropping in. Still, once here, the exposure of the cliff below is enough to scare away most people who aren’t comfortable on this kind of terrain.
Randy Langstraat is a petroglyph hunter and photographer who posts his adventures to his blog Adventr.co. He visited this site in 2018 and documented the experience. He wrote:
“After our morning hike we spent a few hours searching for the Cockleburr Wash Petroglyphs and were not having much luck. We were about to give up and move on when Diane spotted them through the binoculars. We hiked over to them for a closer look and found an impressive panel high up on a narrow ledge. We tried to access the ledge from the top, but there was too much exposure for us to get across to the panel.”
Though he doesn’t recall where he was standing when he took these photographs, he says that the metadata shows he was using a 100 millimeter focal-length lens, suggesting that he probably shot them from the ground. (Flicker links here, here, here, and here.) What’s interesting about this selection of photography is that it’s clearly the panel to the right of the Pregnant Sheep that seems to contain far more interesting and detailed petroglyphs.
If you look at the BLM photograph of the bolts from the ledge, you’ll notice three bolts on the vertical panel and three on the slab beneath. The bolts are placed right at a spot where the slab steepens and the ledge narrows, creating a kind of bottleneck if you want to reach the far side of the ledge—the edge of the above photograph—which is where the other petroglyph panels lie.
At first, I thought that these bolts might be used to get a closer look at Pregnant Sheep itself. But on second thought, perhaps these bolts are meant to help people access the bigger petroglyph panel to the right, past this little bottleneck on the steep and narrow ledge. By this accounting, the lower bolts could be used for footholds, while the upper bolts would serve as handholds, allowing you to scoot past this crux without slipping to your death. Perhaps the homemade hanger was installed with the idea that a cable could be rigged between two bolts, but maybe the person changed their mind after they realized that just grabbing the protruding studs for balance was good enough.
I reached out to Randy to ask him what he thought of the news of the Pregnant Sheep bolts. I also shared this working theory that the person who likely placed them was probably a petroglyph hunter.
“It’s funny you mention this,” Randy replied. “I had a friend ask if I saw the news [about the bolts] circulating on social media, and the first thing I told him is that I wouldn’t be surprised if someone put the bolts there to get a closer/better photo of the panel since I was uncomfortable getting closer to the panel when I visited.”
Randy says he’s someone who avoids people and groups in general, and doesn’t consider himself part of the community of petroglyph hunters, to the degree that this community even exists. He says that people may be drawn to petroglyphs for various reasons, from photography to archeology, the love of adventure, spiritual reasons, or even stoking their own wild conspiracy theories about what the rock art means.
Randy noted that when he started doing these kinds of adventures 15 to 20 years ago, there didn’t seem to be many other people interested in petroglyph hunting.
“But now, with social media, there seems to be quite a bit more interest in it.”
Still, I was bothered by one seeming inconsistency with my latest theory: of all the outdoor user groups, wouldn’t a petroglyph hunter have enough reverence for this art and, of all people, know not to permanently alter these sites?
“I have the opposite view of humanity,” Randy wrote. “When I hear things like this happening it doesn’t really surprise me one bit, no matter what subculture/community might be involved. Of course, these days it seems everyone is trying to get a great photo for social media no matter what activity they are doing. I suppose to some people there is probably a collector element to it, like peak-bagging or many other outdoor pursuits.”
I could only find one other photograph of the Pregnant Sheep panel online, posted last August from someone who I’ll just call “Guy.” Here are the photographs, which were posted to a Facebook group for petroglyph enthusiasts.
What was intriguing to me about these pictures is that they seem to be taken from the ledge itself, rather than from the ground—especially the panels to the right. The photo of Pregnant Sheep is cropped too tight to see whether or not bolts are just out of frame. I tried to check the metadata on these photos to see what kind of focal length was used to capture them, but Facebook scrubs all metadata from anything uploaded to its site.
I reached out to Guy himself, and asked if he had heard the news about the bolts. He replied, “I’m disgusted and upset about the pictures I saw with the bolts put into this panel. Just touching the panels. Our oils can destroy them.”
Guy posted these photos on August 8, 2024, so I asked him about the timing: Had the bolts been placed by then? Did he see them?
He then surprised me by saying that he had actually never even been to this site. These photographs, he explained, had actually been taken by his parents, who were also into petroglyph hunting. His parents, he said, had created a book of rock art of all the sites they had visited over the years, and he had “downloaded” these photographs from this book in August and shared them on Facebook. (I was confused by the word “downloaded” in this context, but perhaps the book his parents had made was digital.)
