Welcome Message from BCC’s New Executive Director
Hello from the BCC’s new executive director:
Happy almost-springtime, Front Range climbers! I am pleased to introduce myself to you here, and I am overjoyed to be starting my new role with the BCCOver my thirty years of living and climbing in Colorado, especially around Boulder and Golden, I have been grateful for the responsibility that my fellow climbers have shown for the places where we climb. I have benefited from the sustainable trails and safe anchors found at so many crags, and perhaps more foundationally, I know I have benefited from the trust and goodwill that stewardship work has earned from our land managers. I recognize how those positive, collaborative relationships that climber organizations– and the BCC in particular– have built in this region underpin the access we all now enjoy to world-class climbing right in our backyard, some of it so close we can sneak a route or two in on a weekday morning before clocking in at the office!
We can say it: we live in one of the best places for climbing in the entire world. Most of us know how lucky we are. We are happy to do our part to clean up after ourselves and to share this region with other recreationists and with the wildlife that also call this place home. With literally hundreds of you volunteering your time every year on BCC projects and thousands of you donating your money to make sure we can keep doing this important work, I could not be more proud to play my role in steering the Boulder Climbing Community into its next chapter of on-the-ground stewardship and in-the-trenches leadership, working to give us the best cared-for crags in the country.
I have personally volunteered on a variety of BCC projects in recent years, from repairing trails and stocking wag bags to replacing bolts. Through this work, I have been lucky enough to meet many of you, and I look forward to meeting many more of you in person over the weeks and months ahead. If you see me at the next rebolting day or social meet-up, please come introduce yourself; I’d love to hear what you’ve been doing with the BCC and what you and your crew have been climbing recently.
In my first month on the job, I have been reminded that our community of climbers here on the Front Range is both big and small. I have been interviewing donors and volunteers, asking how we all became involved and what motivates us to support the work. The challenge is, while there are an awful lot of us volunteers and donors, there are far more of us climbing on the Front Range– many tens of thousands, at least– and we don’t just live in Boulder or Golden anymore (we never really did, I know).
Even as long as I have lived and climbed here, I still regularly meet new long-timers like myself. How have we not crossed paths before? Well, for one thing, we enjoy more climbing resources within a half-hour drive of home than almost any other major metropolitan area. There are hundreds of individual crags here and tens of thousands of known climbing routes; it’s a lot to steward, and it makes me relieved that so many of you volunteer to do so with the BCC every year. But even when a fellow decades-long veteran and I meet each other for the first time, we always find only one or two degrees of separation. Our friends or friends-of-friends climb together, and more than once, working with and supporting the BCC’s programs has been the common point of connection.
I have made great friends and found new climbing partners through my past volunteering, and as I have talked with many of you in recent weeks, that is something you have noted for yourselves: not only does donating and volunteering for the BCC allow you to “give back” to climbing and the community, but you have found partners, mentors, and friends through your involvement.
That makes sense, of course– our mission is to “mobilize the local community and partners to care for the environments we impact as climbers, and enrich the outdoor experience for all.” However, as much as this notion is embedded in who we are and what we do, I and the rest of the staff and board promise to take it to heart and keep creating opportunities for us all to come together and to connect through our shared desire to do good for the land, for climbing, and for each other.
Since we already do this work across the entire central Front Range, from Rocky Mountain National Park to Staunton State Park and beyond, and since we as an organization and a community deeply believe climbing is for everyone, regardless of your ability or where you come from or currently call home, my humble hope is to lead the BCC to deepen its connections to climbers and community leaders across our entire region and to fully embody our commitment to be the local stewardship organization for all climbers here in this vibrant, growing, changing region full of SO MUCH GREAT CLIMBING.
And so, thank you for being part of this community, for welcoming me into this new role within it, and for your membership, your donations, and your time and sweat. It is what allows us to do the good that we do together. I’ll wish you happy sending this season, and I’ll see you out there.
Josh Pollock
303-552-6001
(hit me up with your questions and comments any time!)