This page is a running history of events that CTM has been involved in. It is organized in reverse chronological order to keep the most recent activity at the top. We would like to eventually add past events to keep a public record of CTM's contributions to the climbing history of Austin and Texas, but for now scroll down to see all the events that CTM has been involved in over this past year.

American YouthWorks Trail Project & Climbing Day

The Central Texas Mountaineers hosted a cooperational project with American YouthWorks to continue work on the retaining wall on Barton Creek (see below). Students from AYW added a protective berm next to the retaining wall to keep the initial in rush water down Barton Creek from damaging the base of the retaining wall. We spent a few hours hauling and piling rocks to form the berm and then took some time to reflect on the work done. After a pizza lunch, the AYW students then enjoyed some top-rope climbing at Seismic Wall. For many, this was their first experince with climbing and we all had a great time.

It was a successful and rewarding event for all involved and we plan to have another similar event with AYW again in the Fall.

AYW students help with a Barton Creek trail project and then enjoy some climbing afterwards.

CTM Builds a Retaining Wall by Seismic Wall for It's My Park Day

The Central Texas Mountaineers are a member organization under the Austin Parks Foundation and participate in APF's It's My Park Day each year. This year, we built a retaining wall down at Seismic Wall along Barton Creek to help reduce erosion. With a half dozen climbers and a half dozen other APF volunteers, we hauled big and small rocks to layer a solid foundation for the retaining wall, and then filled-in with gravel and dirt. John Cook of Austin Parks and Recreation was instrumental in helping us plan for this project, as well as providing park tools and wheel barrows at the work day.

Building the retaining wall at Seismic Wall.

CTM Joins KAB for Clean Sweep Day at 360 Bridge

CTM joined forces once again this year with Keep Austin Beautiful for our second annual clean-up of the 360 bridge as a KAB Clean Sweep Day project. About a dozen climbers showed up to rappel down the cliff next to the 360 bridge and pick-up bottles, cans, and other trash. We did this last year and we were very surprised to see so much trash on the cliff again this year. With such a great group of volunteers, we managed to clean-up all the trash from the cliffside, while more KAB volunteers picked-up trash along the cliff base.

Afterwards, KAB threw a great party at Waterloo Park, with free food and live music, for all the volunteers who helped clean-up dozens of Austin area parks that day.

Some of the bags full of trash from the 360 bridge cliffside.

CTM Joins KAB to Help Clean-up Mt. Bonnell

Thanks to all who helped out with this clean-up! With over a dozen climbers from CTM and more than a dozen non-climbers from Keep Austin Beautiful pitching in to pick up trash, Mt. Bonnell is now in much better shape than when we found it. We cleaned up all visible trash along the mountain top itself, which is what the City of Austin's Parks and Recreation Department was most concerned with. With that taken care of, a number of volunteers decended down into the woods at the base of the cliff to clean up some of the more visible litter there, as well.

We also received a lot of press coverage from three local television stations, so our efforts were very visible and well-advertised.

• News 8
• Fox 7
• KXAN 36

There's still a lot to do at the base of the mountain, so hopefully we'll get an even bigger turnout next year.

New Wall Celebrates 20th Birthday

On New Year's Day, 1988, the first routes on New Wall were developed. To commemorate this memorable occasion, the Central Texas Mountaineers sponsored a birthday celebration down at New Wall on Jan. 1st, 2008. Some of the original route developers were there, including Greg Brooks, Scott Harris, and Dave Cardosa. We had a birthday cake, free T-shirts, and, as always, lots of fun climbing and camaraderie.

McKinney Falls Trail Project

The Central Texas Mountaineers joined REI Austin, the Friends of McKinney Falls State Park, the Austin Ridge Riders, American YouthWorks, and local volunteers to pitch in for a National Public Lands Day service project at McKinney Falls State Park in Austin, Texas. Projects included: constructing cedar and granite tent pads, trail maintenance, and a kid's trash clean up. Free lunch, live music and a grant presentation ceremony wrapped up the event.

Volunteers building tent pads out at McKinney Falls State Park.

Public Meetings for Reimers Ranch Master Plan

Travis County will hold a series of public meetings at various locations throughout Travis County in early June. See the following flier for the details of the locations, dates, and times. Please plan to attend one of these sessions in person, if you would like to voice concerns about the development direction of the park.

