Beacon Rock's sheer south face is a legendary Pacific Northwest rock-climbing wall — and a peregrine falcon stronghold, closed to climbers each spring so the falcons can nest.
Take a good look at the sheer south face of Beacon Rock — the naked vertical wall facing the highway and the river — because to a certain kind of person, that cliff is one of the most famous rock climbs in the Pacific Northwest. Not the trail you just walked; the bare rock beside it.
Beacon Rock is a legendary destination for technical climbers. That face is a fluted wall of basalt columns, and over the years climbers have worked out hundreds of routes straight up it, some of them multi-pitch epics — the classic Southeast Corner runs seven rope-lengths up the rock. On a summer weekend you can spot them: tiny figures clinging to the face, ropes trailing below, inching up a wall that looks impossible from down here.
But here's what makes this rock truly special, and the reason you may see that south face roped off with a closure sign: peregrine falcons. The fastest animal on earth — a bird that dives at better than two hundred miles an hour — nests on these cliffs. Peregrines were very nearly wiped out last century by the pesticide DDT, and their comeback is one of the great wildlife rescues in American history. Beacon Rock is one of their strongholds. So every year, from about the first of February through the middle of July, the park closes the south-face climbing routes entirely, to give the falcons the quiet they need to raise their young. The climbers grumble a little, and then they wait — because everyone agrees the falcons come first. Watch the sky around those cliffs: a sharp-winged bird carving the air at tremendous speed is a peregrine, home again on its rock. The hiking trail to the top, happily, stays open all year — the falcons and the walkers have learned to share the mountain.
Photo: Kingofthedead · CC BY-SA 4.0
