Rocks and Walks for 2/5: Stewardship at Box Canyon

Winter is the prime season for enjoying outside time in many of the lower elevation parts of Socorro County. Going higher up into the mountains to see a bit of snow is also quite nice, but the winter temps out at Box Canyon are often perfect in the winter for climbing. This winter has been rather mild, a touch too warm some days even, yet there have been many ideal climbing days. 

I’ve been going out to Box as much as possible during these cooler months, mostly for climbing but sometimes just for some hiking (or both). Various friends join for the climbing days, some coming down from Albuquerque on the weekends or random weekdays. Schedules mix up the climbing partners from day to day, but there are usually a few people free to climb when I can. And while this isn’t the busiest winter season I’ve experienced, weekends can still get pretty busy out there.

As an outdoor enthusiast, I can appreciate all the other people getting out and enjoying activities that I enjoy. However, along with lots of people can come lots of impact on the land and resources that we are going out there to enjoy.

The Box Canyon area is part of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. Box Canyon is also a Special Management Area set aside for recreational purposes, mainly for rock climbing. Plenty of people visit the Box for sightseeing or hiking. With the relatively new trails added to the area–Black Canyon, Blue Canyon, Gramont Peak, Box, and Descansos trails–more people have been able to enjoy hiking and mountain biking out there.

Although the BLM manages the land, ultimately the responsibility of taking care of the land in this recreation area falls upon the users: the rock climbers, hikers, bikers, sightseers, photographers, and so on. Local stewards of all types have pitched in countless hours throughout the years to keep the Box Canyon area clean, accessible, and as natural as possible. Local climbers have organized clean-up and trail maintenance days. The New Mexico Tech Climbing Club has held volunteer contracts with the BLM at times and helped purchase hardware for establishing and maintaining the climbing routes. Local hikers and bikers, along with the climbers, volunteered lots of hours creating all those newer trails.

The bigger organized events help to tackle the larger projects at the Box, but the upkeep of the area most of the year comes down to the practices of individuals and groups that visit day-to-day. 

Pack it in, pack it out: when everyone packs out what they brought in, this keeps Box pretty clean. This includes tissues and toilet paper; get those to a trash can or the pit toilet out there. Picking up a few bits of trash that someone else left (accidentally or not) keeps Box really clean.

Stay on established trails: I’ve been spending some time lately, as well as friends that I climb with, lining rocks to redefine the edges of trails that have begun to widen to road sizes. We also blocked off some newly formed social trails. Locals have already created a wonderful network of trails to get to all of the popular crags and boulders. 

Generally, the trails out at Box are designed to be single track trails, meaning that they are just wide enough for one person to walk reasonably on them. Others in a group follow single file. If someone is coming from the other way, one party steps off to let the others pass and then get back on the trail (not just walk all the way around off trail). In high traffic areas like Box, cutting corners and going off trail only leads to massively trampled areas and unnecessary social trails that spread more and more over time.

Following these trail and trash etiquette basics will go a long way towards keeping the Box Canyon area beautiful for generations to come. There are other principles to follow to responsibly and ethically enjoy these outdoor spaces that we share with many other people, but these two are a good starting point.