Wait, a Bouldering Area Was Recently Protected by… the Zoo?

The Asheboro Boulders could have been destroyed by a mining company. Instead they were saved by the North Carolina Zoo.

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At the summit of North Carolina’s Ridges Mountain lie hundreds of bulbous black boulders whose splitter cracks and vexing friction problems have long tested climbers during winter months when temperatures drop at the mountainous crags around Boone and Asheville.

But the Asheboro Boulders, created from granitic rock formations more than 586 million years old, have also drawn the interest of many who wouldn’t know a splitter from a slab. In the early 2000s, a mineral company appraised the land and mulled plans for a quarry that would have destroyed the boulders and the plant and animal life that thrives among them. The land was privately owned, and though the Carolina Climbers Coalition (CCC) negotiated an annual lease with the owner to preserve climbing access, the area’s future was constantly in doubt.

“There was always a question mark,” Mike Reardon, executive director of the CCC, told Climbing. “We knew the landowner had intentions of selling.”

In December, the land was finally sold—but not to a housing developer or mineral magnate.

Instead, the Asheboro Boulders are now being run by the North Carolina Zoo, in the first known case of a U.S. zoo managing climbing on its lands. The partnership is the culmination of years of relationship-building and good stewardship by local climbers, Reardon said. It also represents another access win for climbing groups in the southeast.

“Climbers get excited about an area, they fall in love with it, and then they figure out the right ways to conserve it in perpetuity,” Reardon said.

Why would a  zoo want a climbing area?

The NC Zoo agreed to add boulderers to the species it oversees in order to expand the now 423-acre Ridges Mountain Nature Preserve, which was established in 2000. The addition of the Asheboro Boulders puts the entire Ridges Mountain under the aegis of the zoo and increases the total land it manages to 2,805 acres.

Zoo staff say the land is home to several animal species—including bobcats and spotted salamanders—that are uncommon to the area. The huge granitic boulders and basic soil also support plants like fragrant sumac and southern shagbark hickory.

Allowing climbing in such an ecologically important space was “a little cutting edge,” Daniel Dunn, Access Fund’s Southeast regional manager, told Climbing. “It was not guaranteed that recreation would be prioritized.”

Before the zoo took over, the Asheboro Boulders were owned for years by Ben Crotts, a former Western Electric worker who died in 2022. The CCC leased the land from Crotts but was never able to come up with a deal good enough to buy it.

Still, Crotts brushed off offers from developers and worked to maintain access for climbers. Once, after neighbors shut down a street used to access the Asheboro Boulders, Crotts bought an adjacent parcel to guarantee road access.

When Crotts passed away, the land was scooped up by a private conservation buyer, who handed it to The Conservation Fund, which eventually transferred it to the state of North Carolina with help from the state’s Land and Water Fund and donors.

Access Fund also played a pivotal role, negotiating with the NC Zoo to ensure that climbing on its lands would be recognized.

The NC Zoo’s actual exhibits are about a 10-minute drive from the boulders, so climbers needn’t worry about power-screaming in earshot of an intolerant elephant. But because the zoo is now administering the Asheboro Boulders—and running a reservation system for bouldering—Dunn said he hopes more climbers will be encouraged to get involved with its conservation work and research.

“I really see recreation as a big motivator and something that connects people to the land,” he said. “It helps create conservation advocates.”

Asheboro bouldering goes back decades

The new ownership adds a fascinating wrinkle to the Asheboro Boulders’s history. Climbers started developing the boulders in the 1980s as a wintertime spot for Boone residents, Dunn said. The area is well into the Piedmont region of North Carolina, where the climate is milder, and near major cities like Raleigh and Charlotte.

Once the area grew in popularity, the CCC started working with Crotts to secure access, though terms of the arrangement were loose at first. Yet climbers steadily established a range of problems to test themselves on cracks and delicate, textured faces.

Lightning Crack (V3) epitomizes the Asheboro style, ascending a vertical finger crack that bends left and rewards careful smearing. The boulderfield also features Font-style mantles on slopers over flat landings in problems like Darth Vader (V2). Another classic, Asheboro’s Steepest (V5), offers climbers jaded with slab a few powerful compression moves up an overhanging column of black and gray rock.

“It’s a really quality boulderfield that I think stacks up in the state,” Dunn said.

There’s no guidebook for the Asheboro Boulders, and Reardon, of the CCC, said that lends the area a kind of “open-nature” feel and also encourages people to befriend more experienced climbers who know the problems. Reardon said the Asheboro Boulders—columnal rocks “stacked like chocolate drops” atop a subtle mountain—are like “nowhere else that I know.”

“Some of them are just strange, globular rock stacks that just seem completely out of place for the landscape,” he said. “And there’s a lot of cracks. So that’s always a bonus.”

For more information about how to access the Asheboro Boulders (you need a reservation) check out the CCC’s website.

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