(Outdoor Mag) The Last Bastion of Outdoor Outlaws

EXCERPT: Fed up with tight National Park regulations—no BASE-jumping, no slacklining, no fun!—adventurers are getting cozy with a surprising new advocate: the Bureau of Land Management. Nowhere are the agency’s lenient recreation policies on better display than Moab, Utah…

This is present-day Moab: former uranium boomtown and current Superfund cleanup site, gateway to two national parks, 1.8 million acres of BLM land, countless miles of singletrack and off-road trails, trad climbing, BASE jumping, slacklining, skydiving, and whitewater rafting, home to 5,100 year-round residents, and annual vacation hot spot for more than two million. I’d come to immerse myself in what I’d been told was either America’s most insanely inclusive adventure destination or else a putrid distillation of everything vulgar about public-land use in America—fleets of idling RV generators, swarms of dune buggies, open-air shooting ranges, expensive hunting expeditions, 40-plus BLM campgrounds (usually full), legions of mountain bikers, dirtbag climbers, and ‪#‎vanlife‬ wanderers seeking the enlightenment that Edward Abbey promised in his 1968 classic Desert Solitaire.

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