New West Feature
Conservationists Deplore Bombing of Avalanche Runs at Yellowstone
Sylvan Pass should be closed in winter rather than expensively and dangerously bombed, groups claim.By Brodie Farquhar, 8-17-11
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| Yellowstone National Park road crews and avalanche experts work to clear Sylvan Pass of more than 20 feet of snow from slide in May that injured no one but partially buried a park vehicle. Photo courtesy of WyoFile. | |
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The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, backed by several other conservation groups, has strongly criticized Yellowstone National Park’s winter use plan to keep Sylvan Pass open between Cody and the park’s east entrance.
The pass features 20 avalanche runs that must be knocked down by artillery shells fired from a 105 mm howitzer, at a cost of $325,000 per season. Weather permitting, high explosives are hand-dropped on the avalanche runs from a helicopter.
In recent years, only a handful of winter tourists a week have ventured through the pass into the remote reaches of East Yellowstone. The coalition objects not only to the low cost/benefit ratio, but also to the risk to park employees traveling past four avalanche runs to reach the howitzer gun site, which itself is exposed to avalanche and rock fall.
The death of park ranger Bob Mahn in 1994, east of Sylvan Pass, is as an indicator of the risks faced by park staff each winter under the avalanche runs, the coalition claims.
In separate letters to Yellowstone Superintendent Daniel N. Wenk and the Office of Management and Budget (the watchdog arm of the White House), the coalition and its allies noted, “Sylvan Pass is the only location in the entire National Park System where the NPS [National Park Service] undertakes highly expensive and highly risky winter avalanche mitigation operations solely to permit recreational use . . . averaging little more than one snowmobile per day.”
Although state transportation departments and ski areas on federal lands in the Rockies use howitzers to shoot down avalanches, Sylvan Pass is the only NPS operation to do so, leaving other avalanche-prone areas closed to the public.
The coalition has also expressed concern about unexploded shells – one of which was picked up in 1997 and carried by a tourist to the Fishing Bridge Visitor Center.
A car travels the newly plowed east entrance road over Sylvan Pass in Yellowstone National Park in the spring of 2001. Photo by Ruffin Prevost, WyoFile.
The letter to the Yellowstone superintendent came from the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, the National Parks Conservation Association, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The letter to OMB came from those groups plus the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.
Don Bachman, president of the board of directors for the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies, opposes keeping Sylvan Pass open in the winter, and offered written comments on the NPS plan in 2007. Should anything go wrong for avalanche gunners or subsequent tourists, he noted, rescue and medical help from the Wyoming towns of Lake or Cody would take hours to reach Sylvan Pass in bad weather.
Bachman, who has 40 years of experience in the Rockies and Alaska, studied the situation for Yellowstone and found it to be unique in his experience.
Fewer winter visitors in recent years mean a lower probability of anyone getting caught in an avalanche, he said. Increasing the number of visitors would simply increase the odds of such an accident occurring.
“But that’s balanced out by a high density of avalanche paths within one mile,” he added. While the low number of winter tourists means lower odds for tragedy, the high number of runs in one area means higher odds.
“You’re playing the odds,” he said, “and the Park Service is trying to improve the odds with avalanches on demand.”
The closest situation Bachman has seen to Sylvan Pass was when Glacier National Park officials refused permission in 2008 to Burlington Northern Railroad management to use explosives on park land for avalanche control. The railroad then switched from its strategic use of explosives, adopting instead prediction of avalanches coupled with adjustment of freight schedules.
Bachman said the railroad had much more money at stake than Cody’s snowmobile access to Yellowstone, even if winter snowmobile activity were to rise back into the thousands. “As far as I can tell, this was a political decision,” he said.
He called the decision to keep the Sylvan Pass open “completely discretionary.”
Feeling overwhelmed by snowmobiles, Yellowstone staff launched a winter use plan at the end of the Clinton administration, which eventually led to a ban of the machines from the park. The incoming Bush administration quickly rolled back the ban, and instituted a series of winter use studies—all of which said park resources were best protected by a ban on snowmobiles.
Caps were placed on how many snowmobiles and coaches could enter the park per day, and best-available-technology standards were adopted to decrease the noise and emissions of over-the-snow vehicles. As a way to increase safety and decrease the harassment of wildlife, guides were required for anyone entering the park.
