Columnist Susan Snyder: This duo can really rock out

Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2000 | 9:52 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays in Accent. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Patrick Putnam and Jed Botsford work with their fannies in a sling, but their bosses planned it that way.

While other Bureau of Land Management rangers don uniforms and badges, Putnam and Botsford slip into harnesses and shoes with sticky soles.

They are rarities working in a rare place. They are the only BLM rangers assigned full time to rock climbing. And they work at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, one of the country's best places for scaling rock.

"It's like taking the Grand Tetons and turning them into sandstone," Botsford said. "There's really nowhere else that you can find the long climbs you can find in here."

The sport has become so wildly popular in the past 10 years, Putnam said, that BLM officials were stumped as to how to keep up with Red Rock's ever-growing number of climbers.

But how do you manage a population of people who dangle from a rope like wind chimes?

Putnam, a 20-year veteran of the sport, and Botsford, who has been climbing half as long, devised a couple of ways.

On weekends during the fall and spring climbing seasons they trot out to 13-Mile Campground with hot java and a safety chat for climbers as they're rolling out of the sack.

Coffee in bed from a ranger is not what most rock climbers expect. Typically, rangers tell them what they can't do, where they can't do it and when they must leave.

But Putnam and Botsford approach that part of their job differently. They're not law enforcement officers. They're rock climbers who happen to be rangers, and Putnam planned it that way.

He was a climbing-gym owner and led tours at Red Rock in 1997 when BLM officials asked whether he'd consider being the first of his kind.

"I said it wasn't going to be a law enforcement position. It was going to be more of an interpreter," Putnam recalled.

An interpreter who talks the talk and harnesses respect from the end of a 200-foot rope.

It's easy to ignore a ranger standing on the ground below. But it's kind of hard to tune him out when he scampers up the rock face like a spider and looks you straight in the eye.

The rangers say the mutual respect is working. Local climbers cleaned up trash along the Scenic Loop Drive on Saturday and also regularly clean up the Black Corridor, a popular climbing route near the drive's second pullout.

The rangers hope such efforts will help deter damage by climbers who don't have a vested interest in keeping Red Rock pristine.

Some of the worst offenders implant bolts in the rock where no bolts should be. The entire striped enscarpment area that provides the loop road with its magnificent backdrop is a federal wilderness study area. No bolts are allowed.

"Unfortunately some bolts are still going in, and it's mine and Jeb's job to find them," Putnam said. "Last year in Arrow Canyon some idiot put bolts right over some petroglyphs."

But those are the exceptions, he added. Most climbers respect the rules that are enforced by a pair of guys who are just like them.

"When we tell them what we do, they're like, 'Man, how can I get a job like that?' " Botsford said.