 Why was mountain climbing prohibited on the Eastern Slope during the time?
There was never so much as a landslide to bring the Fault to the attention of the general public. By the mid sixties it was definitely established that the three Faults were in fact a single line of fissure in the essential rock, stretching almost from the Canadian border well south of the New Mexico-Texas line. Not even in the Rockies could anyone remember a series of rock slides as bad as this. Only Joseph Schwartzberg, head geographer of the Department of the Interior, wondered if the disturbance might not be a settling of the Kiowa Fault. East, where sharp reports and muffled wheezes told of continued buckling and dropping, the earth trembled downward.
 They feared the danger of rock slides
 The rocks were shifting too fast and the paths could be confusing  The flooding was too substantial  They feared the danger of rock slides  Rescue missions were too dangerous due to the sand storms