U.S.: A Legendary Climbing Area Is About to Be Swallowed by a Mine

In March 2026, the U.S. government officially transferred nearly 2,422 acres of public land—among them Oak Flat, one of the premier bouldering areas in the American Southwest, known for short, powerful climbs done without ropes—to a mining company. Sacred to the Apache and a major destination for thousands of climbers, it is likely the most significant loss of a public climbing area in the United States.

© Mike Schennum

“This is devastating news for Oak Flat and everyone who loves this sacred place.” Three days earlier, Russ McSpaden, who has spent years fighting to protect this iconic Arizona landscape, learned that the site was being handed over to a mining company. Oak Flat—or Chí’chil Biłdagoteel, as it is known to the San Carlos Apache—had been protected public land for seventy years under a federal executive order. It now belongs to Resolution Copper, a joint venture between mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP. For the Apache, it is a sacred place where religious ceremonies have been held for generations. For climbers, it is one of the crown jewels of climbing in the American Southwest.

The mine will win

Oak Flat covers about 2,400 acres of public land roughly 40 miles east of Phoenix, Arizona. Set in Tonto National Forest, it is a landmark American bouldering destination. For fifteen years, it also hosted the Phoenix Bouldering Contest, one of the biggest bouldering competitions in the world. In 1955, President Eisenhower designated Oak Flat as protected land, banning mining there and preserving its sacred status for the Apache and other tribes. That protection held until December 2014.

That year, Senator John McCain pushed through a measure buried inside the annual defense spending bill. The mechanism was simple: Resolution Copper would get Oak Flat in exchange for other parcels elsewhere. The goal was to tap an underground deposit estimated at 1.4 billion tons of copper beneath the site. The method is block caving, a mining technique in which the ore body is made to collapse in a controlled way as material is removed from below. In practical terms, underground infrastructure is built beneath the deposit, and the ground gradually caves in as the copper is extracted. The result would be a massive crater more than two miles wide and nearly 1,000 feet deep. Oak Flat, its climbing, its Apache sacred sites—everything would disappear.

“Consuming Oak Flat and all of its fantastic recreational and cultural resources” says the Access Fund, the national climbing advocacy organization in the United States, which represents more than 8 million climbers. Resolution Copper, for its part, says it will keep access open “as long as possible” and build a replacement site “someday.” In the meantime, Resolution Copper president Vicky Peacey told KJZZ that “If people want to come and use the campground, it is open. If people want to use it for cultural purposes, absolutely welcome to do so. And we’re excited to work with everybody.” In her view, it will take about a decade for the underground mine to advance far enough for Oak Flat to close for good.

The climbing community up against a steamroller

Three lawsuits were filed in response. The first came from the San Carlos Apache Tribe. The second was brought by a coalition of environmental and climbing advocacy groups, including the Access Fund. The third was filed by individual Apache women seeking to protect their access to the site for religious ceremonies. On August 18, 2025, one day before the U.S. Forest Service had planned to transfer the land to Resolution Copper, the Ninth Circuit granted an emergency injunction temporarily blocking the handover. It was only a temporary win.

The next day, Donald Trump publicly responded by calling the Access Fund and its co-plaintiffs “anti-American” for trying to block what he described as a “public land giveaway.” The legal protection lasted only a few more months. On March 13, 2026, the court lifted the injunction. It was a major legal defeat, and it exposed the limits of the tools the climbing community has to protect its crags and climbing areas. The Access Fund, which was part of the coalition, is not a lightweight player: it has more than a century of combined public-policy experience and has helped protect more than 4 million acres of public land across the country. But when the law itself was passed by Congress in 2014, folded into a defense budget bill, and backed by an administration determined to move forward, the legal fight hit a wall.

“The fight isn’t over, even if Oak Flat becomes the property of a multinational mining giant,” Russ McSpaden said. Still, the reality is now clear: the site has changed hands, and the first exploratory drills are on the way.

A natural heritage site blown apart

Behind the transfer is a doctrine the Trump administration has made plain. The message is clear: public lands are first and foremost reservoirs of extractable resources. Natural heritage, sacred sites, recreation areas—all of that comes second to industrial priorities and security rhetoric, the same logic that has already led the Trump administration to blast through protected natural areas to build its wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Oak Flat is now a case study in what that doctrine produces: fast-tracked action, sweeping political backing, and total disregard for the multiple uses and values—cultural, spiritual, recreational—held by these landscapes.

For the climbing community, Oak Flat says something broader too: no site, no matter how iconic, is permanently protected. A seventy-year-old executive order can be wiped out by a legislative rider tucked into a defense spending bill. Regional parks, national forests, and all the outdoor spaces where millions of Americans climb could be threatened by the precedent this sets. If Oak Flat can fall, any site can.

As long as climbing areas depend on protections that can be revoked by legislation, and as long as public lands are treated first and foremost as resource deposits, the fight will remain lopsided. The legal tools exist, and so do the organizations, but they are not enough on their own. What is happening at Oak Flat reaches far beyond Arizona. It is a model for what could happen elsewhere, and a warning about how fragile the spaces the climbing community once thought were secure really are—assuming people keep fighting to protect them.