He wrote:
“Download that picture from my parents rock art book that they created for all the sites they saw so it was downloaded in August but it was taken by my parents many years ago and the bolts were not there. It’s one of hope to get back to the site.” [sic]
Now I was confused about whether or not he had been to Cocklebur Wash—“get back to the site”—so I asked him again if he’d ever been here and he said: “I have been to several places with them but not this site.”
I have no reason to believe that Guy was the person who installed these bolts, and so I am not using his real name in order to not implicate him unfairly. But there were some strange aspects to his story. For example, on the original Facebook post of his parents’ photographs, someone asked how far the hike was to reach these petroglyphs and Guy replied with “Not bad,” suggesting he had, in fact, been there. I asked him about this, and that’s when he just stopped responding to my questions.
(Also, despite his initial comment asserting that dangers of touching petroglyphs with our oily fingers, I found another photograph that he posted, of a different petroglyph, in which it appears as if he’s touching the petroglyph with his finger. But given that he apparently shares photos online that apparently aren’t his, who knows if it was even his finger in that photo?)
Guy made a dozen or so posts with various petroglyph photography in myriad locations over the course of several weeks to Facebook around July and August, which makes me think he was, in fact, sharing old photos from some digital album like he said, rather than posting new pictures of sites he’d visited in real time.
Finally, I saw another comment from a different person on Facebook who said that they had visited the Cocklebur Wash petroglyphs on August 20—a couple weeks after Guy’s post—and that he didn’t see any bolts at that time. If this is true, this narrows down the time frame that the bolts were placed from sometime between August 21 and November 7, 2024.
But as to who actually placed them, or why, I’m afraid I found no definitive answers.
Back to climbing
As of this writing, the bolts remain. The BLM is working to figure out how to remove them. I’ve connected with their office, and offered up the idea that a climber, ironically, would be the best bet for making those bolts vanish with no trace left behind. We’ll see if they bite on that suggestion. If so, I have a few climbers in mind who could do an immaculate job of restoring this site.
I find myself haunted by Randy’s observation pointing to both the perverse incentives of social media, as well as the ego-driven behavior you’d normally associate with peak-bagging climbers. Both climbers and petroglyph hunters are susceptible to the darker side of our human nature, the mindset that prizes self-aggrandizement over collective humility. Social media has only made this worse. In fact, without a mindset that prizes self-aggrandizement over collective humility, there probably would be no social media.
I wonder if the person who placed these bolts did so out of pure ignorance, or if they knew it was wrong but went ahead anyway, justifying their decision with the idea that they were making petroglyphs more accessible to the masses. Perhaps they got the idea from climbers that it was OK to place bolts wherever they want on BLM land. I’d like to think that our justifications for placing bolts for climbing is categorically different than whatever was going through this person’s head, but I have a feeling we’re probably closer cousins than I’d like to admit.
Even though climbers aren’t to blame here, this incident somehow underscores just how precarious our relationship is to land managers—and public opinion—at any given time. Even though we had nothing to do with these bolts, can you really blame anyone for seeing bolts in a remote piece of rock and jumping to the conclusion that climbers were the ones who placed them?
Stories like this might serve as a reminder to every climber that the way we interact with crags is a big responsibility. And that our approach to climbing can have unintended consequences, which could be made worse by an entire media industry of “journalists” who can’t be bothered to do their fucking jobs and interview even one climber before running any of these articles. Setting the record straight here—that climbers were not responsible this time for bolting this petroglyph—is important for the future of our sport.
Yes, the PARC act just passed, and yes, climbers will continue to establish new routes where we’re allowed to do so. That’s our right. But it’s also our collective responsibility, one that requires our humility to get it right.
Interesting article – but I think you’re missing the point. My view is bolts didn’t belong in the wilderness and I don’t care where they were placed by climbers, petroglyph hunters, or magical unicorns. If you can’t climb somewhere safely without fixed protection – don’t go there.
I think Andrew understands your point, but disagrees. I don’t think you’ll win any converts by posting on this site. Your time is probably better served preserving the wilderness by picking up trash.
Picking up the trash left by the climbers who proclaim a love of nature while leaving their trash behind
You can join me, I carry a bag for waste everywhere I go, but I find ATV, fishing and hunting sites to be much more trashy than climbing areas. I’ve pulled miles of line from the Tennessee River and others, but not much more than some forgotten tape and occasional other detritus from the Tennessee Wall.
“Well sure, this one thing is bad, but what about this other thing that is even worse!” Is not a valid argument. Justifying climbing by invalidating other outdoor sports is not helpful. Hunting for instance, whether you agree with it or not, requires vast tracts of land, of which the continued existence benefits everyone.
