Armando Menocal is the original climbing advocate. His work shaped the nascent climbing advocacy movement of the 1980s and 90s, and innumerable climbing areas in the United States and beyond are open today, and fixed anchors are not prohibited, thanks to his visionary leadership.

Menocal passed away on October 20, 2024 at the age of 83 after a battle with cancer, but not before offering guidance to Access Fund one last time the night before he passed. He cared deeply about climbers and conservation, and urged us all to “commit ourselves to our core values and mission of keeping climbing areas open and protecting climbing freedoms.”

We are honored to share a bit more about Menocal’s life and legacy in this special posthumous Advocate Spotlight, and hope you are inspired to take up his mantle of leadership in your own way.

Five Inspiring Facts About Armando Menocal:

Access Fund as we know it today wouldn’t exist without Menocal.

In 1986, in the midst of the fierce “bolt wars” era, the American Alpine Club (AAC) asked Menocal to lead its newly formed Access Committee, to respond to the increasing threat of climbing area closures around the country. Ever the visionary, he looked beyond the current divide in the climbing community and recognized the threat posed by governmental bodies working to prohibit bolting on public lands. Menocal and a group of like-minded climbers got to work under the Access Committee charter, organizing to defend all types of climbing—including sport climbing—on public lands.

Four years later, divisions between Access Committee members and AAC leadership reached a breaking point. The committee voted to form a new nonprofit organization with a mission to protect climbing access and conserve climbing areas. And they named it the Access Fund.

Before he became a climbing advocate, Menocal was a civil rights lawyer in California.

The 1960s were a formative time for Menocal. He moved to San Francisco and used his legal training to further social and political movements, including the anti-war movement and the fight to eradicate poverty—work that continued for more than 25 years. In 1979, Menocal prevailed in one of the biggest civil rights cases of his career. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in Larry P. v. Riles that IQ tests could not be used to place Black students in special education classes.

Menocal is responsible for inventing the term “fixed anchor” to describe bolts, pitons, slings, and other forms of climbing protection left in place during an ascent or descent.

In a 2015 episode of The Enormocast, Menocal shared the story of volunteering to be on the “definitions committee” as part of work to protect sustainable Wilderness climbing access in the Superstition Mountains just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. As part of that process, the government appointed a task force to write the rules that would oversee climbing in the area. Menocal realized that the U.S. government’s approach to regulating climbing would be rooted in their understanding of what was involved in climbing and immediately volunteered to be part of a committee on definitions. His work led to the creation of a new term, “fixed anchors,” that ensured bolts were treated the same way as pitons, slings, and other hardware. He helped to ensure that the climbing community, from sport climbers to traditionalists, stayed united in its advocacy—a visionary decision that endures today in Access Fund’s work to stop a prohibition on fixed anchors in Wilderness areas.

After making his mark on American climbing advocacy, Armando branched out to make an impact in Cuba and South America.

A Cuban American born in Miami, Menocal first traveled to Cuba in 1998, where he was struck by the potential for climbing in the Viñales Valley. He traveled to and from the island nation to develop routes and support the growing climbing community until he was prohibited from entering Cuba in 2005. That story is central to an episode of Climbing Gold entitled “Inadmissible.”

Unable to return to Cuba, Menocal turned to the advocacy toolbox he knew so well. He started a website called cubaclimbing.com, and started an organization modeled on Access Fund called Acceso PanAm in 2009. Acceso PanAm continues to advocate for sustainable climbing access in Central and South America to this day.

Armando’s legacy as a climbing advocate lives on.

There are many ways for you to honor Armando’s legacy. Sign up for—and take action through—Access Fund’s digital action alerts, get involved with your local climbing organization, or make a gift to the Armando Menocal Climbing Advocacy Fund, which supports Access Fund’s policy and advocacy work. However you choose to honor Armando, we hope you will do so and remember the incredible impact he had on America’s climbing.