North Cascades Access!

[Off_White]

Wait a minute, you're lobbying for increased mechanized travel in wilderness areas? That's what expanding mountain bikes on valley bottom trails constitutes. The road in Stehekin is a narrow corridor specifically excluded from wilderness designation in recognition of it's historic nature and the fact that it long predates the park. The question is one of maintenance of existing infrastructure, and I certainly never noticed any abuses or excessive wilderness use in the upper Stehekin valley as a result of that road back when it was in service. It does make a huge difference to the people who try to make a living in Stehekin though, one of the most unique towns in Washington.

 

[mattp]

As far as trail maintenance in the short run, we might organize work parties to take care of our favorite trails. In the long term I think we'd do better to lobby Congress to provide adequate funding to keep our Parks and National Forest Areas available for public recreational use, keeping in mind the stewardship ideas that most of us agree are at least equally important in the management of public lands. These lands were set aside with the idea that they were to be held in some kind of public trust. I don't believe the idea was that they would be carved up for use or exploitation by all different factions in some come one come all contest where those who cry the loudest get what they want.

 

In my view, the North Cascades would ideally see increasing overall planning and management programs based on a study of long term public recreational needs along side protection for wilderness and habit and a consideration of which forms of recreation have the greatest impact. Timber harvesting, too, will likely remain a significant part of the picture even though there has been less and less of that activity of late.

 

I fear that an ad-hoc pressure group, user fee, and volunteer user management approach is way too likely to result in great access for motorcycle groups and horsepackers while cutting back access for hikers and climbers. Climbers and hikers may be mobilized to show up in a planning process (though our past track record in this regard is pretty bad), and a formal Park and Forest planning effort is probably going to make provision for us even without a lot of organized effort on our part.

 

However, we are not likely to be able to follow through, long term, as effectively as clubs with license fees supporting their lobbyists (motorized recreation including motorobikes and snowmobiles), or business interests (horse packers, logging, mining), or for that matter the conservation groups at least some of which have sought to cut back even pedestrian access. A "let the users who want to pursue an activity maintain the infrastructure" approach is going to produce a terrible result and it is anathema to the public trust ideas that underlie the foundation of National Parks and National Forests in the first place.

[tvashtarkatena]

Wait a minute, you're lobbying for increased mechanized travel in wilderness areas? That's what expanding mountain bikes on valley bottom trails constitutes. The road in Stehekin is a narrow corridor specifically excluded from wilderness designation in recognition of it's historic nature and the fact that it long predates the park. The question is one of maintenance of existing infrastructure, and I certainly never noticed any abuses or excessive wilderness use in the upper Stehekin valley as a result of that road back when it was in service. It does make a huge difference to the people who try to make a living in Stehekin though, one of the most unique towns in Washington.

 

Mountain bike access is not a big deal to me personally, but it seems to make sense that bike access be allowed on roads that are no longer maintained, and appropriate valley bottom trails up to a certain turn around point. The Suiattle River trail is one example. 10 miles of flat trail; road access to the TH is washed out at Downey Creek. Why not coopt cycling clubs to maintain this section of trail (but disalloy the building of jumps, rails, and other cycling park paraphelia) in exchange for access? This would represent a lower cost compromise alternative to rebuilding bridges that may just wash out again. It also is in line with the argument that we need more than just climber involvement to maintain some of the existing infrastructure.

 

Finally, our trail/road system was built in an era of less extreme flooding, more readily available public manpower, greater park funding, and logging. That's all over with. If we want to see some (you're not going to see all) of the existing infrastructure maintained, volunteer labor will have to become a greater part of the picture over time.

[tvashtarkatena]

I fear that an ad-hoc pressure group, user fee, and volunteer user management approach is way too likely to result in great access for motorcycle groups and horsepackers while cutting back access for hikers and climbers. Climbers and hikers may be mobilized to show up in a planning process (though our past track record in this regard is pretty bad), and a formal Park and Forest planning effort is probably going to make provision for us even without a lot of organized effort on our part.

