Update: This is a forum post comment from supertopo.com by johannsolo:

A friend was out there within a few days of it happening and I kept quite, but the cat is out of the bag

From a text message on 10/28:

Went out to climb on White Rasta someone or probably more than one person has maliciously “Pried” the boulder back out of original location ….this has happened since last week…since I’ve already climbed on it then… Looks like recently this happened….they didn’t even try and landscape just a pry and leave…looks like sh#t…I’ve fell before…u don’t hit it anyway?…some major “Noob” punk crankers have commited Blasphemy?… Pretty messed up… Post this up ..Johnny…what a travesty of honor?

I thought it relevant to update this post with the above information that puts the action in time context. Below is my original post:

After being told by an acquaintance while in Bishop that the boulder at the base of White Rastafarian had been moved, we visited over Thanksgiving to check it out. We arrived while a large party of boulderers were still trying the problem. Here are some images of the boulder’s location now.

Below are some historical images we pulled from mountainproject.com, as well as a screen grab from my old video Friction.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think of looking at these images before we went to see for ourselves, but if I get a chance, I’ll reshoot from these angles to better show the difference. I think you can still see the offset that the new location is compared to the old location.

Here is part of my explanation to the park service:

“…My perspective is that nature should be a fixed entity, at least as best preserved in a climbing context.. The point of climbing, as I see it, is we are supposed to work around what nature offers. That said, chipping or otherwise modifying anything means we’ve lowered the bar to our standard. Gyms are based on legal parameters, so injuries are reduced to a minimum. If we do that outside, we lose that unique creation, a one-of-a-kind, that only nature can create.

In context with history, moving the boulder undermines all previous ascents for the sake of a few, especially when the FA was done without pads. If we allow this to happen once, it will only get more commonplace, and the from my experience, and human nature, this means others will take it to extremes… there are many problems worth doing if we can begin to landscape the landing, and that’s what will happen… much more etreme [sic] landscaping…

…This happened in Fontainebleau on a problem called Misericorde: in this case after many ascents someone rolled the boulder down the hill preventing it from being returned. Many were very angry, especially because the line is hard and tall…”

Here is an excerpt of a John Long article recounting the first ascent in Rock & Ice magazine:

“Around 1973, boredom drove us outside the traditional campground bouldering sites at Joshua Tree, an exodus that revolutionized our game and our lives. Our initial wanderings had no particular design. We’d head out across open desert with water bottle and boots and start clawing over whatever looked interesting—and flashable. Josh abounds in formations 20 to 40 feet high—too small to bolt (they’re all bolted now), but plenty big with no rope.

At first we played it safe, hanging in the cracks or on juggy faces, tackling hard stuff (5.11 or more) only if it lay in the first 10 feet. Over time, we began inching out onto the balder faces. By early 1974, egged on by the incomparable John Bachar (the acknowledged cock-of-the-walk, and the only one of us then climbing full time), we forged farther and farther off the deck.

It’s hard to give an exact date for the sea change when high bouldering (or “highballing”) caught fire and the ropes, by and large, got left in the ride. I suspect it happened one winter afternoon when Bachar and I were exploring open desert behind Hidden Valley Campground and stumbled across a classic, 20-foot overhanging arete. We spent half an hour eyeballing the thing, cranking up and down the first half, too spooked to fully commit. We’d always judged problems on how hard they looked, and this particular problem looked grim. But the “eyeballing” strategy had left too many dazzling prospects unclimbed, and we couldn’t walk past this beauty. In fact, our minds were holding us back, so we worked with the fear, moved on feel, and eventually just went for it. White Rastafarian fell easily at moderate 5.11, yet something happened that radically transformed our climbing priorities.

Toward the top, leaning off a fingertip layaway, right foot hiked high on a beveled knocker, you face a deadpoint (or a disturbing lunge for those under six feet tall) up to a slanting rib, a definitive point-of-no-return. Crank that move and it’s the summit—or a groundfall. The second I committed, a profound internal shift occurred: My experience opened into a weird, chaotic world where I could function only through a profound, spontaneous act of self-trust. No wonder my instinctual reaction was to escape as quickly as possible.

Haste, however, meant crutches at the least, so the trick was to move slow and steady. One moment here was like a year anywhere else, so condensed was the experience. I recall the Marines’ philosophy that boot camp is meant to demolish recruits’ identities, putting them through “six weeks of hell” that mutate them into different beings. Over the next few months, highballing transformed us in much the same way. We’d found the “Magical Component.” A piddling dose, to be sure, but dose enough to imagine the possibilities.

Clearly, on-sighting a difficult, high boulder problem always involved a rendezvous with the mysterious, known in many ventures as the “moment of truth.” We can bluff through much of our lives on secondhand knowledge and chicanery, till we finally strike a pose and turn into mummies. But you can’t fake anything up high: You have to act, and that’s the power and the grace of it. Yet it took months of highballing before I could abide in the chaos without flailing to escape; and when I could (at least half the time I’d back off), I was present with myself in a marvelous new way, and experienced a nameless tranquility unattainable through other means. This felt so novel and important it became an addiction of sorts.

After that first flight up White Rastafarian, Bachar and I put in several laps apiece and found that the thrill was gone; the Magical Component is only fully manifest in the unknown. The game, in its absolute form, was all about on-sighting. A half hour later, Bachar and I began scouring the desert for other routes, trying to recapture the magic.”

Had the boulder been in its original location, anyone could experience what Long and Bachar experienced. Just walk out there with your buddy, shoes and a chalk bag and go for it. Unfortunately, this currently can’t be done.

It’s a case of time immemorial, where we all can have a reset on our view of the world by just visiting outside problems that haven’t been changed.

Thank you, John and John.

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Posted in environment, JT - central joshua tree (intersection), nature, news/information, retrospective/historical event

Tags: joshua tree bouldering, White Rastafarian