Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
An $8,500 Ticket to Yellowstone
It's a familiar story these days. Science and common sense be damned--if a Bush or Cheney crony wants it, they get it.By Joan McCarter, 7-25-08
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The east entrance to Yellowstone National Park is about 53 miles west of Cody, Wyoming, on a road running through the steep-sided Sylvan Pass, an avalanche waiting to happen most winters, given that there are 20 or so avalanche chutes in the pass. The National Park service has been having an ongoing dispute for years with Cody recreational business owners over keeping that pass open during high avalanche season, December through February.
Last November, the Park Service had been set to issue a final decision, based on a variety of impact studies including environmental and occupational safety and risk management, to keep the pass closed three months out of the year. Then an all too familiar thing happened.
But in November, just as a crucial ruling was to come out, an official in the Park Service’s Washington headquarters called Yellowstone and asked that key sections of the document be faxed for review by nine White House officials, including policy advisers to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, said two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals. Cheney is a former Wyoming congressman.
The episode fits a pattern of complaints by government scientists and experts who contend the administration frequently has overruled their work and imposed politically driven policies that benefit powerful economic interests, on issues from global warming to endangered species. For example, the administration rejected scientific advice in loosening air quality standards for ground-level ozone and soot, and ignored advice to control greenhouse gas emissions.
And what happened this week? You got it, the initial Park service decision was reversed and the pass is to remain open, although, as the National Parks Traveler notes, a key amendment might save the day--it specifies that the “pass will only be open between December 22 and March 1 and then only if weather allows, if safety can be maintained, if equipment is available to groom the route, and if the Park Service can afford to maintain the pass.”
The safety and affordability are the keys here. The route will be kept open the way avalanche corridors usually are, with explosive charges dropped from helicopters or fired from howitzers to dislodge threatening snow. One of the problems posed by this is little landmines sometimes left around the park--not all of the munitions explode on impact. Then there’s the fact that crews manning the howitzers actually have to figure out how to navigate those 20 avalanche chutes to get in place to fire them. It’s a risky business.
Then there’s the cost, and this is where we get in to the total surreality of what the Bush administration has imposed here. In order to keep this pass open and to do it with the maximum safety provided to Park workers and visitors, it will cost nearly $4 million in initial costs (that’s four times the Park’s FY2008 budget increase over FY2007) and $456K in annual operating expenses.
The National Parks Traveler does some more math: “Last winter 463 people traveled over Sylvan Pass from Cody. At that rate, based on the nearly $4 million Yellowstone soon could find itself spending to keep Sylvan Pass safe, the cost would equate to $8,470.76 per person.”
You read that right: $8,470.76 per single tourist visit into the Park via Sylvan Pass. That’s an expensive day pass--picked up, I might add, not by the visitor. Not by the Cody company providing the guide service in. By us. You and me. The taxpayer. So much for the “smaller government, fiscally responsible” Bush administration.
Just out of curiosity, and because I’m a bleeding heart liberal, I spent a little time Googling what $8,500 could buy one, either in public or private dollars. (I rounded up. So sue me.)
- Five months salary for a mid-level mid-career federal employee.
- 37 months of combat pay for soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan.
- 134 high school introductory biology textbooks.
- Roughly 8.5 months of health insurance for a family of four.
- A month of food assistance to 242 children living with hunger in the U.S.
- A backyard windmill.
- An Oscar de la Renta gown (in 2006 dollars) to wear to the White House Christmas party.
Or you could look at it this way, it’s the majority of the 2008 federal tax bill for a married couple, filing jointly, earning $65,101-$131,450. A year’s taxes for one joy ride through avalanche territory. Priceless.
Or you could think about it just in terms of the national park system itself:
And yet, 560 miles to the south there’s another unit of the National Park System, Dinosaur National Monument, that obviously doesn’t have the political cache of a Yellowstone. You’d think it might, as part of the monument is in Utah, which, politically, is the reddest state in the nation. But it doesn’t. No, Dinosaur’s superintendent was forced to eliminate two of the three staff positions in her paleontological division because she couldn’t find the $200,000 or so in salaries and benefits for those two positions....