 

However, we are not likely to be able to follow through, long term, as effectively as clubs with license fees supporting their lobbyists (motorized recreation including motorobikes and snowmobiles), or business interests (horse packers, logging, mining), or for that matter the conservation groups at least some of which have sought to cut back even pedestrian access. A "let the users who want to pursue an activity maintain the infrastructure" approach is going to produce a terrible result and it is anathema to the public trust ideas that underlie the foundation of National Parks and National Forests in the first place.

 

It doesn't have to be that way. The National Park and Wilderness Area managers would still be free to restrict motorized/stock (and other environmentally damaging) use while managing volunteer trail crews, possibly supervised by park hired personal. The allowance of volunteers to do some of their work would need in no way impact the park's focus on maintaining pristine wilderness. This is the way trails are maintained in the Columbia River Gorge, and it works very well. No one's clamboring for dirt bike access to that area. In fact, the result was just the opposite. There was a big move several years ago to log some of that preserve, and, because so much of the public had either worked on or used volunteer maintained trail system, the public outcry quashed that effort soundly.

[mattp]

It may not HAVE to work that way, Tvash, but I see limited prospect for changes to favor non-motorized and non-commercial recreational use through any kind of volunteer effort. That is not quite true: the kayak clubs and mountain bikers turned out for the recent Middle Fork planning process, and they won some great accommodation in the resulting development plan -- along side the private campground concessionaires who overwhelmingly won the biggest subsidy. They got a paved road and a new campground built just for them.

 

On the east slope, vast areas of the Okanagon and Wenatchee National Forests are heavily used for motorized recreation and horesepacking at present, while hiking trails are wasting away and I see little prospect for large scale maintenance effort from volunteer hikers and climbers and for that matter little public outcry for more maintenance. Most of the trailheads are three or more hours’ drive from the urban centers where most of the volunteers live, and large numbers of hikers and climbers are not going to show up for a work party over in the Sawtooth area north of Lake Chelan. And, yes, I suppose it does not "have to be the case" that only the motorized groups have paid lobbyists, but I don't think many hikers and climbers are going to readily submit to licensing fees to support their interest.

 

Closer to home, look at how many climbers show up for a work party at Index or Darrington or Exit 38: relatively few. I've been involved in dozens of work parties, and we've done some good work that has served these areas well - but there really are not very many climbers willing to devote even half a saturday to doing trail maintenance.

 

There is no way we would be able to maintain the road into Clear Creek, for example. I don't know who built the new parking lot for the Little Si trail, but it sure as heck wasn't done with volunteer labor or funding from individual donors. We've talked about the need for a new porta-potty at Index for thirty years, and there is support for it from the "powers that be," but I wonder what the prospect is that climbers might be able to set it up and maintain it on some kind of volunteer basis with our own money?

 

It'd be great if more of us wanted to work on maintaining the trails that we use and it could go hand-in-hand with overall forest management efforts that provide recreational access and favor lower impact activities over, say, motorized recreation. However, without organized political activity on our part I don't think it will work out very well. If forced to rely upon volunteer maintenance for long term management activity, and if left to listen primarily to those who have paid lobbyists, forest planners are going to end up favoring motorized recreation and business over hikers and climbers.

[tvashtarkatena]

I'm not suggesting volunteer road repair, although a dynamite license might be fun. I do agree, as with any public issue, that lobbying is very important. The trick is how to represent the zero impact community effectively with a lobbying effort that has enough critical mass to be effective. Some ideas:

 

Demand it from our gear suppliers. Some already do, but companies signing on to environmental lobbying initiatives can be powerful, particularly when whole groups of companies jump on a single issue at the right time. Consumer pressure can help them in this effort.

 

As I mentioned before, coopting with organizations that share a similar wilderness ethic can also boost a lobbying effort.

 

And finally, where's the CC.com's legislative action forum?

[mattp]

I have actually hauled gravel and cleared out drainage culverts in Darrington, as well as done brushing along side the road. We can help here and there, but the real work requires big machinery and big dollars.