This aerial shows the avalanche runs on the east entrance to Yellowstone. Photo courtesy of National Parks Service.
Subsequently, the experience of snowmobiling in Yellowstone shifted away from thrill-oriented rides to cruises and sight-seeing, which more closely echoed what the snowcoaches were already offering.
The light, fast, noisy and smoky two-stroke snowmobiles were replaced by heavier, quieter and cleaner four-stroke snowmobiles, derisively dubbed “granny sleds.” Winter visitation numbers by snowmobilers steadily fell, while snowcoach passenger numbers rose.
The East Gate had 3,160 snowmobilers in 1996, a heyday that peaked in the winter of 2000-2001 with 4,183 snowmobilers. A historic low of 92 was reached by 2009, rising slightly to 168 last winter.
Snowcoaches from Cody brought 250 tourists into the park during the winter of 2007-’08, but that service has not operated for the last three seasons. For the past several years, the town has had only one snowmobile vendor.
Coalition members point out that Cody’s hotel tax revenues are up despite the snowmobiling downturn at the park. Figures from the Wyoming Department of Revenue show that Park County’s lodging tax collections for the last five winter seasons increased from $80,364 in 2006-2007 to $103,459 in 2010-2011.
During that same period, the number of snowmobiles entering Yellowstone through the East Entrance declined from 209 to 115 per season. Snowmobilers seem to have shifted their attention from Yellowstone to the numerous trails in the nearby national forests, where two-stroke snowmobiles are still welcome, the coalition argues.
“The National Park Service’s 2009 winter use plans have displaced snowmobiles from Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway onto adjacent national forest lands in Wyoming,” according Bradley Hill, trails program manager in Wyoming’s Department of Parks and Cultural Resources.
Yellowstone’s most recent environmental impact statement, released a couple months ago, reached the same conclusion as its predecessor of two years earlier concerning Sylvan Pass: Risks could not be fully mitigated and closure of the pass was viewed as the safest option.
Sylvan Lake in Yellowstone, May 2006. Photo by Shiras Rajendran, Wikimedia Commons.
Even so, Yellowstone officials have opted for keeping Sylvan Pass open. This contrasts to a 2007 decision by Yellowstone officials to close the pass because of accident risk and budget concerns.
Park managers then believed that opening Cooke Pass to automobile travel would be a possible alternative route for Wyoming visitors in the winter. That decision sparked controversy, and the next year political pressure was brought to bear from Wyoming and Washington during closed- door negotiations. Park officials soon announced the pass would be kept open.
Wyoming politicians from the governor and legislature up to the state’s congressional delegation have lobbied vigorously to keep the pass open, to keep the number of snowmobiles up, and to push back against NPS proposals to mandate the use of guides for snowmobile groups.
Scott Balyo, executive director of the Cody Chamber of Commerce, said the Chamber supports keeping the pass open, and has sent a letter to that effect.
Claudia Wade, director of the Park County Travel Council, wrote in an email that good snowfall and the second year of a tourism promotion program emphasizing special winter events have brought more tourists to Cody and Park County. “We are seeing more folks from outside the area attending,” she declared.
Brodie Farquhar, who has covered the West for decades as a specialist in resource journalism, lives in Casper, Wyoming.
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Comments
The YNP managers have sold out completely to the external vested interests of the enviro groups and their own Machiavellian internal schemes that really don't fit the physical situation with Sylvan Pass. This entire situation was conceived and amplified wholly from arbitrary and capricious dogma. It wasn't hard at all for the Suzanne Lewis administration and her Prime Minister John Sacklin ( YNP Planner) to go totally onboard with the flimsy obtuse arguments presented by the conservationists.
As long as you realize the Park Service has two sets of rules and regulations...one for the Public to strictly adhere to, under threat of criminal penalties , and the other for their own purposes where the NPS personnel administratrively break their own 'public' rules routinely.. And their regs definitely go in opposite directions with respect to Sylvan Pass, in all seasons, not just winter. The situation with Sylvan Pass and its management is a classic example of lousy civil service ---and even corruption , collusion, and conspiracy, although those are much harder to prove. But they exist.
