Enjoy hiking or climbing in the beautiful Great Basin area of Nevada? Watch out for trundled boulders. This guy, ironically a professor of literature and environment at the University of Nevada Reno, channels Edward Abbey as he brags about trundling a wonderfully situated boulder down a "half-mile-long, 1,700-vertical-foot plunge to the valley below." Trundling is a selfish, destructive act of vandalism and in my judgment should be criminalized. What do you think?

http://www.hcn.org/blogs/range/rants-fr ... d-abbey-do

I tried to read the blog but I couldn't even get past the second paragraph. Blah!

They're assholes.

They didn't use machinery. It's not like animals don't do it time to time (knock rocks loose). For curiosity, sure animals probably don't. People cut up trees to make bridges on trails that I am sure some of you have used. I say big deal. I would've loved to see it. Easier to say though after the fact when you know it didn't cream a house though, for example.

kylenicolls wrote:I say big deal. I would've loved to see it. Easier to say though after the fact when you know it didn't cream a house though, for example.

Wonder how these guys felt "after the fact": http://www.climbing.com/news/passages/peterabsolon/

I repeat, people who intentionally trundle boulders are assholes.

kylenicolls wrote:They didn't use machinery. It's not like animals don't do it time to time (knock rocks loose). For curiosity, sure animals probably don't. People cut up trees to make bridges on trails that I am sure some of you have used. I say big deal. I would've loved to see it. Easier to say though after the fact when you know it didn't cream a house though, for example.

So by that logic, its ok to cut off switchbacks (animals do it, to hell with erosion concerns), go off trial to trample through fragile, primitive vegetation (hey, I love the sound of cryptobiotic soil being crushed beneath my boots), trample a field of wildflowers (I saw a longhorn sheep do it), or set a forest afire (as long as it doesn't burn a house of course.) Sheesh, what happened to LNT?

Peter Absolon was killed in such fashion in Leg Lake Cirque-a big mostly empty basin near Atlantic Peak in the Wind Rivers.

I think, that the only just punishment for trundlers, is that they should be trundled until they are hit in the head like Pete Absolon was.

Perhaps then, their surviving family members will spread the word that trundling is only for idiots and assholes.

Check out my rant about a rock throwing incident on Mt Borah two weeks ago. If I had brought the rifle I would have aimed with intent to hit my target and I usually don't miss.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/105717/t ... Sat.+Climb

Bob

When Ed Abbey did it, there were far less people living in the Great Basin. Which still doesn't make it right.

I think the professor was just looking for his 15 minutes of fame. Either that, or he was drinking WAY TOO much of this ..

Trundling has to be done sometimes. Death blocks that appear on highly traveled routes at popular crags are best trundled, obviously at a safe time when you know for sure that there is nobody who is going to get hit below. This is best done by a trundling team with lookouts and whathaveyou. Trundling can be done responsibly when it needs to be done. The people who do it this way are not assholes. It's a better alternative than a gumby climber who doesn't know any better yarding on the big block marked "X" when there are dozens of people and dogs at the base of the crag.

That's for a crag though. Different story for alpine routes and trails in the mountains.

Point taken, McCannster, but as you noted, that is a very different case from the one above. The OP's link is worth a look, because some of the comments show just how many dumbasses there are out there.

I'm shocked, shocked, that a "Professor of Literature and Environment" might be sanctimonious and self-indulgent.

lcarreau wrote:When Ed Abbey did it, there were far less people living in the Great Basin. Which still doesn't make it right.

I think the professor was just looking for his 15 minutes of fame. Either that, or he was drinking WAY TOO much of this ..

I enjoy Edward Abbey as much as anyone here, but, like the rest of us, he was at times an asshole as well.

I do knock rocks (up to several hundred pounds) off routes, when I think the loose rocks may present a danger to future climbers. But these are seldom-traveled routes, and I make damn sure no one is below when I do so. I knock them off only after ascending the route, and generally only when I can see the path to the bottom. We call this "pruning," rather than trundling. It is almost a necessity on the high limestone terrain around here, where the spring freeze-thaw frees up new rocks every year. I don't do this for the heck of it.