 

This IS the cc.com legislative action forum. And cc.com has had an impact: the individual donations that supported the purchase of the Sam Hill area in Leavenworth came largely from cc.com folks, and a large numbers of the phone calls and letters in support of keeping Darrington open three years ago came from here as well.

 

Lets get to work demanding and co-opting. Letters to your Congressman, anyone? Here's a template:

 

Dear Senator Jackass,

 

I hate you and everything your party stands for, but if you could help keep access open at my favorite climbing destination I would seriously appreciate it.

 

Sincerely,

 

cc.com flamethrower

[Fairweather]

Dear Senator Jackass,

 

I hate you and everything your party stands for, but if you could help keep access open at my favorite climbing destination I would seriously appreciate it.

 

Sincerely,

 

cc.com flamethrower

 

 

Funniest thing you've ever posted, Matt.

 

Of course you realize that both of our senators here are Democrats?? No matter, though. The Dems will screw us on behalf of anti-recreation environmental groups, and the Republicans will screw us by cutting the NP/NF maintenance budget based on the perception that most hikers and climbers are "D" votes anyway. Sad, but likely.

 

 

Edited May 19, 2007 by Fairweather

[mattp]

After a particularly vexing interaction, I sent this one to the district ranger in a local climbing area fifteen years ago:

 

Dear Mr. Ranger,

 

I hate you. Your district office has always sucked and probably always will.

 

Your friend,

 

Concerned Climber

 

 

He didn't write back, but ever since then they've gotten better (well not quite EVER since, as they did have one of the most obnoxious law enforcement officers I have ever met for several years, but as far as I can tell the trend has been toward friendlier law enforcement and better recreation management, and they now actually answer questions over the phone in a helpful manner). A little love can work wonders!

[Blake]

Yakima Herald Story Today

 

http://yakimaherald.com/page/dis/289173246695773

 

 

No way through -- Road battle brews in isolated town

By SCOTT SANDSBERRY

YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

 

SCOTT SANDSBERRY/Yakima Herald-Republic

 

 

This stop sign sits nearly 13 miles up the Stehekin Valley Road where the road was washed out by a flood in 2003. In 2006 the National Park Service abandoned the remaining 10 miles of road upriver of the washout cutting off motorized access to the upper valley.

STEHEKIN -- A huge photograph of Horseshoe Basin, a breathtaking amphitheater of North Cascade peaks, hung for years in the dining hall of Stehekin Valley Ranch.

 

Visitors marveled at the picture whenever they stayed at the ranch, a timber-beamed lodge with rustic cabins seven miles up-valley from the northwest tip of Lake Chelan. Then, invariably, they would ask for directions to see for themselves the area once described in a 1960 Sierra Club documentary as "a crown jewel of America's scenic grandeur."

 

They don't ask that now. The photograph has been taken down.

 

Lodge owner Cliff Courtney got tired of having to tell visitors that, unless they were willing to don backpacks for a 30-mile round trip, they could no longer get to Horseshoe Basin. Or, for that matter, to myriad other backcountry destinations that Stehekin -- itself accessible only by plane, foot or, usually, a 51-mile boat ride from Chelan -- had long been the portal.

 

In the language of the native Indians, Stehekin meant "the way through." But in October 2003, a 500-year flood washed out the Stehekin Valley Road, which a century earlier had gone nearly to Horseshoe Basin, dead-ending -- to quote that 1960 film -- "in paradise." Now it ends at a rather incongruous stop sign just 13 miles up the valley at a place called Car Wash Falls, barely more than halfway to its original terminus.

 

Last fall, the National Park Service opted to abandon the road upriver from that point, less than two miles into the park-run Lake Chelan National Recreation Area and the Stephen Mather Wilderness.

 

Since then, the tiny, historic community of Stehekin -- at least the half of the 80-some population not employed by the park service -- has been in an uproar. Without the road to the upper valley, those residents say, the tourism on which they depend will continue a decline that has already begun. And firefighting crews will lose access to fight the catastrophic wildfire they fear is coming.

 

And, without the road and without some way to corral the meandering path of the Stehekin River, they say, the death of Stehekin itself -- or, at least, the way of life it has enjoyed since long before the park service came along -- may only be a matter of time.

