About

The Illinois Climbers Association

The Illinois Climbers Association is a non-for-profit advocacy group representing hundreds of climbers within the state of Illinois as well as thousands more from other states who enjoy the unique climbing destinations found here. We are dedicated to preserving climbing and bouldering access in Illinois through education, conservation, and cooperation with federal, state and local authorities.

In addition to working to have a seat at the table when land management policies are being discussed, there is a lot of work to be done outside. Climbers have been – and will continue to be – visible ambassadors of the community who lead the way in protecting the resource of Illinois rock. The ICA works with land agents whose resources are stretched thin, and represents the climbing community with a high standard of ethical behavior, concern for safety, and courteous co-use of the land.

The ICA also supports and advocates for stewardship of the climbing resources available in Illinois. Often in conjunction with The Access Fund, we have been and remain engaged in trail maintenance projects (Adopt-a-Crag), development and construction of trails, construction of information kiosks at Jackson Falls (in cooperation with the USFS), and other projects still in development. The ICA is proactively advancing positive relationships with land managers to secure the future of Illinois climbing.

This website

While the ICA has been experiencing a revival, with new energy coming from all directions, this website has gone through more than just a face-lift. A rebirth, if you will, that moves us from static to dynamic, open, current and hopefully engaging (you will have to be the judge of that, so be sure to let us know your thoughts). It is my goal and my sincere  hope, that as we move forward with new ideas this website will serve as a portal for communication between the board of directors, our members and even those just passing through.

Some of you may recognize right away that the new ilclimbers.org was built on the versatile Wordpress framework – if not, then let me fill you in on what is new here. The new website is loaded with features that will make it easy, whether you want to just sit back and take it all in, or actively participate. The main page (www.ilclimbers.org) will list the most recent news and updates, with older entries accessible via the “Older Entries” link near the bottom. Near the top (right) you will find our RSS-feed links. You can subscribe to posts as well as comments using.

Just above the image banner you will find the page navigation links. “The Scoop” is the equivalent of a home button and will always  take you back to the listing of the most recent posts. The other links will take you the the relevant content and and the forum link will open a new window or tab (depending on your browser and settings) and take you to the ICA forum. Just above the banner on the right, you will find the search box. The search is quite comprehensive and will return results from all posts and pages on this site. In the left and right side-bars you will find groups of links – often called widgets – that will allow you to easily navigate our dynamic content. Some of these wigets include the Tag Cloud, Recent Comments, Most Discussed (posts with a lot of comments), etc.

Posts are tagged with words related to the content, such as “climbing, trails, volunteer, meeting, jackson falls, tree damage” etc., and clicking a tag will show you all posts tagged with the selected word or phrase. You will notice tags appear in different sizes – this indicates how frequently a tag is used by rendering popular tags larger. In addition to being tagged, posts are also grouped into categories. While similar to tags, categories are more generalized groupings of posts. For example, if you would like to see all news items, click on “News” in the category section. For everything related to upcoming events, select that category.

In the meta widget (bottom, right) you will see Register, Login and RSS links. I hope that you will at the least subscribe to our feed, so that we can easily share news and updates with you. If you’re not crazy about RSS, you can subscribe to get updates via the email – that link is just above the search box near the top of the page. If you would like to share your opinion with us by commenting on posts, I encourage you to register. Registration is not mandatory to leave comments, but it it has certain advantages (like not having to wait for moderator approval on a comment or ever being confused for a spam-bot if you post a link). Just so there is no confusion, the web page and forum user names are not the same, nor are they connected in any way.