AmeriCorps Reimers Trail Work Day

A group from AmeriCorps Environmental Core, headed by Charlie Parrott, came out to Reimers Ranch on Monday, May 21st 2007 to lend their skills to help with some trail improvements.

"AmeriCorps members serve with more than 2,000 nonprofits, public agencies, and faith-based and community organizations. Since 1994, more than 400,000 men and women have provided needed assistance to millions of Americans across the nation through their AmeriCorps service."

CTM held a series of trail projects in 2006 to improve upon some of the erosion prone areas of the climbing trails and this group of 9 volunteers brought to bear much more exensive trail building experience to replace some of our initial work with better stone constructed stairs and walkways. Thanks to AmeriCorps for helping us make these trail improvements longer lasting for generations of visitors to come. We look forward to working with them again on Barton Creek Greenbelt trail improvements later this year. Also, thanks to Mike Brewster, a ranger of Travis County, for meeting with the AmeriCorps team and guiding them through the park to the various work sites.

A great group of volunteers from AmeriCorps helping out at Reimers Ranch.

Clean Sweep Day

CTM helped Keep Austin Beautiful with a Clean Sweep Day project at the 360 bridge. The cliff at the lookout point above Lake Austin had been strewn with garbage, beer cans and bottles for years. A few CTM members pitched in for this project and rappelled down the cliff with rakes and trash bags to help clean this area. The climbers worked early in the morning and other volunteers collected the trash at the base of the cliff and hauled it away via kayaks, which ferried the bags over to dumpsters at the boat launch on the other side of the lake. The event was a great success, clearing about 35 bags of trash from the cliff area.

Thanks to CTM members Kareem Al-Bassam, Roni Beer, John Dwyer, Eric Patrick and Karl Vochatzer for their help with this event. This could certainly be an annual event for our club and could include other areas such as Mt. Bonnell in the future.

Trash at the cliff prior to the Clean Sweep Day event.

Our fearless volunteers getting ready to descend.

It's My Park Day

CTM and Rock About helped out this year with an Austin Parks Foundation It's My Park Day project down at Sunken Gardens in Zilker Park. Located by the baseball fields along Robert E. Lee Drive, Sunken Gardens was originally built as a rock wall garden around one of the spring heads along Barton Springs. In the last few decades, it has become a popular site among climbers as a forearm-building bouldering exercise wall, with long and difficult traverses. Over the years, however, the site has become overgrown with shrubs and poison ivy, so this project was organized with the intention to clean up the walls and surrounding grounds to trim back the growth. About a dozen volunteers pitched in to help accomplish this during the 4 hour event.

So make a point to head down to Sunken Gardens soon and try out the long traverses on the clean walls - we have taken away your only excuse for not making it all the way around the wall! Thanks to Rick Watson of Rock About for heading up this project for the climbing community, and to Bill Gooch, Neil Higa, and Gary Ellis of CTM for their participation.

Master Plan Review for Reimers Ranch

Travis County held a review session for the master plan for Reimers Ranch Thursday night, April 12th, and invited all of the current Reimers user groups to attend and provide feedback.

• April 24th - Present plan at Commissioner's Court to get approval.
• May 9th & 10th - Public hearings at Commissioners Courtroom (314 W 11th Street) and Bee Cave facility (Southwest Parkway).
• June - Present budget to Commissioner's Court for approval.
• Spring 2008 - Begin construction of parking lots, bathroom facilities, etc.

• Main entrance road will be widened for two lane traffic and re-routed away from Reimers' house.
• Side roads (single lane) to added parking lots will be added and paved.
• Main parking lot will move a little further down the road away from the mouth of Sex Canyon.
• Biker's parking lot will also move further back up the hill.
• Existing parking lots will be closed and re-vegitated.
• Additional parking lots: before boat launch area, two lots near Pouge climbing and bouldering areas.
• Pavillion and bathrooms with running water at main parking lot.

All in all, it looks like we will get everything that we asked for at Reimers from Travis County. We will most likely have access to the new Pouge climbing area, although there may be a closed season for that area to allow for turkey migration to a nearby nesting area. If we do get access, it may be as soon as this summer or fall, well before any of the roads or parking lots are finished. This would simply require a longer hike from the exsisting boat launch parking area in the short term.