Look around the park system and you quickly can spot staff reductions forced on park managers because the dollars supposedly don’t exist. At Acadia National Park there are 20 vacancies on the 100-person staff. At Blue Ridge Parkway there are 45 or more vacancies. At Gettsyburg National Military Park more than two dozen full-time employees have been let go the past two decades due to insufficient funding. Canyonlands National Park did away with a deputy superintendent’s position when the incumbent retired to save $122,000. Rocky Mountain National Park filled a deputy superintendent’s job with a division chief, and then left that position vacant to make ends meet.
Does that qualify as robbing Peter to pay Cheney’s home state buddies? It’s enough to make one wonder if Halliburton isn’t invested in the Wyoming tourist business.
The National Parks Conservation Association has filed federal suit on the whole snowmobiles in the Park issue, and as part of the case, requested the documents relating to the rule-making for the Sylvan Pass decision. Not surprisingly, when the 40,000-page record was released hundreds of documents, including the faxes from Yellowstone to the White House, were withheld. Executive privilege, don’t you know. Whether it’s over the outing of a covert CIA operative, the railroading of a political foe, the rampant politicization of the justice department, illegal spying on Americans, or just a ridiculous and blatant waste of taxpayer dollars in Wyoming, this administration holds itself above accountability.
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Comments
Marion, can you really look deep inside your federal government hating self and imagine that this is a smart way to spend taxpayer dollars?
Now if only they would stop witholding information from us so we could figure out what really is going on, and then develop our opinions/solutions. How frustrating.
And you seem to have entirely missed the point of the article if you think I'm arguing environment here. This is all about $4 million federal dollars being spent on a relative handful of tourists. Our taxes. I'm talking financial impact, here. Is Cody really, really dependent upon those 600 some winter visitors for its economic health? Really?
Is this really what you want the feds doing with your taxes? Really?
By the way where did the $4 million price tag come from? I would have to go back and try to dig up the costs, but here is one quote: "For the winter of 2007-2008 the east entrance saw just 463 people pass through and head over Sylvan Pass, according to Park Service records cited by Mr. Stevens. For that traffic the park incurred avalanche control and maintenance costs of $298,806, or $645.37 per visitor, he added." And from another site: "In the agreement the National Park Service reached with the state last month and that Snyder has now ratified, the agency has agreed to continue to spend the money to keep the pass open _ roughly $300,000 last winter"
Sounds to me like a little imgaination is taking place, and maybe stretching the facts a little. The whole idea of closing it is based on trying to eliminate snowcoaches from Yellowstoneo it can be the exclusive resort for skiers..at taxpayer expense fo course.
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=104&sid=1444556
The $4 million figure is based on what it will cost the Park Service to meet all safety concerns laid out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. That total includes $3.46 million in one-time costs and $456,216 in recurring annual operational costs that no doubt will be driven up by inflation.
No doubt it's expensive to keep the park's other entrances open in winter, but none pose the safety issues as does Sylvan Pass, and I'd venture the per-person cost is less in light of the higher numbers of visitors.
As to your contention that there's a subtle movement to turn Yellowstone into a resort for skiers, that's a bit of a leap. Keep in mind that the National Park Service's mandate is to preserve/conserve resources foremost for future generations, and then to provide for public enjoyment. If you have two modes of winter transportation in the park -- snowmobiles and snowcoaches -- it only makes sense to provide that public enjoyment with the mode of transportation that has less of an impact on the park's resources, which snowcoaches do, according to the park's own research.
The point remains, however, that this is a ridiculous expense for an extremely strapped park system, based on what appears to be a purely political decision.
I do not care for Ronald Reagan, but he was correct when he said, "....the problem is government".
The figures that 'only 463 people' sno-mo'd over Sylvan Pass last winter " and the statement that Yellowstone would have to spend the astronomical sum of $ 4 million to keep the pass open safely are not just Red Herrings, they are both Crimson Whales. Then comes the gross misapplication of statistics to inductively state this somehow means the Park Service is spending $ 8500 per capita to accomodate the winter travellers. Well, there's Junk Science and then there's Enron Accounting .
The actual real cost to the Park Service for Sylvan Pass in winter used to be zero. That was c.1960. In more recent times, it has run about $ 250,000 year max for the howitzer and personnel , but not the helicopter operation which was a recent replacement for the howitzer and groomers and proved to be a first rate disaster and boondoggle.
