[digital-cygnet]

I've come to believe that there's a place for the more accessible enjoyment of the outdoors that the via ferrata seems to represent. Every park represents a different place on the spectrum of accessibility vs true wilderness -- from Manhattan's Central Park (millions of visitors of all types, requiring hard paths, railings etc) to Denali National Park (other than the road, limited to very small dispersed groups, kept few enough that it can remain a "trackless wilderness").

I don't begrudge someone who is not a very skilled climber their use of a via ferrata, provided that impact to the area (e.g. sightlines) is kept to a minimum and other options for more purists remain. I'm not a climber per se but this is the same attitude I have towards hiking, skiing, mountain biking, etc. I'm careful not to gate-keep casual folks using the Mt Washington cog railway because they get a lot of enjoyment out of it and it's a small blip in my Prezzie Traverse -- if carefully managed, there's enough nature for everyone.

[sandworm101]

>> there's enough nature for everyone.

Climbing is different. It is about very rarified and somewhat delicate places. Climbing is also always about balancing safety with ability. Anyone can hammer in ladders and assent a cliff. That isn't climbing. Make a route too "accessible" to the masses, make it easy, and the masses will loose respect. They will destroy it. Have a look at Everest base camp. It is effectively a landfill of garbage and human waste.

[jltsiren]

Accessibility is not the issue. Prestige is. A lot of people have heard of Everest, and many think it would be cool to climb it. Other equally accessible mountains in the region see much less human activity.

Also, the waste issues in the area are mostly due to serious climbers who go to less accessible places. Casual tourists stick to settlements, some of which have existed for centuries. Because the settlements are relatively wealthy and connected by decent paths, there seems to be less waste than in the average rural area in a third-world country.

[themaninthedark]

I'm not against making something more accessible but I against destroying nature in order to do so.

If in order to provide access to a waterfall; you have to cut a road through a mountain and then clear out the trees at the base so you can construct a ramp for wheelchairs, you have disfigured the very thing that you wanted to preserve by having a park.

What is the difference, if any, between hammering these iron rungs and jack hammering steps into the rock face?

Why would we say that "via ferrata" is an acceptable amount of defacement while jack hammering is not?

[digital-cygnet]

My point is that it's a spectrum, not a bright line. We do, in fact, have roads that go into parks. Some parks even have trails; some even provide bathrooms and campsites, with varying degrees of amenities. All of these things increase accessibility at the expense of the nature and wilderness of an area, so it's important to have lots of diversity in degree of hardening: does every waterfall need an ADA ramp? Probably not; should no waterfall in the world have an ADA ramp? No, that's needlessly cruel to disabled folks who deserve reasonable access to natural beauty.

There should be (and are) sites of natural beauty you can take pubic transit to, drive to, roll to, bike to, ski to, hike to, climb to, ice climb to, and yes, even cannot access at all, each category with it's own sub spectrum of difficulty (eg some one mile hikes, some weeks long treks). To me a via ferrata seems like the left hand side of this spectrum -- something in an already heavily impacted area that gives casual users access to something they otherwise wouldn't. If someone starts proposing putting them there they don't belong (real wilderness, serious climber spots) I'll be with you in advocating against that.