Mt. Rainier accepting comments on Camp Muir

[Kitergal]

Mount Rainier now accepting comments on Camp Muir Planning Process

 

 

Key questions the park would like public input on:

 

1. How should the park best modify existing uses of structures or provided new structures at Camp Muir to fulfill the intent of the Commercial Services Plan in providing a variety of guided climbing visitor experiences?

 

2. How should structures at Camp Muir serve day use visitors?

 

3. Should there be separation at Camp Muir between guided public visitors and independent public visitors?

 

4. Should the public, guides and clients sleep in built structures or in tents?

 

5. Should cooking shelters be provided at Camp Muir to reduce potential hazards associated with visitors sleeping and cooking in the same structure during inclement weather?

 

6. How can the park provide better information o Camp Muir visitors to ensure they are informed of potentially hazardous conditions during inclement weather?

 

7. Can multiple concessionaires share the same facilities or should separate facilities be provided for each concessionaire?

 

8. If new structures are to be built at Camp Muir should they e for the public or for concessionaires?

 

9. Should potable drinking water that meets WA State Public Health Department/EPA “Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule” be available to concessionaires’ guides and clients?

 

Submit your comments in writing no later than June 15, 2005 to: Superintendent, Mount Rainier National Park, Tahoma Woods, Star Route, Ashford WA 98304

OR VIA EMAIL to donna_rahier@nps.gov.

[barjor]

Any news on that starbucks and gondola?

[Stefan]

1. How should the park best modify existing uses of structures or provided new structures at Camp Muir to fulfill the intent of the Commercial Services Plan in providing a variety of guided climbing visitor experiences?

 

 

Lavatory facilities. I was in Switzerland and was impressed with the newer designs and efficiency they had in eliminating human feces. I had always thought MRNP could adopt the same designs and at the same time reduce expenses in maintaining the facilities. Learn from the experts.

[olyclimber]

Maybe seperate smoking and non-smoking areas in Muir hut?

 

Definitely keep the guided segeragated from the non-guided.

[olyclimber]

Serious beans though. Be sure to put your 2 cents worth in. link to NPS website soliciting input.

[fear]

You can smoke in the hut? WTF?

 

I think the summit should be handicap accessible. The gondola is a good idea but maybe some kind of paved road or trail with a handrail. It'd be keeping with more of the experience.

 

-Fear

[Alpine_Tom]

I think the summit should be handicap accessible. The gondola is a good idea but maybe some kind of paved road or trail with a handrail. It'd be keeping with more of the experience.

When were were up at Muir last weekend, I was impressed by how roomy the bathroom was, much nicer than I'd remembered. Then I remembered the spray on here about the "handicapped accessible" bathroom at Muir, and sure enough, that's what it was!

So, if you can get your wheelchair up the trail and rock stairsteps, and across the muir snowfield, and you can get up over the bottom half of the dutch door and down the steps into the bathroom, there's plenty of room to turn your wheelchair around, as well has handrails to make it easier for you.

[Couloir]

I think the summit should be handicap accessible. The gondola is a good idea but maybe some kind of paved road or trail with a handrail. It'd be keeping with more of the experience.

When were were up at Muir last weekend, I was impressed by how roomy the bathroom was, much nicer than I'd remembered. Then I remembered the spray on here about the "handicapped accessible" bathroom at Muir, and sure enough, that's what it was!

So, if you can get your wheelchair up the trail and rock stairsteps, and across the muir snowfield, and you can get up over the bottom half of the dutch door and down the steps into the bathroom, there's plenty of room to turn your wheelchair around, as well has handrails to make it easier for you.

Funny yes, but in the latest edition of Gator's book, he tells a story about Pete Rieke who spent 13 day trying to get to the summit. He finally made it up the Kautz Glacier in a modified wheelchair. He had some help, but the guy tackled it under his own power. Unbelievable!

 

BTW Mike, the second edition is better than I imagined. Nice work!

[Divot]

I'm new here and would more than be happy to bridle my thoughts on this, but since you asked........

1) RMI has been seen, observed, and thrown under the microscope regarding their trashing up the MUIR hut with some clients (party anonimous), and cooking in a non-RMI hut, while having a perfectly decent building to play in of their own.....Hint?

2) I have travelled abroad and have noticed that there is very little basecamp segregation Himalya and so forth.....Even on bigger and better mountains sorta speak.

So why should we or they have their own little nitch when it should be shared by all?...

I Will take this moment to mention, that I have no vendeta with RMI, but they have become very used to their "own ways" and those days are over........Hint.

 

That's all I have to say on this.....And I suggest it is considered, because It wil still continue to be a certain way " under the rug" sorta speak....

[sobo]

I think the summit should be handicap accessible. The gondola is a good idea but maybe some kind of paved road or trail with a handrail. It'd be keeping with more of the experience.

When were were up at Muir last weekend, I was impressed by how roomy the bathroom was, much nicer than I'd remembered. Then I remembered the spray on here about the "handicapped accessible" bathroom at Muir, and sure enough, that's what it was!

So, if you can get your wheelchair up the trail and rock stairsteps, and across the muir snowfield, and you can get up over the bottom half of the dutch door and down the steps into the bathroom, there's plenty of room to turn your wheelchair around, as well has handrails to make it easier for you.

Funny yes, but in the latest edition of Gator's book, he tells a story about Pete Rieke who spent 13 day trying to get to the summit. He finally made it up the Kautz Glacier in a modified wheelchair. He had some help, but the guy tackled it under his own power. Unbelievable!