As for "only 463 people" going over Sylvan this past winter, that is a self-fulfilling prohecy of Park Service management since the year 1999 when they began using artifical gate quotas and demanding that all snowmobilers must be escorted by commercial guides that were not cheap. I recall one President's Day weekend when over 175 snowmobiles carrying over 300 people went over and back from Pahaska Tepee at the East Gate to West Yellowstone. A similar number came from the West Gate to Pahaska . So right there on that one weekend before quotas and the Guide law, over 500 people made the traverse of Sylvan in one weekend.
It was not the public that self-limited the useage of Sylvan Pass by their own choice...it was the Park Service choking off access to Sylvan by management fiat. The numbers went down to 5-15 percent of their former annual totals only because of the Park Service's arbitrary and capricious new regulations .
Which makes any discussion as appears in this article about millions of dollars being needed to service a few hundred over-snow visitors to bewidely disingenuous at best. Or as Mark Twain said, there are lies , damn lies, and statistics.
But I have a question. Where does it say anywhere that winter travelers must pay for the total cost of winter use exclusively ? That is not as self evident as it seems. The route over Sylvan Pass is the same in winter as it is the rest of the year...it's a BRAND NEW HIGHWAY that we spent $ 27 million over 7 years to rebuild , widen , and make safer. Sylvan Pass meets or exceeds federal highway standards. Now, some 300,000 motor vehicles travel over Sylvan Pass Road in the summer. Does not a significant portion of their $ 25+ gate fee per vehicle go to Yellowstone's operating budget , also cover winter maintenance ? Let me put that differently... do your taxes and especially your state fuel taxes only apply in the season theyw ere colelcted in when it comes to maintaining rural roads and county lanes and snow removal for school buses, etc etc etc ? Of course not. The operation of all roads and maintenance thereof is distributed across the entire year for both revenue and expense. It's absolutely stupid and deflective to put forth the argument that the entirety of winter travel costs for Sylvan Pass be borne entirely by the winter user. It's a federal highway , folks. US Hwy 14-16-20
And the East Entrance is a Cash Cow for Yellowstone and the Park Service.
Everything about the Sylvan Pass issue on both sides of these arguments has been taken so far out of genuine gedynamic and physical context , and amplified by odurate bureaucrats and rabid snowmobilers both so much that distorion overwhelmed the signal. It's mostly all noise these days.
I'll fill you al in on the political manipulation aspect later and how Cody was able to play their Dick Cheney card so successfully. Of course a Dick Cheney trump card that is an Ace of Diamonds in August will be a Deuce of Clubs come November 5 , but that is another story.
I just want most of the posters here and the readers of this most excellent NewWest website and forum to know that thanks to a skewbald news media , information manipulation , plain old political patronage, and the gremlins that haunt the Park Service, the real story about Sylvan Pass has yet to see the light of day in any season. The environmentalists, the snowgoers, the politcos , the Park Rangers and Park Service admins have warped it all beyond recognition , no matter whose viewpoint you try to ascribe to.
It's truely Beyond Shit. Really. Strong words to follow.
Dewey Vanderhoff
Cody WY
---first snowmobiled over Sylvan in December 1959; mostly quit in 1973 becasue I was disgusted with the company I was keeping; only been back a few times since , and by the way snowcoaches are fabulous
Re the $4 million figure, that was produced by the NPS and presented to Cody officials. The breakdown:
* One-time cost of $875,000 for a concrete bunker and warming hut for those who keep the pass open, as suggested by OSHA.
* One-time cost of $1.16 million, and annual costs thereafter of $35,000, for access risk mitigations as suggested by OSHA.
* Annual costs of $34,000, plus one-time cost of $62,000, to fund two rangers for East Entrance staffing in winter plus a vehicle (not sure how fancy).
* Additional annual costs of $53,000 to meet OSHA recommended emergency response and evacuation personnel.
* $304,000 initial cost for rescue/recovery vehicle and ambulance.
* $32,700 one-time cost for howitzer operations.
* $300,000 one-time cost and $33,000 annual costs for unexploded ordnance recovery ops.
* One-time cost of $715,000 for engineering.
Total: $3.9 million
Are those numbers cooked? Who knows.
As for information manipulation, it occurs on both sides of the table.
Since individuals are not allowed for fear they will contaminate the place, they must have an approved guide, and how many of them would there be east of the gate? They could have an access key, and be responsible for making sure their clients had a pass, and make a report to the park. That woudl eliminate that cost.