About 400,000 vehicles per year travel over Sylvan Pass. The possibility of a dangerous happening up there is always present. It's called " being in the mountains". Yet we just spent $ 28 million rebuilding the East Entrance Road, making it much wider and safer, including the stretch over Sylvan . For what ---so the bitchy Ranger can close it on a whim when a snowflake lands on her nose "? The East Entrance Road is all new wider safer---and open less hours than it was before ! Adminstrative closures. Yet the Park Service has relocated new personnel to live yearround at the East Entrance ...built new residences and buildings and maintenenace facilities. It used to be no ranger or winterkeeper, then just one ranger ( Bob Mohn ), then Bob and his wife Grace. Now it's a whole platoon of nitwits in new housing. THEY still need to get back to headquarters in winter: Lake Ranger Station 22 miles in from the East gate over Sylvan , so the Park Service people will always be using Sylvan regardless. Just not the public. They think the public is stupid and incompetent and a dangerous lot , or something. When actually , it's them , the Park Service who are incompetent, overprotective, risk-aversive wimpy non-mountain folk ( but with college degrees). Sylvan Pass is being held hostage by academic wimps.
If Yellowstone insists on closing Sylvan in the winter for the threat of avalanches, they must also close it yearround regardless for all the other threats, too. Close it altogether. By their own reasoning: interference with wildlife; disruption of solitude ; physical dangers ; severe weather situations ; pollution from the thousands of Harleys and diesel tourbuses that traverse it; prime grizzly habitat.
The hypocrisy and duplicity of Yellowstone's management of Sylvan Pass is egregious, far beyond any words I can put to it..
- written by someone who first went over Sylvan on a prototype doubletrack snowmobile in 1963. I pretty much gave up on snowmobiling in the early 70's, but not because of teh danger or ugly smelly loud machines...I just didn't want to be around the disgusting loud smelly people driving them. But that is no reason to deny the snowmobling public and winter recreationist the opportunity to enjoy Sylvan Pass in winter. They will gladly accept the risk. The reason so few snowmobiles use Sylvan Pass these days is due ENTIRELY to the Park Service trying to kill East Entrance mechanized winter travel altogether, and almost succeeding. But it really doesn't fit the situation on the ground at all. Sylvan Pass has been bastardized by made up misconceptions and the rotten policy resulting from those unjust justifications.
The East Entrance was not open in winter in 75/76 or 76/77. The NPS staff consisted of one (1) district ranger at Lake, and one seaonal ranger at the East Entrance to keep out bubbleheads on snowmobiles.
Then the NPS decided to promote snowmobiling. More staff at Lake, especially maintance personnel to keep Sylvan Pass open. More staff at the East Entrance. Of course snowmobilers went bonkers in the park, so the NPS increased the number of rangers to ride herd on snowmobilers going off road, chasing wildlife and generally behaving like, well, normal snowmobilers. Dolts. Lunatics.
The bureaucracy grew until there were dozens of NPS winter employees at Lake and the East Entrance. The NPS is not keeping the East Entrance open today to serve the public or even business interests in Cody: it's all about maintaining the size of the NPS bureaucracy in Yellowstone. Closing the East Entrance in winter would eliminate at least 20 NPS jobs. No Park Superintendent in his or her right mind would decrease the size of their staff.
This article sounded totally reasonable until I read that the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council support it, then figured there might be more to it.
The big engineering item in the USFS budget is road obliteration. To prevent erosion. I built a hundred miles of that USFS road in my lifetime. Full bench roads. Everything you excavated, you hauled and placed in a compacted fill. No slough, or pushing of dirt over the side slope. The erosion of those roads is from rock wear, and fines in the aggregate moving in wet weather due to traffic, poor maintenance and drainage, and just because erosion is a part of geology and geography. Shit runs down hill. And so does dirt. If that were not happening, there would be no sandy beaches, no dunes, no alluvial fans on which to grow the breadbasket foods of the world.
Obliterating a road only causes more erosion, but that is just a red herring anyway, the real objective is to keep people out of the public lands. Not having roads works well for that end.
