I just spent the last month living in Las Vegas, while prepping for and taking an AMGA Rock Guide Exam in Red Rock Canyon. One of the most challenging parts about this process for me was simply existing in Vegas for that long. If you would have told me 10 years ago that I would spend months of my life in this overstimulating, sprawling city, I wouldn’t have believed you.
No matter where you’re going or what you’re doing in Las Vegas, everything is at least a twenty minute drive. Virtually nothing is walkable, and I can’t recall seeing any public transportation during the four weeks that I was there. I’m sure it exists, but it’s obviously not a major part of the city’s infrastructure. It feels next to impossible to exist there without a vehicle (though undoubtedly many people have to!)
But it also feels nearly impossible to exist as a climber without a car. Similar to the way that many cities in the American Southwest were built around the automobile, our outdoor recreation infrastructure generally assumes access to a personal vehicle. I couldn’t have trained for the rock exam, completed big objectives in remote areas, or done a lot of my work as a climbing guide over the years without my van.
Freedom Is a $2.25 Bus Fare
I wasn’t always so dependent on having my very own internal combustion engine. In seventh grade, I started taking public transportation home from middle school. The journey took almost an hour and a half door to door and started with a half mile walk from my school to a transit station underneath the Mall of America. After a 45 minute ride, I transferred to a second bus in downtown Saint Paul before being dropped off at a stop two blocks from my childhood home.
At the time, I hated it. What was normally a twenty minute drive took more than four times as long on Metro Transit. Everyday, I trudged through the snow in inappropriate footwear and stood in my uniform skirt waiting for the bus, often in below freezing temps. Perhaps the worst part was sprinting to catch the 54D and then watching as it rolled out of the parking garage without me. (I have some light trauma from this; I’m now the kind of traveller who shows up at the airport two hours early.) But for me, public transportation, and later a bicycle, came to mean freedom. If there was a bus route or light rail line, I could go there on my own, with an amount of money that I could easily scrounge up from the loose change in our family’s junk drawer.
A few years later, as I studied environmental policy in Portland, Oregon, alternative transportation also came to represent a key climate solution. Investing in light rail infrastructure and safer bike routes seemed mandatory in our society’s shift away from fossil fuels. More people commuting by train rather than car is more efficient, uses less energy, and requires less physical space for roads and highways.
Well built and reliable public transit systems are also more equitable! They give more people access to reliable transportation at a more affordable price. As I learned when I was thirteen, paying for bus fare is way cheaper than buying a car. As a senior in college, I focused my capstone project on sustainable transportation. As I biked to coffee shops around Portland to do research and took the bus to school, I felt like my transportation choices aligned with my values, even if I also just couldn’t afford my own car.
The Hypocrisy of the Dirt Bag Dream
My behavior started to change when I graduated, started working in the outdoor industry, and living in mountain towns. At first, I attempted to make it work without a car. I explored the (slow, unreliable) bus system in Keystone, Colorado, and I begged roommates in Ashford, Washington to take me with them when they went grocery shopping an hour away in Puyallup. I loved being in the mountains just as much as (or more than??) I valued sustainable transportation, and these two pursuits were proving to be at odds.
Finally, I tasted the joys of living “on the road” as a dirtbag climber, and I was ruined. In a friend’s borrowed Honda Civic, I spent six weeks climbing in the desert during the fall of 2015. I learned to trad climb, climbed long multi-pitch routes in the canyons, and explored free camping in the vast expanses of BLM land in the Southwest. Pretty soon after that I bought my first car.
Ever since then I’ve worked in the climbing industry in some capacity, as an instructor, coach, or guide. The above mentioned car addiction that has followed is largely due to logistics but also at least in part to the ethos of climbing culture. Logistically speaking, it ranges from inconvenient to impossible to access most climbing areas in the United States without a vehicle. Rural areas have limited public transit, and stops at trailheads are rare. While shuttle systems exist in some high use national parks, like Yosemite or Zion, these are the exception rather than the norm. And good luck finding a bus route to free, dispersed camping options.
But logistics don’t explain everything; even when carpooling is possible or convenient, I’ve noticed that my climbing partners and I have shied away from it. A couple of years ago, a friend and I were making plans to meet up in Washington’s Methow Valley to go climbing. She was driving up from Bend, Oregon, and I would be coming from Index. We could have met up in Leavenworth and car-pooled for the last couple of hours, but neither of us could imagine camping without our cars. Sleep on the ground? Couldn’t be me!