What are access risk mitigations? Why do they cost over a million dollars?
Sure looks like a crimson whale to me.
Yup, Kurt...those numbers are made up and cooked alright. You wouldn't believe some of what NPS has brought to the table . I also have to say that the six yearround residents of the East Entrance Ranger Station could be effectively used to aptrol the road more than they have, as well as the Lake District personnel from the west . You see, the Park Rangers have quit being part of the day-to-day enforcement and public safety protocols of keeping Sylvan open. They are not mountain people ; not western folk ; not of the rigged stature necessary to take on the mountains in winter. Frankly , they are wimps. If Yellowstone would hire qualified seasoned outdoorsy people to run Sylvan in winter with the full understanding that you cannnot even come close to mitigating--let alone eliminating--the risk of travelling Sylvan in winter, we could do this. And do it cheaply and efficiently and allow thousands, not hundreds of users to enjoy Sylvan in winter.
And to those who have more rotun diisues with having Sylvan Pass open at all in Winter : Please don't try to tell me snowmobiles are loud and polluting if you are not also willing to restrict diesel tourbuses and Harley Davidsons. Please don't tell me snowmobilers impact wildlife when 300 people cause bear jams and wolf jams relentlessly. Please don't try to tell me Sylvan is dangerous beyond reproach or reconciliation and requires some kind of McMurdo Antarctic Base up there to be utilized. It doesn't. Get real.
I think the whole thing was based on forcing Wyoming to maintain the road to Cooke City from Cody...even the part in Montana, that would make it easier for the wolfers.
The NPS will only allow 2 snow coaches and 30 snow machines in each day. I suspect that would include guards, er guides, so one could make the case that only 15 paying customers could go in from the east entrance....and I believe that snowmachines pay an extra fee also right?
The whole thing is nonsense meant to appease enviros, so they aren't disturbed by folks making noise.
(1) States in which the majority of people voted for GW Bush received an average of $1.31 for every federal $1 contributed. States that voted for Kerry received $0.92 for every federal $1 contributed. These figures differed significantly (t= 4.335, df=48, p<0.001).
(2) A simple bivariate linear regression shows that the percentage of people who voted for Bush was strongly, positively correlated (r=0.43) with the federal dollars received per dollar contributed. This one variable explained roughly 18% of the variance in federal dollars received.
The bottomline (according to "JB")... States who vote republican get more from the federal government than states that vote democratic. Yet, these people are constantly complaining about taxes!
And, which high-country road will be next? How about the Beartooth Highway? The Beartooths would really be something during January and February.....a little bit of Switzerland. To heck with the cost.....let others pay the bills. Just pretend there are no avalanches in the Beartooths and you are good to go.
And, we should not deprive the folks down in Jackson of their rights. Surely there are folks there that would like to drive a vehicle and take the kids to Old Faithful during the cold season. Why not keep the south entrance open all year for vehicular traffic?
And, do not forget the cars and trucks that would line up at West Yellowstone. They deserve their rights too.
Virtually everyone I have met over the decades from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho are of conservative leanings in all regards. They tend not to waste money on trivia and things that are not necessary and meaningful. And, they tend to be very cautious about opening a can of worms. It surprises me that the locals in Wyoming are not fighting this wasteful expenditure with all they can muster. Unless.......the locals have decided that "we can play and they can pay". Surely the locals have not adopted the ways of the eastern establishment....or have they? We know the Vice President has, perhaps others are following his lead.
(Perhaps I am just jealous because I cannot be there to enjoy Yellowstone in the snow.)
I, like so many others I know, haven't been to Yellowstone in the winter since snowmobilers were required to travel in groups with guides. I snowmobile (on a 4-stroke) with a few friends because we enjoy the solidue and enjoy watching wildlife (from a distance) in the winter. The moose in my area will walk right up to where you are sitting. You used to be able to do that in Yellowstone. You could ride to some areas and walk or ski the trails with no one else around. The buffalo would walk right up to you as you sat on your sled and sneeze all over you (love those full face helmets for brucellosis protection). They've never bothered us as we sit quietly while they come to check us out and wait until they have moved a good distance away before starting up again.
