A group of climbing enthusiasts teamed up to scrub a popular Colorado climbing locale of hateful graffiti, featuring anti-Semitic and racist statements over the weekend.
The climbing cliff – known as X-rock – is now clean, after being covered in graffiti since June, reported the Durango Herald.
Anti-Semitic, racist and vulgar statements had been spray painted in the park’s parking lot, trails, rock face and X-rock formation by unknown vandals.
The climbing spot is north of Durango, Colorado located on the west side of US Highway 550.
Local nonprofit Keeping Colorado Beautiful teams up with local volunteers and La Plata County staffers spending hours removing the spray paint from the park.
Luke Mehall, the president of the Durango Climbers Coalition called it a “step in the right direction.”
“There were quite a few tags,” said Stephen Singer, founder and CEO Keeping Colorado Beautiful told the Herald. “I’d guesstimate there were probably several hundred square feet total.”
The graffiti was first reported in early June when a local climber posted photos to Facebook, urging other climbers to help him clean up the vandalism.
The spray paint graffiti included swastikas, a racial slur and vulgar drawings.
The images had been painted over by the time the clean-up crew removed them.
Some of the graffiti was so high up on the mountain that ropes had to be used to reach it.
Mehall said that the Durango Climbers Coalition would “like to figure out who committed the graffiti and address that appropriately.”
During a time of rising anti-Semitism in the US, anti-Semitic graffiti has become a huge problem.
In April, a vandal spray painted “The Jew is Guilty” on sidewalks in Venice Beach, California. A Jewish resident subsequently took it upon himself to clean up the hateful graffiti.
In mid-June, a park in a Lynnfield, Massachusetts was defaced with a swastika, an obscene image and Hitler’s name.
At the end of June, anti-Semitic graffiti was discovered on a bridge serving the Atlanta, Georgia area, including several of the city’s large suburbs.
The same week, a swastika and racist graffiti appeared on two concrete barriers in White Farm park in Durham, Connecticut.