There’s a sense of freedom and independence about having access to your own vehicle on a climbing trip. If you’re not feeling the vibe or the weather turns sour, you can simply drive somewhere else. We’ve romanticized “van life,” or living on the road, not tied down to one location or an in-person job. We’re so obsessed with this car-dependent lifestyle that van-life influencers can make a living online sharing videos about how they’ve pared down their shoe collection to fit in their limited storage space.
Aside from fossil fuel emissions and the horrors of climate change, what I find most problematic about this car addiction within climbing culture is its hypocrisy. Many climbers consider themselves part of the “human-powered recreation” sector. They draw a distinction between themselves and snowmobilers, jet skiers, dirt bikers, or other recreationalists who use gas powered machines for fun. I would also argue that it’s not a neutral distinction; I get the sense that human-powered recreationalists see themselves as better or even more sustainable than the hobbyists that rely on engines. I’ve definitely fallen into this line of thinking.
This perspective falls flat when you consider just how much driving we do to access our “human-powered” outdoor pursuits. During the summer in Washington, I regularly commute more than three hours each way for work or play in the mountains. Every time I work in Joshua Tree, I drive almost an hour roundtrip in and out of the national park. And I usually don’t carpool with my clients, even when it’s possible. Since 2019, I have put 130,000 miles on my van. Part of this is due to my seasonal migration from California to Washington. But a large part of it is because I go climbing A LOT, both for work and recreation.
Van-Lifers Anonymous: Can We Collectively Recover from our Car Addiction?
So what can I do about my car addiction? I miss throwing my bike on the light rail to commute in Seattle, and I have chronic pain in my hip flexors, which I suspect is a byproduct of the thousands of miles of driving I do every year. But I also love my job, and I love rock climbing. The American West is not the European Alps with their high speed rail to ski resorts, but I wonder if we could get a little closer.
There’s the lowest hanging fruit; I can change my mentality around carpooling. I can ask to hop into my clients’ cars when I meet them in the morning, which would reduce emissions and save me some cash. I can find ways to share rides to trailheads in Washington whenever I can. I could even gasp eschew the dirtbag dream and share a vehicle with my climbing partner on an extended trip. I might have to become better at packing and actually sleep in a tent sometimes, but I am strong and up to the challenge.
Then there are structural changes, which require collective advocacy and organizing. Everytime I drive by the backed up traffic on Highway 2 on a weekend, I wonder what it would take for more people to take the train to Leavenworth. There is currently an Amtrak line that runs from Seattle to Leavenworth, but people still choose to spend five hours in bumper to bumper traffic through Sultan to get home from the East side of the Cascades on Sunday afternoons. If there were regular and reliable shuttles up Icicle Canyon, would that be enough to change people’s behavior? What kind of marketing and outreach effort would that require? Who would take this on?
There are examples of communities making changes like this and advocacy being done on a local and national level. The Transit to Trails Act is a piece of national legislation introduced by Senator Cory Booker in 2023. It’s stalled out in congress at the moment, but it would provide grants to fund transportation projects that increase access to public lands and waters, especially for underserved communities. Perhaps the new congress elected by the 2026 Blue Tsunami will be more amenable to passing this kind of legislation, especially if they hear from us!
The Trailhead Direct program provides seasonal, weekend bus service on weekends and holidays from Seattle to popular trailheads in the I-90 Corridor. This service is sponsored by Amazon and provided by King County Metro, King County Parks, and the Seattle Department of Transportation. In my very own rural town of Joshua Tree, there is a small but sustained effort to advocate for a bike path connecting the Morongo Basin.
Climbers and other human-powered recreationalists are loud advocates for protecting public lands, but we love our gas-guzzling trucks and cargo vans. This is a hypocrisy I can’t reconcile, even while participating in it. Climate change will continue to wreak havoc on the ecosystems where we love to recreate. Climate shifts are already impacting our access, especially to cold weather sports like skiing or ice climbing. There has to be ways for my two loves of climbing and sustainable transportation to be more aligned, or something’s gotta give.