I don't go to Yellowstone to watch the other tourists. You have to travel a long ways to get away from the crowds in the summer and ankle reconstruction and 3 knee surgeries have made that impossible for me.
Many communities that help provide an enjoyable vacation experience for tourist in the summer need the snowmobilers to survive the winter. It helps keep good employees working, earning a living and available for the busier summer season. This allows working families to stay in the area, keep the kids in school and for tourists to come and have all their needs met during the spring, summer and fall. We need more balance in the economies of small town that are so heavily dependent on tourism since all of the natural resource related (good paying) jobs have been taken away from us.
I'm with you Becky, I have had a life long love of Yellowstone, but since the enviros & tour buses took over ruling it, it is not the same.
Then if some 'necks want to bust in there on their own they aren't relying on "big government" to protect them from themselves? I mean all the 'necks vote republican and say how much they hate "big government" taking care of people who are too stupid to take care of themselves anyways, right?
Let Jesus be their avalanche control.
If we are going to talk about costs, how about all of the free back country camping for hikers, some 300 if I remember right. At even $10/night, which is cheaper than the others, that is about 3000/day right there all summer subsidizing hikers.
Actaully we could stop grooming all of the roads in the park and close the gates, put guards/rangers to keep everyone out. Think of the savings. If you want to save money, you can't pick and choose those you don't want money spent on. EVERY single visitor to the park is subsidized, foreign visitors more than Americans because they pay no taxes in htis country.
As Becky said, it didn't cost anything to keep the gate open until they wanted this that and the other done to keep people out. The guide requirement did more to keep locals out of the park than anything, it is a stupid requirement thought up by enviros who want the park for just themselves.
Last year the cost was less than $300,000 to keep the road cleared and we had a really tough winter, the 4 million is one time costs that someone thought up that might be done. To say it is an $8500 subsidy for each winter user thru the east gate is a blatant lie.
sorry, no matter how you try to justify your redneck welfare it ain't happening, especially after spouting a bunch of I hate to pay for stuff and get the government off our backs so we can be personally responsible flim-flam for so long.
You should go back to conspiracy theories about computers taking over the world by tricking us via radiometric dating and conflating weather and climate. It's less crazy.
First , the weapon: The M1 howitzer, designated M101, was developed as a portable field gun for WWII , first used in 1941 and upgraded in 1944 to the M3 version. The M1, M2, and M3's are no longer used for front line service by the Army...it's been officially Obsoleted. Some were relegated to National Guard for training. The gun currently emplaced on Sylvan Pass appears to be a refurbished M2A1 Vietnam Era howitzer. In recent years, there was an even older gun sitting up there.
Now this is gonna get me in trouble some day . I visit the Sylvan howitzer pad now and then. It's a quarter mile above the highway at the crest of the pass, south side, with a bulldozed road to it. A five minute walk takes you to three buildings; one a workshed ; another a detached ammo bunker. The howitzer is on a semi-permanent steel pad with an embedded rotating surplus tank turret. M60 tank joint, I think.
I am very suspicious of the shells fired by the Park Service gunnies. Why ? They leave the empty ammo crates laying around. The shells fired are never newer than 1973 production. They're firing 35-year old Vietnam War ammo on top of the frozen Rocky Mountains. Only god and some thankless supply sargeant know where that ammo had been before it got to Sylvan Pass... Dien Bien Phu or no further away than Ft. Lewis Washington ....WTHK.
A 105mm can pop off a 40 lb. shell and send a High Explosive projectile up to 5 miles ( 7600 meters). The HE round has five pounds of TNT or a nice 50/50 Amatol charge in it. The brass can be loaded by the gunnies with 1 to 7 " doughnuts" of charge depending on the range the gun is expected to need. The HE round, fused, is crimped to the brass by the gunnies on site. Field artillery fired from Sylvan Pass is rarely fired in ideal weather.
The net result is I am not the least bit surprised that so many Sylvan Pass rounds fail to detonate. Old ammo , obsolete gun , amateur gunners, Arctic conditions.
But unexploded rounds are fired into the face of Hoyt Peak , an broad area not travelled by hikers or pedestrians. It's covered in rock talus with scrub pine on very steep slopes. Perhaps the dud rounds migrate down the face of the mountain back towards the road, but the probability of anyone coming into contact with them is a fraction of one percent at best. Even when they go looking for them they can't find them.