If you can’t drive somewhere without roads, don’t drive there. If you can’t hike somewhere without trails, don’t go there. If you can’t walk somewhere without leaving footprints, don’t walk there.
If we went by this mantra, Yellowstone and many other great places would have never been discovered.
So by what you’re saying we need more roads and trails to so we can go anywhere cool but I’d rather you have to earn your way to the peak, climbing walls, waterfalls or vistas, instead of destroying more land to allow any idiot to access these areas. By making easier to get there you end up with people not fit enough and need to be rescued like that group that called for rescue because they were tired.
My above comment is meant to highlight the subjectivity of that logic. That argument can be made apply to anything and everything and so it’s a functionally useless way of thinking about whether or not a trade off is worth making
This last year, I happened to be in the region and ventured to one of my first backpacking trips with scouts (including my now-deceased dad and also aging older sister), to find the trailheads that likely should be overgrown. It’s a place called “Dinkey Wilderness.” (I also know Not relaying said information can be with worse effect. [Also, the original trails were notched blazes.] ). It happened to be the year-one since a major wildfire, so there Were recovery fundraisers most everywhere inhabited in the vacinity.
When I was there, in addition to the festival traffic, there was also a huge off-road vehicle (ORV) party basically on top of the Designated Wilderness. I was fairly upset about it myself. Not only was I upset, but my tire popped and I had to self-rescue before I was able to relocate to the vacinity of the second trailhead.
…I am only left to have to hold of serious hope that the ORVers didn’t overstep forest to wilderness boundaries and go to there first, or worse. It all is a question of people’s logic to jusprudence.
…super disheartening…
Has anyone considered that the bolt installer simply didn’t see the problem with where they put them? It seems to me that they are below the rock art not in it. Same as the photo of the guy and his finger. He’s not actually touching the rock art he’s touching beside it. This younger generation is different. They don’t infer or connect things. This might simply be a ‘need more education and clarity’ problem.
I think climbing is good, on trees but rock climbing sounds ike suicide, if there are writings of such nature it is nature that takes our pace and well we cant have aspects at such trail meaning there is no way in heck that humans are responsible for any of this ,when it comes to sense, god knows who and in what mind could such figure would have made it, my guess is what blows is what it is and what carves could be that what isnt anymore ,if human well that time was theirs now is it legal to see yes nit to vandalise.
How far do you want to take this argument? Maybe we should just eliminate people from wilderness areas to avoid harmful encounters with wildlife. In fact, let’s do the same for state parks adjacent to wilderness areas as they may serve as valuable wildlife transit corridors. Next, let’s move onto city parks, which can provide habitats for animals that live in or near human settlements… until we arrive at the final solution of removing people from the planet so as to avoid any trampling of ground that could have instead be trampled by a non-human animal and so that rocks don’t have to suffer the pain and humility of being bolted.
100% agree
Great article. It’s a shame it happened at all. Really enjoy the long articles makes the subscription worthwhile.
Thank you Tim
I appreciate you doing the digging to come up with some answers, Andrew. I think it could be picked up by other outlets if you reworked it to be less nuanced, shorter, a more sensational title, and maybe a few hashtags. Have you considered asking Honnold for a quote?
Thanks, Alex! It’s funny you mention that because as I was writing this, I was aware that parts of this would never make it into a more traditional media outlet. I’m really happy that I have this site that allows me to go long if I want … But I agree, this piece could be edited down and probably find a home somewhere with a wider audience.
I once watched a well known “bolter” from the Wasatch repeatedly drill holes on a “new” route he was “establishing” on the School room area at Wall Street near Moab. Each time he sank the drill into the rock and would pull it back out saying it was too soft. After 5-10 holes, I told him to stop, but it made no difference.
I also helped remove many of his bolts from “new” routes he had established on the west slabs of Mt. Olympus in Salt Lake.
Many in the Wasatch will know who I’m talking about. Check the bolts for “TC”.
That TC guy is a great example of someone who thinks that drilling the rock will somehow make people accept him as a hard-core developer when in fact climbers mostly feel that he should put the drill down.
The part about highliners possibly being responsible isn’t discussed here and we all know that those guys are now using drones to string up their lines thousands of feet away.
time for a call to “Guy’s” parents.
If those are climbing bolts, they are placed by someone inexperienced. I see only one hanger and it’s not anything I’ve ever seen as a rock climber. I would think they are more for hauling than belay points. I hope that this wasn’t in an attempt to vandalize the petroglyph.
I think such things should be punished very, very harshly.
