concernedcitizen

Are you a federal employee or somethin'? The NW Forest pass and the other fee programs set up under HIRA are a load of BS. Yes, they fill important funding gaps, but that filler should not be coming from user fees for public land. The emphasis is on "PUBLIC" here people! There is no way that this fills important funding gaps. Someone should pull the Freedom of Information Act on these jokers. I am pretty sure that you would find that the NW Forest Pass is a losing proposition for all of us. There is just no way that the amount of money they collect each year can possibly cover all of the expenses it takes to run this thing....printing and selling passes, handling the tickets, wages for more employees to enforce the program, I bet they purchased more vehicles for this, making and installing signs at trailheads...no way does it pay for all of this stuff. This is costing us all more money for a negative benefit. All this is doing is creating more money and power for certain management types in the Forest Service. The Northwest Forest Pass is a some sort of a sick joke being played on all of us.

There is definitely something fuzzy with these numbers here. Climbers should just have to pay the park entrance fee like everyone else (and even this is questionable...these are our public lands, and the taxes that we have all paid should already allow us to freely access our public lands...this is a matter of principle), and then be free to climb whatever they want...while managing environmental impacts of course. This thing is a joke. Local climbers are being discriminated against here, and being asked to pay for a larger portion of the pie than everyone else.

What you are saying here makes absolutely no sense when you look at the facts when related to Mt Rainier. Acutally, officials at Mt Rainier told me that the demand for climbing permits is NOT INCREASING...and, they said that they do not expect it to. They also told me that they really do not turn people away for permits. Also, camping on the snow does not seem to have a significant impact on the environment like camping in fragile meadows does as long as folks manage their human waste properly. I see nothing wrong with sprawling tents sites on the snow. ...and like I said earlier, if folks can't take proper care of the public shelter then maybe we should get rid of it. I do however agree that we should concentrate the majority of climbers on the Muir route, which is already what is happening. Most people who climb Mt Rainier just want to get to the summit, and they don't really care which route they take. This point was raised by the public at the meeting years ago when they re-worked the fee, guiding, and permit systems the last time. Many members of the public seemed to want to confine the commercial guide services to the Muir route only so that the rest of the mountain could be left to those that wanted to have a wilderness experience away from the crowds of guided clients.

I agree here. We should try to maintain our National Parks as wilderness areas as much as we can. My vote would be to take down all of the guide structures up at Muir. It is a joke to call these things "historic buildings". For the safety of Mt Rainier's employees, it is probably o.k. to keep a small ranger building...although my gut feeling tells me that we should get rid of all of the structures at Camp Muir. Someone told me that people are using the public structure as a bathroom in the winter...yuk!...and the rangers have to shovel this out in the spring. If the public can't take care of this structure properly, then maybe we should take it down too. My guess is that this one is there to stay, so maybe we should turn it into a day use only and emergency use shelter only. I see no reason to have a hotel up there. People should have to stay in tents...clients, guides, and non-guided climbers. If you need a permanent structure to spend the night in and cook in to be able to climb the mountain, then maybe you shouldn't be climbing the mountain!

It looks like the climbing program budgets for both Teton and Yosemite national parks are much higher than the climbing budgets for Mt Rainier. It also looks like the climbing fees in those parks are essentially ZERO!...and, Rainier appears to have a lot more registered climbers than the Tetons....hmmm.... Why does it appear that are we being arbitrarily discriminated against in Washington and Alaska? Doesn't seem fair to me...

I am normally not much into posting comments on-line, but this seems like an important issue that is worth some discussion! As an independent climber, I do not feel like I need or want any of these climbing services at Mt Rainier that are in question related to these fees. Therefore, I do not feel like I should have to pay these fees when I go to climb Mt Rainier. Furthermore, Mt Rainier's own numbers clearly show that there is plenty of money flowing through Mt Rainier from climbers right now. The money is just being mis-managed by the park service. I do not want to point fingers at anyone in particular, but the system is failing us. It looks like their climbing program budget is only about $400,000...most of which goes to things that I think we do not need...who is it that wants these things? They are already receiving about $300,000 from climbing permit fees each year, $300,000 to $500,000 from climbing guide service franchaise fees, and probably around $150,000 from park entrance fees that climbers pay who would not otherwise be going there. There is also 3-4 million dollars of revenue generated by the climbing guide services each year. There is plenty of money already flowing that direction to accomplish almost anything that they are proposing. In fact, if they eliminated the permit and climbing fee program, that would eliminate a large part of their budget that is needed for the bureaucracy to issue permits and collect fees. We don't need it!