Back in 2021, in our first season, we ran an episode called Give and Take.

It was a story about how climbing in America, climbing on public lands, nearly was banned, effectively and in climbing in America.

You know, a lot of times we think about figures like Yvonne Cheneard, Lynn Hill, Chris Sharma, Tommy Caldwell,

some of the most important names in American climbing.

But there is a name you probably have never heard of that arguably may be the most important

of all. Armando Menacal. In the late 1980s, as sport climbing began to take hold in America,

land managers, the people in charge of making decisions on public lands for

national parks, national forests, and Bureau of Land Management areas, they took note that the sport

was growing, and they nearly shut it down. A small group of climbers set out to save climbing.

Armando, a Cuban-American civil rights lawyer who'd spent a career working with

farm workers in California and had become a passionate climber later in life, found himself at the

center of climbing's defense. Today, if you clip a bolt at a crag, repel from a sling in a wilderness,

you have Armando to thank. That is his lasting legacy. Since Alex and I last spoke with Armando, he's been battling

stage four cancer. Simultaneously, American climbing has also been under threat again. At the end of

2003, the National Park and National Forest Service issued a draft climbing management plan that would

have banned fixed anchors in wilderness areas.

So bolts, repel anchors, slings, in places like Yosemite, Rocky Mountain National Park,

Joshua Tree, Red Rock.

Fortunately, the climbing community spoke up and the proposal was temporary tabled, but it

illuminated that climbing isn't a right. It's something we have to

care and stand up for. To celebrate his life and work, the Access Fund created the Armando

Menacal Climbing Advocacy Fund. In this fall, we may, in fact, have a chance to protect

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