Very odd collection of anchors. Some thoughts to add to the discussion:
If it was a “false flag” operation, why not drill the actual art rather than 6 holes 10′ away? Why choose such a remote, hard-to-reach location to vandalize that might not get discovered right away? Why not publicize the vandalism to make your point? Why not use actual climbing hardware that unambiguously screams “climber”? (Not some weird homemade angle-iron hanger thingie and strange threaded rod.)
Is it possible these anchors were part of an unfinished DYI installation of some sort? Like an observation platform or hand-rail? The rock art looks rather exposed, so perhaps this was a foolish attempt to make it more safely viewable? Or maybe someone intended to connect a knotted rope to the bolts to make it easier to access ledge? Maybe the bolts on the ledge were drilled first, then on second thought decided the above-the-ledge bolts were better positioned for such a handrail?
I’ve seen some real botch jobs by fishermen to set up tyroleans. The uselessness of these bolts reminds me of those.
Thank you for the excellent investigation report. Based on the previous stories, I was looking for bolts in the middle of the petroglyphs. I was happy to learn from your reporting that the bolts are below and several feet away from the petroglyphs. Can’t tell from the photos actually how many feet the bolts are below the petroglyphs.
Your thought that the bolts could be used as footholds to get past a narrow section of ledge makes some sense to me. The lower three bolts especially seem like they are spread out in a way to be used as steps. The upper three bolts being close together are less helpful for a traverse or handline, and seem more likely to be used to hold a ladder of some sort to get closer to the petroglyphs.
Paul: On the Runout Podcast they said the anchors were 10′ away from the actual art. In one of the photos you can see the anchors and the lower part of the art. Not sure about 10′, but there is a clear separation, thank goodness.
Stepping on pokey threaded rod to bypass an exposed section of ledge seems like a weird way to solve a poor-footing problem. Placing the lower bolts to install a walking plank or something seems more likely. And maybe the upper bolts for a handrail? Just taking a stab; no matter what the intention, it’s clearly misguided.
Jim: Thanks for the feedback on the distance. Looking at the horizontal photos, my guess is 5 to 6 foot distance from the bolts to the bottom of the Petrogliph. It seems clear that the bolts are not directly endangering the petroglyph. I am glad to see that.
I have bolted a number of traverses, including Via Ferrata type things, and built a number of ropes courses, so I have some sense of why bolts might be placed in different ways, What I see in the photos, doesn’t make much sense to me for a traverse. The upper bolts are too close together to be part anchors for a handline. They look like a central anchor intended to support weight. The lower bolts are far enough apart that they could be used as steps or supports for a plank. But, why are they so far below the existing ledge? If for a plank, why not leave the plank in place?
We know people have been scooting across this ledge to access the other petroglyphs for centuries. Who ever added these bolts had to be capable of scooting across the ledge without bolts, since they had to get out there and stand to place the first bolt. I don’t see someone going to that much trouble when they can just scoot across the ledge like everyone else. What if they had one non scooting friend that really really wanted to see the other petroglyhs. It seems unlikely that such person scrambled all the way up there and was stopped by the scoot, and it seems less likely that anybody would go to the trouble of adding 6 bolts in odd places, when one bolt before the narrow spot and one bolt after the narrow spot would be enough to string a handline between.
My newest hypothesis is that someone wanted to get close up photos of the petroglyphs and created an anchor for a pole mounted camera, or perhaps anchors for netting so the photographer could climb up and examine the petroglyphs. Even with this scenario, the anchor placements don’t make obvious sense to me.
Excellent article, Andrew! Thanks for doing this and keeping us well informed on this strange occurrence. As a route developer, I agree that this is most likely not the work of a rock climber. Even a noob would understand the basic principles of bolt/hanger placement. The theory of a Petroglyph hunter hoping to make the access better for themselves and/or others seems highly likely. I also agree that the mystery bolter may have had a plan to place a cable and plank to improve access. As someone else mentioned, time to talk to the parents and let the BLM law enforcement talk to “Guy” in person. Again, thanks a ton for your hard work and excellent reporting on behalf of the climbing community, Andrew!
Interesting read, thank you. With the apparent difficulty to reach the petroglyphs, my first thought after seeing that photo with the cliffs is maybe the bolts were used to rap down after scrambling up. Would explain the lack of chalk. And it doesn’t look like there are any obvious natural anchors.
I liked the thoughtfulness of this article but not the statement “To call petroglyph hunters a ‘community’ might be too strong of a word. While enough of these kinds of people certainly exist, they’re perhaps too disparate in interest, and too solitary in nature to coherently lump together. ” The American Rock Art Research Association has been lumped together since 1974, and the Utah Rock Art Research Association since 2003. Both of these, and similar organizations, have codes of ethics.