Shiprock (Tsé Bit'a'í)

Shiprock rises about 500 meters over the desert floor of northwestern New Mexico, a volcanic plug trailed by a radiating ridge of dikes, and it is the most prominent landmark of the region. In Diné tradition it is Tsé Bit'a'í, the rock with wings: the great bird that carried the Diné from the north and turned to stone, a being tied to the narratives of the people's arrival in Dinétah and still regarded as sacred. The formation was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1975.

The modern record around climbing is plain. The first recorded climb, in 1939 by a Sierra Club party including David Brower, was the first in the United States to use expansion bolts, and the route entered climbing canon; after serious injuries in March 1970 the Navajo Nation banned rock climbing on Shiprock and across tribal parks, calling the ban absolute, final and unconditional, and a 2006 Navajo Parks and Recreation statement reaffirmed that climbing there remains prohibited, citing the religious damage illegal climbs do to the Navajo people. Vandalism at the base remains an ongoing community concern reported by the Navajo Times.

Visiting

The formation itself is closed: no climbing, no approaching across tribal land. View it from public roads including US 491, where the profile is at its most dramatic at dawn and dusk; Navajo Nation Parks publishes the rules that apply on Navajo land.

Photo: The view from US 491, [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rock_Est_direction_Shiprock_-_US_Route_491_NM.jpg), CC BY-SA 3.0, A. Perucchi.