Those equally dubious Park Service figures detailing the cost of the Sylvan Pass howitzer operation show a sum of over $ 1000 per round fired for cost of ammo , and something like $60,000 for the annual " rent" of the gun. In the case of the former, that seems high . As for the rent of the gun , quien sabe ? We can never bet NPS to tell us much about that aspect. But a little research in how howitzers are used elsewhere in the West for avalanches control at ski areas and certain highways would broaden the context .
I'm just not sure I trust the Yellowstone Sylvan gunnery operation and its stated costs to be anywhere near the efficiency it should be. But I do know this : The alternative used in recent years of contracting with a Missoula/ Bozeman helicopter service to deploy hand charges was a monstrous debacle. The contractor had way way too much downtime and could never fly when they needs avalanche work because of ---duh ! ---bad weather. Sylvan Pass was closed more than it was open two winters ago becasue the whole helicopter thing wasn't performing. And the Park Service let that contract for $ 360,000 for a 85 day winter season. There's your $ 4000/day up front costs to wheeze at . And it was a near total waste of taxpayer money to go with helicopters instead of competent gunnery and everyday road grooming by Sno-Cat. A boondoggle of a solution.
Sylvan Pass can easily and effectively be kept open in winter to over snow travel. It's no more treacherous than Colorado highways that traverse mountains at far higher elevations. There will be accidents and incidents, but that is the nature of winter travel in SubAlpine terrain. The risk cannot be negated, but it can be mitigated. And accepted .
The problem is that Yellowstone National Park does a lousy job of avalanche " control" on Sylvan Pass. They are buffoons about it , actually. Not the guys out there doing the work ...the administrators. The problems keeping Sylvan Pass open to oversnow travel in winter ( it's a brand new wide highway , folks!) have little to do with avalanches and baseline gunnery , but a lot to do with incompetent administrative people and obsolete military hardware.
What drives ( the lack of) Sylvan Pass being open in winter is the arbitrary and capricious decision by Yellowstone Administration o orphan the thing. They don;t like Sylvas Pass and don't want to deal with it or do physical work to serve the public in winter. They long ago quit patrolling it much ( hence the commercial snowmobile guide law ) or doing road enforcement, instead foisting that onto the guides with veiled threat , thereby transfering their public safety imperative onto the backs of the guides, then turning around and severely limiting the numbers of snowmobilers that can use the pass at all. That's why travel numbers are so low. Even when the pass is scheduled to be open , Park Rangers close it without notice at the first sight of snowfall. A snowflake on the nose seems all it takes .
Four to six Park Service rangers now live at the East Entrance ranger station at the base of Sylvan Pass in winter. ( More in summer- they added more residence cabins and vehicle shops in recent years) . If Sylvan Pass was closed in winter, the Park Service would technically be orphaning their own employees there who would be cut off going into Yellowstone over Sylvan along with the public. That makes a lotta sense, doesn't it ? It is 365 miles from the East entrance to Park Headquarters at Mammoth Hot Springs by highway via Cody WY , Laurel and Livingston MT. It's 26 miles by snowmobile over Sylvan to the Lake Ranger Station that the East Entrance people work under. Would the Park Service allow their own employees to use Sylvan Pass in winter, but not the public. Suzanne Lewis said publically at a hearing in Cody the route would be closed to everyone, even her own employees. Why do I not fully believe that ? The Park Services closes lots of roads to public use but leaves them open for "Administrative Travel Only "... like the fact the same Sylvan Pass road is open till the Wednesday before Thanksgiving every year, but is closed to the public from the first Monday of November on . That's three weeks of disparity. Ditto many interior Park roads. I drove my 2WD Volvo station wagon from Old Faithful out over Sylvan on November 23rd of 2003, but the East Entrance had been closed to the public since October 5 that year . The magic red permit card and combination to the locked gate were all that was needed, because the roads were maintained all along, just not for the public. Don't expect the Park Service to obey their own regs on winter use access. I already know they don't...
Sylvan Pass is doable in winter. It's just that certain spineless Yellowstone rangers and obdurate administrators don't want to do it. There's your real issue, folks.
Dewey, that is an excellent overview of the Sylvan Pass situation.
Interestingly enough it appears the NPS personel do not want to be bothered by visitors anymore than skiers do.
