How best to manage wilderness areas in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks will be the topic for public conversation come October, when the parks seek input on preliminary draft alternatives for their Wilderness Stewardship Plan.
At a series of public meetings, the National Park Service will be seeking ideas and feedback about alternatives to address future wilderness management at the two parks.
Topics that may be addressed in the plan include: day and overnight use; permitting and quotas; party sizes; campfires; food storage; camping and campsites; human waste management; pack stock and grazing management; scientific research; natural and cultural resource management; maintenance of signs, trails, bridges, and other recreational infrastructure; administrative infrastructure; education and outreach; the extent to which commercial services are necessary to fulfill the recreational and other purposes of wilderness areas; and front-country support facilities.
Many of these topics were brought forward during the public scoping phase of the planning process that took place from April 11 to August 31 last year. The issue raised its head earlier this year when the lack of a wilderness management plan temporarily derailed the parks' ability to issue permits for pack trips this summer.
The problem was temporarily resolved when Congress intervened and sent legislation to President Obama that would allow the parks to issue permits for this summer's season.
To learn more about the process and how to comment on what the new plan should include, visit the National Park Service Planning, Environment, and Public Comment website and/or consider attending an upcoming workshop during the last two weeks of October to listen to a presentation by the National Park Service and meet with staff to discuss your ideas about alternatives or submit your comments.
The schedule for the meetings is:
Thursday, October 25, 2012
7 p.m.- 9 p.m.
Eastern Sierra Tri-county Fairgrounds
Patio Building
Sierra Street and Fair Street
Bishop, CA 93514
Friday, October 26, 2012
7 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Los Angeles River Center
California Building Atrium
570 West Avenue 26
Los Angeles, CA 90065
Monday, October 29, 2012
7 p.m. - 9 p.m.
East Bay Regional Parks
Redwood Regional Park
Richard C. Trudeau Training Center
Main Conference Room
11500 Skyline Blvd
Oakland, CA 94619
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
6 p.m. -- 8 p.m.
Visalia Marriott Hotel
Main Ballroom
300 South Court Street
Visalia, CA 93291
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Comments
Yes, I understand all that. My point was that taking the park overall, these backcountry camps are far less intrusive on the national parks experience than the overbuilt Yosemite valley 'services' that I listed. IMHO, only those services essential for visitors should be permitted. Food, lodging, some gas. Education not recreation.
If 'wilderness' is to be truly wilderness, then maintained trails should be eliminated also. Follow the deer paths.
I find it amusing that so many are so prompt to use wilderness character to justify banning bicycles, but now complain when it's their turn to see their favorite recreational structure/activity banned because of that very wilderness character. I have to admit that I enjoy the irony quite a bit.
I'm not getting the feeling that they're "less instrusive". Their waste disposal is serviced by helicopters and their kitchen facilities are bigger than some snack bars in Yosemite Valley.
Anon @ 6:05,
You're blurring things. You can't compare the frontcountry services at Yosemite to the backcountry camps that are in designated wilderness at SEKI. Different criteria apply.
Roger, if I may quote you, you said (see several posts above this one): "I can . . . hike about 20 miles a day and a 30 mile overnight backpack . . . . Why deny younger generations the pleasures of the solitude on wilderness trails by adding mountain bikes?"
Now, I mean no offense, but what do you think you're doing when you're hiking 20 or 30 miles? Posing a risk of violating other people's solitude! With all respect, what makes you think they want to see you but not see someone on a bicycle?
An unkind person would ask you to stop hiking forthwith so that you don't run the risk of ruining others' solitude.
I won't go that far, but would politely suggest that if you reassess and modify your comment you'll be able to shield yourself from accusations of applying a double standard that favors you.
Now, about those younger generations . . . . I'm afraid that you have an overoptimistic view about their love for wilderness solitude. The OECD issued a report saying that 75% of Americans are going to be either overweight or obese by 2020. That will include, unfortunately, many younger people. By discouraging bicycling on trails, you're not doing anything to help get younger people fit instead of fat.
As an anonymous poster described on these pages recently, the kids he works with can't stand hiking: the slow pace, the insects, the boredom, etc. That, I fear, is the reality. You don't have to worry about kids worrying about loss of solitude in the middle of the High Uintas. They're not there in the first place—not except for an infinitesimal handful.
As Nicholas Kristof pointed out in a New York Times column this week, only a "tiny minority" of Americans is interested in rugged hiking. "[T]he number of backcountry campers in our national parks has fallen by nearly 30 percent since 1979." He wrote in a companion blog: "I find the declining use of back-country areas of national parks utterly depressing."
Please bear in mind that we're not paying taxes for those public lands simply for your private enjoyment of them. They're for the use of everyone willing to use them in a quiet and undamaging manner.
To imtnbke, I will be mountain biking and hiking in the Mammoth Mountain area in California, and in the Breckenridge Colorado area the next two weeks. I hope I don't offend anyone else on the trails. I will post some comments after I get home. Part of the problem for mountain bikers is they are their own worst enemy. Just look at the impressions they leave with many of their videos.
Roger, I hope you have pleasant experiences during your trip.
Roger: surely you're not complaining about how, at age 76, you can hike ONLY 20 miles a day?!?! Jeez.(or, maybe, why?!). I'm happy covering 3 (though with many stops by streams and meadows and an occasional snooze...).
Well, perhaps, but that still leaves a LOT of young hikers out there. I would estimate that John Muir Trail use has increased about 20% in the last 5 years -- most of that increase is from people in their late teens to late 20s. A lot more families with kids doing the trail and shorter trips. So while those sorts of stats are more than a bit depressing for the country as a whole, trail use in Yosemite and Sequoia Kings is at daily saturation in many places (that is, the number of people starting a hiker are close to or at the quota for a given trailhead).
For most of the 90s and early 2000s, I was concerned it was just a bunch of fellow-aging baby boomers out there. But it's not. A new cohort is taking up overnight backpacking and visiting National Park frontcountry areas. A great thing!
George