An imminent threat to climbing in Vietnam

Hidden in a maze of water-borne karsts on Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, is a small beach that is only accessible at low tide. Few people know how to find it. Towering over the beach is a limestone cliff holding scores of bolts and hangers left by sport-climbing visionaries Lynn Hill and Todd Skinner in the 1990s. The routes are classics in an otherworldly setting, and are worth traveling around the world for. The basket boat wanders slowly toward the beach while we eye the water line beyond, where it laps the naked cliff. We’re scouting a new solo line, Ha Long Bay having been made a Dosage-featured DWS hotspot. Like so many others, we came for a few days of soloing – “a brief stop on the way south” – but ended up staying a month. Ha Long Bay is the new Tonsai Beach.

Behind the scenes, keeping the classics in good shape, dealing with the persnickety boatmen, navigating the red tape of climbing in a UNESCO world heritage sight, and generally putting Vietnam on the map as an up-and-coming destination are Onslo (“Slo”) Carrington and Erik (“Pony”) Ferjentsik of Slo Pony Adventures. With a strong stewardship message and a sizable tourist draw, you’d think the Vietnamese officials would be pinning medals on these guys. Not so. Instead, the Slo Pony team, a bunch of Westerns “squatting” in Vietnam, has to do circus tricks and drop loads of cash to procure and maintain every little bit of access that we climbers have to The Bay. They are doing the hard work in an even harder place, moving things forward for the benefit of our community, and now find themselves in need of the community’s help.

Much of Slo Pony’s business comes not from guiding The Bay, but from taking newbies out to a land-locked crag know as Butterfly Valley. This striking limestone wall rises behind the rural village of Lien Mihn in the jungle interior of Cat Ba Island, and is home to tons of moderates and a handful of crank-till-you-crack hard sport routes such as Enter the Dragon and Dreamweaver. Butterfly Valley has been developed exclusively by Erik, Slo, and visiting international climbers, and is the focal point for an entire nation’s climbing community. It is also in imminent danger of being closed, permanently. Here’s the story, straight from the Pony’s mouth:

[Vietnamese] law requires that land must be “acquired” in order to engage in tourist activities. Until now Slo Pony Adventures has been paying rent, palm greasing, and other fees to the local authorities on Cat Ba Island in order to maintain access at [Butterfly Valley] for climbers.

It was a recent argument between the local people of Lien Mihn and the village officials (unrelated to rock climbing) that sparked speculation by Hai Phong City, the provincial owner of the land. The speculation resulted in Hai Phong City claiming [the village] and Cat Ba have no right to rent us the land, that we must rent it from Hai Phong City.

In order to rent land from HPC, you need to complete an arduous proposal for “tourism development” in the exact format required by the government and done by a professional. Then you need to have various meetings with various officials sponsored by the petitioning party (with palm greasing) to move the proposal through the complex bureaucracy of offices that must accept the proposal.

We are told that once we submit the proposal we will be granted conditional access to [Butterfly Valley] during the waiting time for Hai Phong to give the final approval of the tourism development project proposal. Once accepted, we will be given a 50 year lease of the crag and easements.

Note the repeated use of the term “palm greasing.” Slo Pony expects to need at least $3000 to push the proposal through the local bureaucrats and, budgets suffering from the slump in tourism, are in need of financial support. If you’ve ever climbed in Vietnam or think you’d ever like to, here’s your chance to contribute to the survival of its most important climbing resource. PayPal it here. No donation is too small and every bit counts!