 

* * *

 

Maintaining "the way through," say the locals, requires only common sense.

 

Parallel to the section of the valley that flooded in 2003, the critical 21/2 miles from just below Carwash Falls upriver to the trail junction called Bridge Creek, runs the road's original route -- safely upslope from the river. In the 1930s, though, that stretch of the road, called "the old wagon road" or just the "detour road" by locals, became part of the Pacific Crest Trail and Civilian Conservation Corps crews replaced it with the flood-prone road along the river.

 

The solution is obvious, say Stehekin locals: For those 21/2 miles, simply reroute the main corridor to the "old wagon road" and run the PCT along the river, where a trail would be far easier to maintain and rebuild than a road.

 

The park service's response: Nope, can't do that. The Stehekin Valley Road is bounded on both sides by the Mather Wilderness, a 100-foot right-of-way that, according to the 1988 Washington Park Wilderness Act and the 1964 Wilderness Act, cannot be moved.

 

SCOTT SANDSBERRY/Yakima Herald-Republic

 

 

From left, Cragg Courtney, Ron Scutt, John Wilsey (with daughters Beth and Sarah), Cliff Courtney and Phil Garfoot discuss Stehekin's concerns over the closure of its valley road.

The locals' answer to that: Change the law.

 

"This is not a roads versus non-roadless area matter. This is about a common-sense fix," says Ron Scutt, who runs a bike-rental business and is president of the non-profit Stehekin Heritage. "There (would be) no net loss of Wilderness, the Crest Trail users get to follow a more beautiful route and the road is reopened. It's just common sense."

 

It would also take an act of Congress, like one working its way through right now: the Wild Sky Wilderness Act, which would create a 167-square-mile wilderness near Stevens Pass. That act has made it through the House, and state Sen. Linda Evans Parlette, R-Wenatchee, sees it as a natural vehicle on which to attach a rider allowing the minor adjustment to the Stehekin Valley corridor.

 

"If it involves no net gain or net loss of wilderness, it's just a practicality of doing what some of these other parks have done," Parlette says, who is hoping Democratic Congressman Norm Dicks will champion just such a rider. Some other national parks, Parlette points out, have similar Wilderness issues that, by comparison to Stehekin and the North Cascades National Park/Lake Chelan National Recreation Area, are much less constrictive.

 

Alaska's Denali National Park has a lengthy road corridor that, as in Stehekin's case, predated the park and designated Wilderness through which it runs. But Denali managers can shift the road when necessary, affecting up to 5,000 Wilderness acres, without requiring Congressional approval.

 

But the Washington Park Wilderness Act -- which established the Mather Wilderness on both sides of the Stehekin Valley Road -- included no wording for such adjustments.

 

Says Parlette, "I honestly believe that was an oversight."

 

Bill Paleck, who retired this year as North Cascades National Park superintendent, disagrees. "I think the congressional intent, which is the road would be placed within that 100-foot wide non-wilderness corridor, was clear," Paleck says. "If they had other intentions, they certainly didn't make it clear in the language of the act."

 

Roy Zipp, the park's environmental protection specialist, agrees that the "old wagon road" was probably where the non-Wilderness corridor should have been in the first place. "Folks knew where to put roads in the good old days," he says.

 

But the park service can't simply move the road back. It doesn't enact laws.

 

"This is really an issue for the legislative branch now," Zipp says.

 

"I feel for the folks in Stehekin. They're in a difficult spot. In a lot of ways, there's a good argument to say that Stehekin should be held to a different standard, because it's such a unique place."

 

* * *

 

How unique?

 

Few Stehekin cars carry current license tabs; many don't even have plates to put them on, because the Department of Motor Vehicles decided long ago that Stehekin's remoteness made it a special case. When people pay $125 to have a car barged over from Chelan, it's usually there to stay.

 

Almost every private door in Stehekin remains unlocked. Ignition keys sit in unattended cars and motorcycles. Yet there is virtually no crime. The locals watch out for each other: In the most recent "crime wave," about five years ago, an outsider broke into a few homes, was caught by locals and handed over to Chelan County Sheriff's deputies.

