No outdoor pursuit is too crazy for a desert town built on red sandstone and adrenaline. Mountain bikers careen off rocks. Climbers string lines between towering rock spires and dance out over canyons. People build oversize slingshots and launch themselves skyward, recording every scream and scene to post online.
However, after a handful of accidents and a rash of complaints, the federal government is weighing whether to crack down on the latest Internet-fueled thrill ride to crop up on public lands — extreme rope-swinging.
The sport turns Moab’s collection of ancient stone arches into death-defying swing sets. People climb an arch, lash ropes to the rock and leap into the air, swinging earthward in a dizzying, 30m pendulum.
“It feels like you’re cliff-diving, but you’re looking down at a solid rock foundation,” said Thad James, a tour operator, who was one of the first arch-swingers and who led guided jumps off the Corona Arch. “It’s so incredibly scary.”
However, many of the 40,000 hikers and backpackers who visit the arch each year say that rappelling, swinging and other aerial feats have become a nuisance, filling a once-solitary canyon with whooping screams and long lines of adventurers, with varying levels of safety skills and experience.
Some have complained that the activity is also wearing away fragile arches that have withstood wind and rain for eons, scoring them with bolt-holes and rope marks.
So now, the US Bureau of Land Management is weighing whether to bar swingers, jumpers and other participants in aerial rope sports from Corona Arch and Gemini Bridges, another towering arch formation in the area.
It is a new problem for the bureau, whose responsibility for millions of hectares of land and mineral rights has long made it a target for populist anger in the West.
This spring, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy led a standoff with the bureau over grazing fees that exploded into an ideological battle over the federal government’s role in managing open spaces. In Texas, the agency is embroiled in an ownership dispute over 36,000 hectares along the Red River.
Around Moab, environmental groups have criticized the agency over plans to drill for oil and gas in the canyon lands and a new natural-gas pipeline that crosses federal land.
The fate of the arches has touched off a heated debate about the limits of outdoor play on public lands in an age when X Games daredevils and popular stunt videos beckon more and more weekend adventurers to seek out the same thrills.
One such adventurer was Kyle Stocking, 22, a former marine from West Jordan, Utah. He had been a rock climber for about five years, and, after watching videos of people hurtling down from the arch, he knew what his next adventure would be.
In March last year, he gathered his gear and friends, borrowed his father’s truck and set off for Moab. His parents were worried, but he assured them that he would be careful, his father, Mike, said.
“Last words,” his father said.
Rigging ropes to leap off an arch takes precision and testing, climbers say. The younger Stocking miscalculated and left far too much slack in the line. He slammed into the ground as he swung down and was killed, according to the Grand County Sheriff’s Office, which investigated his death.
This May, a 25-year-old man from New York also left the ropes too long and crashed to the ground, suffering severe head injuries.
Swinging enthusiasts say that risk and responsibility are woven into recreation, whether it is rafting through rapids, riding a scrabbly bike trail or climbing a rock face. The reality, they say, is that people die.
The sheriff’s office keeps a list of adventures gone wrong — a jumper with a parachute who fell to his death; a Japanese tourist killed after a 20m fall at Arches National Park; a hiker rescued after tumbling into a crevice.
Some outdoor devotees have lost patience with the thrill-seekers.
“Say no to swinging,” one hiker wrote in the trail register leading to Corona Arch. “It ruins the arch.”
“When did Corona Arch turn into a Disneyland theme park?” another lamented.
Others called the jumpers “obnoxious” and “idiots” who had tarnished the views.
However, Brian Mosbaugh, 29, who has swung over canyons and tiptoed high over the desert on a slack line, said that too much government regulation could cripple the spirit of adventure that drew so many people to Moab.
“That’s a reason so many of us love this area,” Mosbaugh said. “There’s just so much freedom.”
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