Meet the 2006 Grant winner-Laura Petersen
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Laura Petersen loves the undo button, dark chocolate, and to get on any kind of rock to climb. She "learned the ropes" and fell in love with rock climbing about six years ago along the North Shore of Lake Superior.
She currently lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with her dog Ely, and works as a graphic designer at Jax Outdoor Gear.
You'll see her frequently bouldering at Horsetooth or roping up at Lumpy Ridge or Vedauwoo for some good 'ol crack climbing.
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Check out a sample of Laura Petersen's winning essay for the 2006 Horsetooth Hang Educational Grant.
What is your favorite climbing area and some of the access/environmental issues that are faced there?
Minnesota will always have a huge part of my heart. The beautiful views, crack climbing, quality and quantity of climbing will always be underrated to most climbers,
but I believe it deserves more attention than it's had over the years. The sea cliffs of Palisade Head and Shovel Point are an either easy hike in or drive up overlook of beautiful Lake Superior.
Because of such easy access and a constant flow of tourists, the base of the climbs are littered with trash. For some strange reason, people love to throw things off of high points;
I have found everything from car keys to charcoal grills to speaker boxes to glass bottles and televisions at that base of the 100 foot climbs. The level of erosion at the top of the fragile sea cliffs
has also been a huge issue for the northern Minnesotan climbing community. Less than twenty years ago, the cliffs were covered with lush grass that continued all the way up to the edge of the cliff.
Currently, there is a twenty to thirty foot continuous bare rock and gravel strip that lines the cliff edge that has been roped off and closed in areas or climbing platforms have been built to repair the
soil and grass that once existed. The last issue that exists along the north shore is chalk usage. When the first climbers established routes and wrote a guidebook for the area, they established a no chalk ethic.
Unfortunately, a lot of the more heavily used climbs are coated with white chalk, ruining the beauty of the area.
How have you been involved in addressing these issues?
When I was living in Minnesota, I was involved with four straight years of Adopt-A- Crag day service projects. Some of the projects involved through the Adopt-A-Crag days were we planted new trees,
collected seeds, carried fence posts, cleaned up a few truck loads of trash from the base of the climbing sites, maintained existing trails, established new trails, trimmed trees, removed brush,
placed erosion barriers, and had lots of fun making a difference to the climbing community. I also spent this past year as an AmeriCorps member/volunteer in northern Wisconsin where I ran weekly
4-H based after school programs for Medford, Gilman, and Rib Lake schools. I would plan activities, take photographs of the kids, and organize programs. Some of programs I was involved with were
planting trees around the school grounds, going on nature hikes, and creating projects and playing games that would teach the children about respecting the environment.
Also, during my last semester in college as a Graphic Design major, I took a semester long independent graphic project/class. Through this independent class I was able to develop my own project.
I came up with the idea, along with a friend, to create a bouldering and climbing guidebook for the city of Duluth, Minnesota. We were both avid climbers, both winding down our time in college, and we both
really wanted something to give back to the climbing community before we left Duluth. We got to work and we wrote, designed, photographed, printed, and assembled the first ever bouldering guide for the Duluth area.
Still, we wanted to really give back to the community. So, we decided to sell the guidebooks to the community for a small amount and donate all of the earnings to the Access Fund. So far, we have saved over
$300 to donate to the Access Fund to help keep not only our climbing community, but also other climbing communities around the country growing strong. I have also committed myself to participating in at least one
crag clean-up a year.
How would you help educate others about the issues faced at your chosen stewardship project?
If I could give my slideshows anywhere, I would really like to give a slideshow to the public, local climbing community, and students involved in with climbing in northern Minnesota at the
University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). Every year, the UMD Outdoor Program has several weeks of slideshows involved with climbing, or any other outdoor activities, which I would love to be a part of.
Also, if I had the opportunity, I would like to give the slideshow at W-Trek Outfitters, a gear store in Duluth, Minnesota, and also the Mountain Shop in Fort Collins, Colorado. I'm still pretty new
to the Fort Collins area, but I will accept any invitations or be open to do a slideshow at any local locations or events.
Tell us a funny story
I'm an owner of a Volkswagen, and I am still surprised that it hasn't blown up yet. Really. I mean, explode. I think that's a better word.
A few years ago, I went on a two-week spring break climbing road trip with a group of friends. We were driving from Duluth, Minnesota to Moab, Utah, and then we were to spend a week in Las Vegas, Nevada.
I drove with three of my friends in a borrowed mini van, while another group left a few hours earlier in a Volkswagen Westfallia (because they could only go a maximum of 55mph). We were going to meet
them along the way somewhere in Wyoming. After fifteen hours of driving, we called our friends in the Westfallia and they had broken down somewhere outside of Cheyenne. We met up with them a half an hour later,
right about the time the tow truck had arrived. The tow truck hooked up the Westfallia and was going to drive the van and us to a local garage to be fixed. We followed behind the tow truck in the mini van
to the garage when super high winds shook our van and blew a few tumbleweeds clear across the highway. Then, all of a sudden, the Westfallia's roof in front of us exploded and tore itself off into little bits!
Great, we haven't even gone climbing yet and bad things have happened, we thought. We did made it to Moab and Las Vegas and even back to Duluth alright; we unfortunately had to leave the Westfallia at the local
garage and pack six of us in our friends mini van and tow a fully loaded U-Haul trailer with us. We got an average mileage of 8 miles per gallon of gas. You should have seen the local garage we were taken to! When we
pulled into the mechanics garage, the mechanics neighbor was skinning a giant pig that was hanging from an engine elevator. I didn't come out of the mini van until the pig was out of sight. So, the reason the
Westfallia's roof exploded was because the tow truck man towed the van backwards! The super high winds lifted the back of the pop-up roof and ripped the roof off.
Apparently, you should never drive your Westfallias backwards at eighty miles an hour through high winds. Who knew?