-dewey
Cody WY
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Cody played its Cheney card from up it sleeve
How timely . It trumped all, but come November, that would be next to worthless. As a former point man for the Reagan and Bush (4I) brigade , the colorful Senator Al Simpson of Cody once commanded that kind of clout in Washington , but it has sublimated away to the point of being more gaseous than solid. The Simpson name was a few years ago the Gold Standard in Wyoming political currency , but has been seriously devalued, as son Colin found out the hard way in the 2007 Wyoming Republican Party cage fight to replace the other Cody US Senator, Craig Thomas. Wheretofore anyone named Simpson would have been perfunctorially annointed, Colin Simpson never even made the semi-finals when competing with his peers on real merit rather than hutzpah (He wasn't conservative enough for the cabal , just as his dad was shown the door in the US Senate in 1994 in the race for Senate Majority leader , usurped by Trent Lott R-MISS for not being conservative enough in the Gingrich hegemony. Al stepped down .Colin couldn't step up in June 07 because his feet were suddenly encased in cement , poured lovingly by his colleagues.)
Fast forwarding, the former Senator , Big Al, could still call in a favor or two with Cheney when needed. In the case of Sylvan Pass winter use, it was needed badly. The Regional Park Administrator Mike Snyder in Denver was allegedly going to stick to the company line of not allowing Winter travel over Sylvan as recently as ten days before the exact opposite decision was announced. Huh ? Colin was on the team that had been negotiating closed door with the Park Service bureaucrats all winter long , and those talks, though mediated by third parties, were going nowhere for the Cody delegation whose mission in life was to protect the marginal winter recreation business of that other Park County Republican stalwart, State Senator Hank Coe of Cody , whose family owns the Pahaska Tepee Resort at the base of Sylvan Pass. The Coe name is likewise fading fast from the scrolls of the state GOP honor roll, like being Past Exalted Ruler at the Elks Club. BTW--- Al Simpson is the Chairman of the Board of the $ 1 billion Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody that was a family institution run by the Coe family , the Coe's having made their fortune in Standard Oil C before the antitrust breakup by Teddy Roosevelt. Dick Cheney is an honorary member of the BBHC board and visits Cody regularly . (I also believe Colin Simpson has a seat on that board, but am not sure ). Acting on Coe's behalf, Al Simpson called in a favor from old friend Cheney and put it in son Colin's hip pocket to take to the Sylvan Pass talks in late May or June this year. If you think the Cody-Cheney connection is fluff, let me insert a reminder here. Recall that Cheney was Wyoming's lone Congressman serving in that role for 13 years till Bush 41 called on him to be Secretary of Defense in late 1990 in the runup to the first Gulf War. Cheney's representative in Wyoming was a man named Paul Hoffman working out of the Casper federal offices. Cheney being promoted to the Pentagon put Hoffman out of a job ( he was actually fired by Cheney's replacement, the late Craig Thomas). Hoffman kicked around for a bit but finally landed a 12 year post as the executive director of the Cody Country Chamber of Commerce, during which he became a Yellowstone antagonist. One former Park Superintendent said of Hoffman and Cody that " all I ever got from them was grief". When Cheney became Vice President for Junior Bush , Hoffman left the Cody Chamber for a plum job in Washington . He became the undersecretary at the Department of Interior overseeing the US Fish and Wildlife Service and ---ta da!---the National Park Service. He got that job based on the list of six references on his resumé.... Al Simpson , Wyoming Governor Jim Geringer, Congressman Barbara Cubin, Wyoming's other Republican Senator Mike Enzi, and Wyoming GOP gubernatorial hopeful and Bush-Cheney-Simpson disciple Eli Bebout. And the only name he really needed: the Honorable Dick Cheney. Paul Hoffman served as deputy assistant secretary of Interior until the day that Gale Norton's head rolled, adn Hoffman was quietly shunted over to an HR or accounting job somewhere in DOI, where he is to this day. It does serve to illustrate that Cody Wyoming had a Cheney card to play all along, and that card was set to expire later this year.