 

BTW Mike, the second edition is better than I imagined. Nice work!

 

It wasn't so much a modified wheelchair as it was a modified bicycle/tractor/crawler. I was involved with all of his attempts on Rainier, and was one of the six folks that summitted with him in June of 2000. He cranked the thing all on his own for the entire trip, and never asked for, nor received, any forward/upward assistance from any of the many folks that tagged along with him. I am proud to count him among a very small list of my friends.

 

Here is a pic of the Snowpod, v. 3.0:

 

 

Here's the story. Yours truly is the blue smurff on the right. And those are gloves in my coat pockets, not manboob!

[Bill_Simpkins]

A separite shack for cooking and hanging out. Better Ventilation and more light(windows, maybe I beam and sheet metal construction with plexiglass roofs). Those current shacks are gloomy.

It would be pretty cheap to add durable waterproof padding to the sleeping spaces. Sometimes doing the climbing hut thing is fun.

And get rid of the those rude French climbers. They take things too seriously up there.

 

[Divot]

I agree on the Frenchies Bill...lol

[Fairweather]

Is he the guy who spent two years trying to get the NPS to approve the use of his "snopod" because of Wilderness Act bureaucratic inflexibility, and was so pissed off about it he forced the NPS to build a wheelchair accessible toilet at Muir? If so, I give him

[sobo]

Is he the guy who spent two years trying to get the NPS to approve the use of his "snopod" because of Wilderness Act bureaucratic inflexibility, and was so pissed off about it he forced the NPS to build a wheelchair accessible toilet at Muir? If so, I give him

 

Not the same guy. I seem to recall that Pete got the NPS to approve his snowpod in quite a bit less time than you mention, by working with the NPS, not against them. But he is definitely not the twerp who forced the NPS to put in the ADA-compliant shitter. That was another guy who was competing with Pete to be the first gimp (and Pete uses that term for himself, so I'm excused) up Rainier. This other guy was using RMI guides to fix lines up the hill for him, then he would jumar them while lying on a sled device. They'd haul him up stuff that he couldn't or wouldn't jumar over. Basically horizontal jugging was his plan, and not a totally "clean" ascent style in our opinion, given the gratuitous assistance. At some point below Camp Muir, The Jugger got tired and frustrated with the whole mess, while Pete was making good time on the Kautz Glacier route. When Pete got to 12,500 and above the cliffs overlooking Camp Hazard, it became obvious to The Jugger that he was not going to make it to the top first, so he split and descended. He must have gotten pissed off somewhere along the way because the NPS told us that the guy basically got in their face and said that there needed to be a handicap access crapper at Camp Muir, this is wrong with that, whine whine whine, blah blah blah. I guess that's how it came to be there. Maybe he threatened to sue or something. Pete thinks it's a crying shame to have federal taxes spent that way. Pete's comment, "Who the fuck is going to crawl all the way up here just to take a shit in that thing anyway?! I don't even like the DC route!" FWIW, Pete learned how to shit in a blue bag before he got hurt, and he can still shit in a blue bag after the accident.

[Fairweather]

I agree; it's a bad thing to waste tax $$$. But I love to see land managers squirm about their precious Wilderness Act (and the ridiculous 'mechanized' provisions therein) when it butts heads with the ADA.

 

I really like that snowpod. The guy engineered it himself, I read? Is it getting any use now? The guy must have had some freaking incredible upper body stregnth.

[Mike_Gauthier]

Hummmm????

 

Sobo has the story much better... No one that I know of at the NPS opposed either ADA climber. As I recall, we wished them both the best!!! AND constructed the ADA toilet when one "asked" why there wasn't one...

 

What is great is that many non ADA climbers enjoy the ADA toilet due to the extra space. Wow, sounds like it worked out well for everyone!

 

Hope folks comment on the Camp Muir Plan.

 

BTW, has anyone seen the new climbing information center at Paradise? Any thoughts!!?? Are folks able to find it?

 

Mike

[snowball]

BTW, has anyone seen the new climbing information center at Paradise? Any thoughts!!?? Are folks able to find it?

 

Mike

 

 

The info center is nice. Good job! BTW are there any bunks upstairs i could crash on before a climb? I should have asked while there...

 

Sobo, i found a copy of your summit pix sans manboob!

[sobo]

...BTW, has anyone seen the new climbing information center at Paradise? Any thoughts!!?? Are folks able to find it?

 

Mike:

I found it easy enough. I think it's nice, but it's sad to see the old icon go...

 

snowball:

Nice work with PhotoShop. I appreciate it!

[sobo]

...I really like that snowpod. The guy engineered it himself, I read? Is it getting any use now? The guy must have had some freaking incredible upper body stregnth.

 

Yes, he and a coupla other friends engineered and built them in his garage. There were a couple of earlier versions, some less stellar than others. Version 2 met with an untimely "death" in a rollover accident coming back from a test run at White Pass. It was being carried on a car top carrier...

 

The photo up-thread ^^ is of ver. 3.0, which was the version that made the successful summit of Rainier. Other versions followed, in a multitude of colors, which were used by Pete and 3 other gimps to make a successful summit of Mt. Shasta a couple of years ago. The pods are for sale, and Pete is making more to sell a fleet to a paraplegic rehab outfit in Canada, I believe. Pete takes it out on the snow once in a while, but for a "real" climb, he needs belayers and such. And yes, his arms are the size of most people's legs.