The meeting included Charles Bergh, Kurt Neilsen, Dan Perry, Mike Brewster and Wendy Scaperotta of Travis County, representatives of the bird-watching community, the Ridge Riders, and our members of the Reimers Ranch Climbing Committee. Thanks to Tommy Blackwell, Troy Wilson, John Hoge and Gary Ellis for attending this meeting on behalf of the climbing community.

Lobbying with the Access Fund

Jason Keith of the Access Fund visited Austin to help us lobby for funding for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. We visited a number of State Senators' offices, including:

• Terry Zubreck - Senate Finance Committee staff
• Lauren Doss/Senator West
• Noe Barrios/Senator Estes (SB 252 sponsor)
• Zack Evans/Sen. Nelson
• Sarah Bagwell/Sen. Shapiro (SB 252 co-sponsor)
• Michael McMullen/Sen. Janek

From the meeting minutes of a recent session, the outlook is positive:

House Bill 6 Hearing

On Tuesday night, Feb. 20th, 2007, there was a public hearing at the capitol for House Bill 6, which proposes to remove the $32M cap on the current Texas sporting goods tax. The hearing was chaired by Rep. Harvey Hilderbran who gave a brief history of the issue before hearing testimony from the various lobbyists:

In 1993 House Bill 706 was passed, which replaced the cigarette tax with the new sporting goods tax as the prime source of revenue for State pubic parks. This was done primarily to provide a revenue base to appropriately match the mission of use. However, cigarette sales were on the decline anyway so a substitute was needed.

There were about 20 lobbyists in attendance:

• Robert Cook, Executive Director of TPWD
• Several members of the State Parks Advisory Committee
• Hotels/Campgrounds (apparently the 3rd largest industry in the State)
• Texas Coalition for Conservation
• Hunter and angler lobbyists
• many others ...

TPWD indicated that they need about $406M for all the upgrades and acquisitions they want ($60M is necessary for immediate health and safety concerns). State Parks Advisory Committee has detailed studies from 2003 to 2006 and proposed a plan for $85M over ten years. No one opposed the bill.

Jamie McNally attended and signed in as a representative for the Access Fund in favor of the bill. Gary Ellis attended and signed in as a representative of CTM, also in favor.

How does this impact climbing in Texas?
If TPWD doesn't get their needed funding, the State may move some parks over to the Texas Historical Commission (THC) in order to cut costs. If they make places like Hueco Tanks and Enchanted Rock historical landmarks, we could loose climbing access there.

Meeting with Austin Parks and Recreation

Attended: Sarah Macias, John Wright, Gary Ellis
Location: Maintenance shed at Zilker Park

General meet and greet meeting for PARD and CTM, since Sarah's relatively recent change of position to managing the Greenbelt parks. Discussed current role of CTM for PARD with respect to the Greenbelt and climbing. Reviewed the Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) and are still in agreement to its content. We will continue to have access for climbing, provide route maintenance, and assist with bolting applications. We will provide signs about CTM for PARD to place behind the glass of the 7 kiosks marking the trail heads of the Greenbelt. These signs will essentially be for educating the public that CTM is a volunteer organization that oversees climbing activity and route maintenance on the Greenbelt. Also that there is a bolting policy in place and questions, concerns, and applications can be directed to CTM.
Discussed possible cooperation on trail projects and specifically It's My Park Day.

Do Not Bolt Without Permission

Earlier this year we were notified of an incident of bandit bolting on the Greenbelt - a short route was bolted with five bolts and two anchor bolts, just upstream of Urban Assault.
If you have any information about who bolted this, please let us know or have them contact us. This kind of activity is not only illegal, but threatens climbing access for everyone. With that said, we are not looking to bust anyone, but just inform those involved of the established bolting policy and keep this from happening again.

CTM has long-established bolting policies in place with Austin Parks and Recreation and with Travis County Parks for most of the climbing areas throughout Central Texas and these are procedures that we all need to follow in order to maintain not only a standard for climbing saftey, but also to maintain permission to use this public land. Please see our What We Do and Bolting History pages for more information.

In the meantime, we have removed the bolt hangers from this route and will be pulling the bolts from the wall soon.

Location of the illegal route near Urban Assault Wall.