On July 25 , we found out it was , as the New West opinionized article states, a decision based as much on political manipulation from above as it was a grassroots movement from below putting pressure on the stubborn Park Service administrators who absolutely hate Sylvan Pass and want nothing to do with it in winter. With a senior Simpson and a sittng Vice President above them , and a junior Simpson and a Coe below them, the jaws of the Veep vise were excruciating to Yellowstone's stubborn bureaucrats, who finally caved. They really wanted to stall a few more months till the Bush administration was out the door. Presidents come and Presidents go , but bureaucracies go on forever. Because on that Cheney card is the notification " Best If Used By October 2008 ". But hold this thought : neither that card nor the Park Service's reversal decison are lettered in stone.
Good news for L'il Ole Cody. For now. After the Obama Renaissance begins in January 2009, any hope of negotiating Sylvan Pass open in winter would've been frozen shut. But it is a phyrric victory for the self-called " Shut Out Of Yellowstone " group that fought to keep Sylvan Pass open...the Park Rangers can still close Sylvan on a whim if a snowflakes lights on their nose, and the Coe 's Pahaska Tepee is not nearly the economic juggernaut and vital winter business that everyone claimed it is. Not by a darn sight. That was a red herring all along , folks.
This is stated not to approve of or even acknowledge the Park Service's and Tim Steven's / National Parks Conservation Assoc and the other so-called conservation groups whose contention is that science was somehow supplanted by politics. That isn't a red herring...it's a Crimson Whale. Washed up on the beach where we all can go see it , if we wish. Whatever you may think about the politics behind the Sylvan Pass turnaround and defeat of the Yellowstone Boneheads, the argument that Sylvan Pass is so dangerous as to be unmanageable is so very bogus. How odd that fifty years of snowmobiling over that road in far nastier winters than we've had lately have resulted in no fatalities and few accidents. he reason that so few snowmobilers use Sylvan Pass in recent years is the Park Service ran them off, choking down the numbers at the gate with excessively hard and fast regulations to dissuade use rather than enable it---a self-fulfilling prophecy, but used here egregiously to bolster a phantom case. That the Park Service has been forced to keep Sylvan Pass open in winter is in fact the correct decision and management policy , but not for the reasons stated nor the heavy handed political means used to override the winter closure; both of which are deplorable. The reason for keeping Sylvan Pass open in winter is simply because it's quite doable and has a 50-year history of no public snowmobiling fatalities. ( Caveat : the one death by snowmobile up there occured on Sylvan Road several miles below the pass...a Ranger ran off the mountain for reasons unknown, but not due to avalanche. )
I'm frankly disgusted with both sides of this debacle. Does the end justify the means ? Only if you can stand the smell. I first snowmobiled into Yellowstone up Sylvan Pass in 1959 and for over ten years we pretty much had the east side of the Park and Sylvan to ourselves, for snowmobiling in those days was a wilderness adventure and unregulated. A genuine Western experieince unmatched to this day , for by 1972 there were so many reckless snowmobilers on loud smoke-belching machines and Rangers who were getting nasty that Sylvan Pass wasn't all that enjoyable anymore. But it never was not passable or not manageable, if you respected the mountain and understood that Mom Nature can take your life any day at any time is She so chooses. That's what veteran snowmobilers know ,but the Park Service has yet to learn here. The made-up rules and quotas for snowmobiling up and over Sylvan Pass in winter are far, far away from the physical reality of doing so. Taken either way , the Sylvan Pass winter use options being bandied were not of the Real World to begin with. Crass commercialism of public resources meets bonehead bureaucracy. Can we have another choice here, please ?
Bottom Line: Nobody involved in this recent Sylvan Pass decision reversal has anything to be proud of.
The fact is, the Sylvan Pass fiasco is circular political reasoning at its worst. There used to be plenty of snowcatters over Sylvan in the winter to spread out the cost of avie control. Then in 1998 Finley dropped the bomb, and ever since then, especially now with the spendy guides and rental cats, the numbers have been in freefall.
At the same time, there is probably a social preference among rangers for visitors that can be herded and controlled more easily into a structured "educational" experience...i.e. snowcoach riders and skiers.
Overall, that means less work and less aggravation for the same pay, assuming the agency doesn't cut back on winter staff to follow winter declines in visits from former levels.
The Park Service needs to be careful. Its constituency is NOT the groups that sue, sue, sue; but rather people who visit the parks and spend money appreciating the parks. Look at USFS. They've eliminated everyone that used to use their ground, only ones left are a few horse hunters and summer hikers. No wonder they lack budget support.