 

The nearest medical doctors are in Chelan, but there are enough emergency-medically-trained people in Stehekin that folks don't fret about it.

 

"If somebody's in trouble up here, you'll get more help than you can dream of -- and it's good help," says Cragg Courtney, a member of the sprawling Courtney family tree whose branches make up the bulk of the non-park service residents. "That's how it is here. You've got a group of people in this community who will support you."

 

And who don't want to be supported by anybody else. When community-wide satellite phone service was proposed recently, most locals were against it -- primarily because, though low-cost to them, its immense expense would be federally subsidized by the Universal Service Fund, something that to many manifestly self-reliant Stehekins smacked of socialism.

 

"It's a handout, basically. It's just not right," says Cragg Courtney, one of the handful of locals who pay for their own satellite phones or satellite Internet, at vastly more expensive rates than they'd pay anywhere else. "We pay for that ourselves, and nobody else is paying it for us. That's the main thing."

 

But the road problem is something the locals can't take care of themselves. They can't move the road because of the Wilderness Act. They can't simply armor the banks of the river and regulate its recent flood-driven course -- one that has already eroded away nearly an acre of Stehekin Valley Ranch property and will likely take much more -- because of federal guidelines in the Clean Water, the Endangered Species and National Wild and Scenic Rivers acts.

 

"If we could make our own decisions," says Don Pitts, the town's retired postmaster, "it would already have been done. And if you think erosion is bad now, wait until a good fire comes in and clears all that out."

 

The upper valley, from which the prevailing winds blow, has the same bark-beetle and spruce budworm blight that has browned much of the thick-forested eastern Cascade slopes, making it susceptible to just such a lightning-strike wildfire. And the road closure erases the ability to truck firefighting crews closer to those slopes, where they might be able to keep a smaller wildfire from becoming the monster that wipes out the town.

 

"It's definitely generally acknowledged to be a huge threat," says Bob Nielsen, Chelan County Fire District 10 commissioner. "It's important for Stehekin to get that road back."

 

And, perhaps, not only for Stehekin, since its lodges' guestbooks show hundreds of entries not just from far-off states, but far-off countries.

 

"Throughout the world," says Don Duncan of Renton, a veteran climber who has used the Stehekin Valley to reach numerous peaks, "there may be no place else quite like Stehekin."

 

Indeed, it's a warm, welcoming place where everybody waves at you, a place without locked doors or crime, where visitors ride around on 1960s-era fat-tired bicycles while ogling deer and the occasional black bear, and where, for decades, they could head off, as the old Sierra Club documentary said, into "paradise."

 

But not any more.

 

"A lot of the areas that are the most magnificent, people just can't get to any more," says Randall Dinwiddie, owner of the Silver Bay Inn in Stehekin. "It's like going to Disneyland and only being able to do the cup-and-saucer tour."

 

"We need a federal delegation to get behind us -- to understand the valley needs the road economically, but the visitor needs the road recreationally. It's an access issue," Cliff Courtney says. "This has to be more than just a little frontcountry experience, a rock wall and an interpretive sign.

 

"Stehekin deserves better than that."

 

[Tom_Sjolseth]

That's a damned good article. Thanks to a determined Don Duncan for lobbying folks to get something done out there in Stehekin, and to Scott Sandsberry for writing this piece.

[Fairweather]

Great post!! I'll be writing Norm Dicks - in who's district I reside here in Fircrest. He's very responsive and fair minded. In fact, he's the only Democrat I regularly vote for.

[Serenity]

I met Ron Scutt on a plane going to Turkey a few years back. He's a top shelf guy, and that community deserves better than they are currently receiving from local land managers.

[mattp]

As I indicated above, I'm not sure the Stehekan road is all that high of a priority in my mind but I can certainly see why those with an investment in that particular valley would want it and I agree with those who say that road would not threaten the integrity of the North Cascades. Anyway, access in general is suffering and I'd like to learn more about what Norm Dicks is doing. Maybe we could do more than simply send him a "thumbs up" letter.