Fairweather

Matt, Was there any talk about the fate of these soon-to-be decommissioned roads? In other words, will the abandoned grades be enclosed into the surrounding designated wilderness? (Bicycles banned.) Or will the 100-foot wilderness exclusion buffer remain intact? (Bicycles allowed) Also, I'm having a hard time finding your Darrington road number(s)? Do you know them off-hand? I'm also curious: were the MBSNF folks talking about major trunk roads as a "single closure?" or are they counting secondary roads as stand-alone closures? Is the 75% based on miles? or raw road numbers? My "save these" list exceeds the eight-road limit: Hannegan Pass #32 Glacier Creek #39 (Heliotrope access) Suiattle #26 (Screw the NCCC and fix it, for God's sake! A judge has already ruled on this.) Baker Lake Road #11 Mountain Loop FS #73 and Suntop (Huckleberry Creek off of Hwy 410) Cayada Creek #7810 (aka Coplay Lake just before the Carbon entrance to MORA) Schreibers Meadow #13 Middle Fork #57 (and reopen the Upper Road while you're at it.) Foss River #68 (and Foss River West Fork #6835) Cascade River Road #15 !!!!! (Don't give Harvey his dying wish. Listen to Ira and keep this road open!) BTW, thanks for the summary.

I agree, but I think the 30 bucks does make us stake-holders, and the $$ are now a significant portion of the USFS budget. As for the right-left thing, well, I think there are plenty on the right who wonder why federal $$ are being spent on the pursuits of a few--and many on the left who wonder the same albeit for very different reasons. We need to face the fact, right or wrong, that what we are asking the USFS to do is spend taxpayer $$ to repair roads that only a relative few will ever use. I'm willing to live with this conflict in my value system because I think outdoor recreation serves a valuable public function, and because humans still have a role in the places we perceive to be wilderness. Plus, I just enjoy the status quo access to the outdoors in this region. Anyhow, I hope you'll post comments regarding the meeting tomorrow night; I'm anxious to hear how it went.

Thought you might enjoy some pictures I took this past week (July 15) out the window of a Beechcraft Bonanza. Unfortunately, we flew through a cloud of bugs while coming up the lower Stikine out of Wrangell and their dried juice made for some bad images. We flew through the notch in the lower West Ridge of the Needle dead-on in the second picture. Cleared it by about 30 feet. (!) (Devil's Thumb in the distance.) Anyway, your accomplishment(s) is even more impressive when it's seen in the real. Wow!

The core issue, as usual, pits the concept of wilderness as a public park against those who see wilderness as an ecological preserve. (I believe it's both.) Since those in the latter camp have USFS budgetary constraints on their side, I think it's important to remind Forest Service representatives that users in the former camp have paid the $30 annual "demonstration" fee for nearly twenty years now--and we expect popular areas to remain reasonably accessible.

Thanks for the heads up, Matt. As you know, I have a long-standing interest in these issues. I'll be attending the Enumclaw meeting on August 6th, but I'm not sure if the road discussions at each of these gatherings will be regional, or will apply to the MBSNF at-large.

As you know, I'm generally a life, liberty, and property kind of advocate, but the RR&CC campaign makes a strong case for the invalidation of the 1864 grant. Not sure how undoing the "checkerboard" would work, but I'd love to see the case before the Supreme Court in my lifetime. On the other hand, we should ask ourselves honestly whether the USFS has managed the lands under its "public domain" any better than these private companies have done with their own. Fees? Well, NPS, USFS, DNR/WA State, Fish&Wildlife, are all in on the "pay-to-play" game now--and this on lands we the people supposedly own already! In short, this is probably one of the most complex domestic political issues that people generally don't know about.

Trip: Mount Hood - Old Chute Date: 5/5/2013 Trip Report: Just goofing off with my new GoPro camera along the summit ridge of Mount Hood a couple months ago.

This one in the Olympic Mountains is pretty stunning too. We visited this cirque last September, however, and lots of perennial snow remained. Hopefully the heavy/late-season snow cycle we've been in these last few years will revive this dead glacier. Not optimistic though. http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/images/Lillian-Glacier-1905-2010-pair_1.jpg

Hancock, Champion, and now WH are all doing it to varying degrees. It is private property, after all. A good read on the history at the root of this issue: Jensen, Derrick, George Draffan, and John Osborn. Railroads and Clearcuts: Legacy of Congress's 1864 Northern Pacific Railroad Land Grant.

Sitting here thumbing through my tattered, first edition copy of Glacier Ice. Good journey, Austin Post. And it's something quite peculiar Something shimmering and white It leads you here despite your destination Under the Milky Way tonight

Gotta love these new personal attacks in the post-nasty era. (Try just a little harder.) Vancouver sketchy? No. Just kinda dumpy.

Oh you mean like the right to live in a country free of violence? Where does it say that?

Oh. You must be referring to Obama's $1,000,000,000,000 per year deficit spending and his uncanny ability to outdo all of his predecessors (combined) when it comes to pushing us toward the $20tn brink? Rewarding your union base with the taxpayer dollars of our grand children is a novel way to finance a campaign I suppose. Not even sure Keynes would approve of this little shitter in Elbe.

Go Canada! #1 in hockey and #1 in rights and freedoms! What good are your rights if your government maintains an absolute monopoly on the means and use of violence? Gotta admit though, Victoria is one of the nicest, safest-feeling cities anywhere. (Vancouver, not so much.)

Um, I never post from work. Ever. It's a private-sector thing...

Let's face it, for 3.2 million dollars you could buy the whole fucking town. Including the trains. And probably Scaleburgers too. Give Olympia the money and they will find a way to waste it.

Remember j_b: "don't be a dick" Pretty much everything I ever said about JayB and co has been based on the position they defended here. If you don't want your rhetoric to be taken at face value, don't post it. :[]

Or your eyesight is worse than it was 25 years ago. Madonna looked her age on the giant plasma HD. Andy rocked! Then thank God I'm too cheap to pony up for Comcast HD.

Let's face it: Madonna looks better at 53 than she did 25 years ago.

I liked that Jack In The Box wedding ceremony: "You may now eat the bride."

I thought we had all entered the post name-calling era.

House Rep: [x] Norm Dicks Senator: [x] Maria Cantwell (probably) Governor: [x] Rob McKenna President: [ ] None of them. Quid pro quo, where does a good liberal go when their guy continues targeted assassinations overseas, dramatically increases drone strikes on ill-defined terrorists (and their families), pulls out of Iraq two years past his promise, now fully embraces neo-liberal economic policy, and has completely reneged on his promise to close Guantanamo Bay? and here I thought Off wanted to have a real discussion...

it's no longer kewl to hate fags. pretty much all we got left capable of public derision are bus drivers and their occasional dipshit passengers The present crop of American liberals still seem to do ok limiting their hate to Christians, Jews, and Sara Palin.