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Washoe Tribe, Climbers Clash Over Rock

TIMES STAFF WRITER

They hurl their questions aggressively, aiming to discomfort:

How would you feel if teenagers slung ropes over the Western Wall in Jerusalem to practice rappelling? Or rock climbers took to scaling the steeple of the National Cathedral in Washington? What if dirt bike racers rumbled each weekend through the somber fields of Gettysburg?

How would you feel?

Indignant, maybe? Appalled? Incensed?

Good. Then the Washoe Indians who posed those questions have made their point. They have forced you to consider how they feel watching rock climbers crawl over one of their most sacred sites--a towering plug known as Cave Rock that juts up from the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe.

But before you sign on with the Washoe cause, consider the climbers.

They, too, revere the rock. From around the globe, they come to worship it in their own way, through sweat and strain, by hauling themselves up its steep, forbidding crags. Cave Rock offers some of the most challenging climbs in the world, and the athletes have marked each one by drilling 300 bolts into the landmark’s surface.

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And so two cultures stake claims to this one rock.

The Washoe want the climbers out. The climbers refuse to abandon their routes. Both sides are angry. And it’s up to the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the rock, to figure out a solution.

In deference to the Washoe--who view Cave Rock as a potent source of spiritual power--the Forest Service in February ordered climbers to keep off the rock for the rest of the year.

The climbers threatened a lawsuit, arguing that the government cannot shape its policies to bolster any one religion--including the Washoe creed. Taken aback, Forest Service administrators agreed to reconsider their decision.

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In the meantime, the rock remains in limbo. The Washoe and the climbers remain antagonists, their conflict fanned by nasty letters to the local paper and acid comments about who really loves the rock most.

As Darriel Bender, a Washoe elder, put it: “There is no middle ground.”

Bender remembers journeying to the rock as a child. But he never got close enough to touch its spiny cliff. Few Washoe do.

For according to Washoe tradition, Cave Rock is so charged with spiritual energy that only certain elders dare approach it. And even they must tread with care. Bender recalls that his uncle, a Washoe medicine man, would spend days working his way to the top of the rock, pausing often for spiritual renewal.

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Once he reached the sacred upper alcove, Bender’s uncle would commune with the resident water babies--powerful spirits that live in Lake Tahoe--to replenish his healing powers. Sometimes he would stay two weeks, sometimes a month, from one full moon to the next.

All the while, Bender would wait on the shore beneath, awed by the rock’s magic and majesty.

Because most Washoe, like Bender, paid homage to Cave Rock by keeping a deferential distance from it, they were not around to chase away the teenagers who adopted it as a prime party spot years ago. Nor were they around to clean up the sour beer cans and crumpled cigarette cartons that piled up every weekend in the caves the Washoe consider sacred.

So when climbers discovered Cave Rock about 15 years ago, they found it, quite literally, a dump. “That area was completely neglected by the Washoe tribe,” said climber Tom Addison of El Cerrito, Calif.

Returning weekend after weekend to trace new routes in the jagged cliff, the climbers organized clean-up brigades. They carted away the rocky rubble in the caves and paved them over with smooth concrete.

By their reasoning, the Washoe should be grateful for these improvements.

Instead, Washoe leaders are furious.

In their minds, the 300 bolts that climbers have punched into the rock to hold protective ropes desecrate a sacred site. They take offense as well at the paving job, which covered over the ceremonial ground where Washoe shaman of old communed with water baby spirits.

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Even the idea of climbing the rock for sport disturbs some Washoe. Experienced climbers scurry up the strenuous routes in just a few minutes--then shimmy down to start up another path. On a sunny weekend, 10 climbers might be clinging to various handholds, each attacking a different route. Such blithe scrambling all over Cave Rock seems to mock the cautious, respectful and solitary way Washoe medicine men approached the site.

“The activity [of climbing] itself trivializes the site as a cultural symbol,” Penny Rucks, the Forest Service’s heritage resource manager, noted in a recent report. “Climbing on Cave Rock is as appropriate as climbing on the Washington Monument.”

The climbers find it frustrating to fight such emotional analogies. But fight they do.

They argue that no one group can claim exclusive rights over a natural wonder like Cave Rock, especially because the federal government owns the site. “This is a place for everyone to enjoy,” one teenage climber wrote in a letter to the local paper.

In fact, Cave Rock does have historic value for all Americans, not just the Washoe people.

It was one of the first landmarks explorers noted on Lake Tahoe in the 1850s. And it hosted the last battle of the Civil War--a tit-for-tat grudge match that involved one group sneaking up the rock to raise the Confederate flag and another rallying to rip it down and hoist the Union banner in its place, in a spiteful cycle that lasted for weeks.

Anthropologist Warren D’Azevedo, a professor emeritus at the University of Nevada in Reno, cites such history as reason enough to preserve Cave Rock and ban climbers from its crags.

But climbers contend that the rock lost its spiritual and cultural significance decades ago when the state punched two freeway tunnels through the lower cave. Traffic now rumbles through those tunnels at all hours; some motorists honk their horns to bounce an echo off the rock. A nearby boat launch adds to the tumult.

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“The traffic noise is so loud that it’s hard to carry on a conversation in a normal tone there,” said climber Paul Minault. “It’s hard for us to believe that this is a sacred site that climbers are intruding on.”

The Washoes agree that the tunnels destroy Cave Rock’s calm. But that desecration, they argue, only makes the rest of the rock all the more precious--and all the more deserving of protection.

“You can see what has been done to it and that speaks to us, telling us this shouldn’t happen anywhere else,” said A. Brian Wallace, the tribe’s elected chairman.

Or, as D’Azevedo explained: “Cave Rock has now become a symbol to [the Washoe] of their lost power, of the appropriation of their rights and their lands.”

Indeed, when Nevada authorities gouged tunnels through the rock, first in 1931 and again in 1956, the tribe had no voice to raise in protest. The Washoe tribes had been kicked off their traditional lands, instructed to abandon their “heathen” religions, and shunted into segregated schools.

Only in the past few years have the Washoe gained the confidence--and the savvy--to defend their turf.

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But at Cave Rock they have run up against a formidable opponent.

In a thick memo urging the Forest Service to reopen Cave Rock, the climbers insist that the U.S. Constitution is on their side. As proof, they cite a federal court ruling in a Wyoming case last summer.

That case began when the National Park Service ordered climbers to stay off Devils Tower during the month of June to allow Native American tribes to perform religious ceremonies there. The climbers protested, and a judge struck down the Park Service’s order, calling it “impermissible governmental entanglement with religion.”

After winning that court battle, the climbers voluntarily agreed to stay off Devils Tower in June. They have pledged to make a similar “gesture of respect” toward Native Americans at Cave Rock, such as pledging not to pound any more bolts into the climbing routes.

Wallace, however, said his tribe is weary of compromises that denigrate Cave Rock and belittle Washoe beliefs.

“We are not going to apologize for our religion,” he said. “We take it very seriously. . . . A tribe that cannot remember its past and honor it is in danger of losing its soul.”

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