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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!

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On Friday, representatives from Yangshuo’s guiding companies met with the farmers, who have a legitimate legal claim to the land adjacent to White Mountain. It is reported that the farmers demanded 10,000 CNY for continued access to the crag. The climbing association balked at this figure, setting the stage for yesterday’s confrontation.

Yangshuo's White Mountain

Says Bob Keaty (USA), a Yangshuo regular: “The problem is that the climbing association doesn’t have the same interests as the independent climbers that visit White Mountain. The association represents the guiding companies in Yangshuo town. These companies don’t guide White Mountain because the climbing is too steep for beginners. They don’t depend on it for revenue, so of course they’re not going to be willing to pay to maintain access.”

Keaty, a long-time resident of Shanghai who is fluent in Mandarin, accompanied the group of climbers to White Mountain on Saturday morning, expecting trouble. Arriving at the crag, they found a few locals, all younger men, crowding a party from France that had arrived just minutes earlier. The village headman, meanwhile, was talking loudly on his cell phone at the top of an adjacent hill, the anger in his voice obvious. Keaty quickly went to speak with him, but more farmers soon arrived from the nearby village. While the climbers outnumbered the farmers twenty to seven, a tense atmosphere prevailed for several minutes before Keaty and the village headman could come to a temporary resolution.

In an attempt to make the farmers feel better about our presence, Marcus Oechsner (Germany) and I made a short expression of our gratitude for being able to climb at White Mountain. Keaty interpreted for us, and we were received positively by the farmers. Their group graciously invited us to return to our climbing and dispersed shortly thereafter. Keaty went to the home of the headman to put the details of their complaint into writing. He later reported on a productive discussion:

“These are a poor but generous people, and they’d like to make a bit of money for allowing us continued access. Their chief complaint is that we arrive in taxi vans and contribute to the erosion of their dirt roads. This complaint seems legitimate, so I suggested that we might walk or ride bikes to the crag, thereby not damaging the roads. They didn’t seem pleased with this suggestion. I also suggested that we might buy our water and snacks from the village, providing them with some income. I think, in the end, we may just have to pay a few yuan each day to have access to the crag.”

Word travels fast between the little villages outlying Yangshuo, and there is concern within the climbing community that such an arrangement might set a dangerous precedent. Climbers have enjoyed hassle-free access to world-class limestone sport climbing for many years in Yangshuo, and loathe the idea of having to pay to climb at the area’s many crags. As a result of the interaction, though, I am not convinced that money is the central issue. I, personally, think that the villagers at White Mountain simply feel disenfranchised. We have visited their land on a regular basis for many years without asking permission and without saying “Xie xie.” The small gesture that we made to them – shaking hands and expressing our gratitude – was enough to assuage their anger and resentment. The final resolution of the issue will, undoubtedly, not be so simple.

Saturday’s events recalled the struggles that organizations like the Access Fund take on regularly in the West. Yet in places like Yangshuo, where there is little official representation by the global climbing community, we often rely on locals with a vested economic interest to act on our behalf. As Keaty so clearly expresses, though, this is one situtation where our interests and the interests of local guiding companies diverge, highlighting the need for a more global treatment of the access issue.