{"id":46365,"date":"2021-06-08T17:04:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T23:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/offensive-graffiti-scrawled-around-x-rock-climbing-area-north-of-durango\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:31:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:31:17","slug":"offensive-graffiti-scrawled-around-x-rock-climbing-area-north-of-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/offensive-graffiti-scrawled-around-x-rock-climbing-area-north-of-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"Offensive graffiti scrawled around X-rock climbing area north of Durango"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Graffiti
Graffiti with racist, vulgar and antisemitic imagery appeared on boulders and other areas around the popular X-rock climbing area north of Durango in late May or early June. (Courtesy of Ryan Willard)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A popular climbing area called X-rock just north of Durango city limits has been hit with graffiti expressing racist, vulgar and antisemitic messages and imagery.<\/p>\n

X-rock, on the west side of U.S. Highway 550, is one of the most widely used crags in the area, drawing people for bouldering, crack climbs and sport climbing. The graffiti spans areas from the parking lot and trail to rock faces around the X-rock formation, said Durango climber Ryan Willard, who came upon the graffiti last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not go looking. I\u2019m sure there\u2019s more to be found than what I saw. I was pretty disgusted,\u201d Willard said.<\/p>\n

Willard said he saw a \u201cmassive amount\u201d of graffiti. It was spray-painted on rocks near the lower parking lot, along the trail leading to X-rock and on the climbing area underneath the X-rock formation.<\/p>\n

It was also on anchors at the top of the well-known Gold Wall route and on the base of the route, called the Gold Face. The wall is accessible by hiking and climbing. Willard said the graffiti was not there when he climbed in the area in late May.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis one hits pretty close to home to me because I have a lot of Jewish family,\u201d Willard said. \u201cThere was pretty nasty antisemitic, racist, and some pretty nasty vulgar stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Willard posted photos of the graffiti to Facebook with a call to action to the Durango climbing community to help clean up the area. The graffiti included swastikas, depictions of male anatomy and a racial slur.<\/p>\n

The post drew more than 100 comments from people outraged about the incidenft and volunteering resources to help fix it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been contacted by so many people \u2026 that have offered their services,\u201d Willard said. \u201cI\u2019ve been really astounded by the energy and motivation that the local community, even outside of the climbing community, has put toward this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The X-rock area spans La Plata County, city of Durango and Bureau of Land Management land. Climbing groups have reached out to local governments to manage the cleanup.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur environmental engineer is coordinating with Durango Climbers Coalition, who\u2019ve asked if they could help take the graffiti down,\u201d said Chuck Stevens, county manager. \u201cI believe we\u2019re trying to get that scheduled for this week.\u201d<\/p>\n

The La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office had not responded to any calls related to graffiti around X-rock as of Tuesday, said spokesman Chris Burke.<\/p>\n

The city of Durango recently cleaned up graffiti at another popular climbing spot, Sailing Hawks in Dalla Mountain Park, this year, Willard said.<\/p>\n

In Vallecito, residents cleared away images stomped into the snow-covered ice on Vallecito Reservoir over the winter. The image included a racial epithet and depiction of male anatomy.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it\u2019s obviously pretty upsetting to see that in our community,\u201d Willard said. \u201cI have no idea who did it \u2013 it could be somebody from out of town. I really don\u2019t know. I was just really blown away by the support of the town in general in trying to deal with the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

smullane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climbers, La Plata County government plan removal this month<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2748,168,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-46365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-climbing","tag-crime","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86851,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46365\/revisions\/86851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46365"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=46365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}