The public can hardly go anywhere on a USFWS refuge. The FWS will find a "willing seller," tell them what they want to hear, and buy the land with funds from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which is going to sunset sooner that the NGOs of obfuscation would like, and then close the land to the public for a new, recently discovered reason. No hunting. No trapping. No being there. You sell to the public, and the public will never set foot on the ground. Up the Salmon River, and along the protected stretches of the Snake River are formerly private lands purchased by the Feds, and they end up as private retreats for public officials only. No access to the public. Overnight quarters and seasonal quarters for public officials and their retreats, and meetings about policy or gaining further land. Politboro dachas, in reality.
And that is what is in store for the buildings in Jellystone. More room for the help. And less access for the public. The people that live in the Park don't like the noise, the inconvenience, of having to share it with the piggish public. The unwashed, under educated, greedy slobs from the private sector. After all, this is ObamaNation, and government for government by government, all supported by taxes which are surely not enough and we all could pay more.
I add up my city, county, state, and federal taxes, and they are getting more than half. My partner is getting more of the deal than I am. I thought that I was the senior partner in my relationship with government. Nope. I am working partner, the earning partner, and the lampreys of government are stuck to my efforts like the ticks they are. I have to watch how and where I go so that the remoras are safe. I cannot use certain chemicals in order to protect the fleas, the bed bugs, the head lice, and all the rest of the government. We are supposed to be living in a country that is colorless. And we soon will be. With all our blood sucked out by government, we will end up as formless blobs of nothingness of that strange bluish hue of meat drained of blood. The desiccated tax payer, worker, provider, and unintentionally, the drained carcass at the compost facility.
Closing access to Yellowstone is just a teeny little piece of the big plan. Like, how many days do kids go to school in these enlightened times?? And which kids get the scholarships and the appointments to the good university?? The ones that slog to the dirge of public school?? Or is it the home schoolers, the parochial school kids, the rich kids from the demanding private schools?? Their Yellowstones are not closed, ever. Their access to all things wise and wonderful, bright and beautiful, kind and gentle, are there for them. IT is just the Feds that are intent on shutting out the public from their private estate, once our public lands.
You people miss the point. Keeping the east entrance open in winter is a waste. You lose all credibility when one minute you're railing against government waste and the next minute you're either blaming local staff for wasteful activities that are forced upon them by your own neighbors or, worse, actually joining your neighbors in calling for that waste yourself.
USFS land was pay as you go. Timber paid the bills. Timber does not pay for its planning today. And recreation budgets are a joke. All the yammering for road closures comes from the extraordinarily loud and powerful NGOs, which are really government entities in a way. They exist to use money avoiding taxes, and power avoiding oversight. Bidness, as Molly Ivins called it. MegaHuge Corps use the Trust and Foundation route to avoid taxes for powerful equity interests, and that money ends up running the NGOs, providing their lifeblood. Government for government by government. More of them than there are private sector investors and tax payers.
My complaint is that I live in a State with almost two thirds of the land in public ownership. There is a limit on tax receipts and money from public land, and that limit is set by Congress. Since nobody lives on public land, for intents and purposes, there is no population there to vote, and that means no Congressional representation. The Congressman whose District encompasses vast public land holdings has no constituency from that land. His constituency needs classrooms and money for schools, if only to educate the Ranger's kids who live in town. Or the Forest biologist's kid. Their house in town supports part of the needed funds with property taxes, but the 600,000 acres in the Ranger District don't contribute a sous. A dime. Any meaningful support. Wasn't that way when counties got a third of gross before costs revenue from sold timber or AUMs of graze. When you end those contributions, you have to figure out that land is now a lit tire hanging from the local necks, sitting there to burn them out sooner or later. Those fires don't end at the Forest Boundary, like the responsibility to the local government does.
So, yes, I am railing against access, against purposeful stockpiling of resources for the time when government fails, which is what Standard and Poor was saying with their bond rating of the Treasury. A failed government, a broke government, cannot protect you or land.
So who are they keeping out?? certainly not the illicit dope growers. Not the predators of livestock. Not alien troop training jihadists. Just regular people who once went up some road to use the unclaimed public domain.
Close the pass during the winter and ride your snowmobiles elsewhere.
All the rest of this is eyewash.
The NPS should close the road from the East Entrance to Fishing Bridge in the winter, close the road from South Entrance to West Thumb, close the Mammoth Hotel, ban snowmobiles, and try snowcoaches only on an temporary basis. No groomed x-c ski trails in the park.
The entire Sylvan pass fiasco is one of circularity. The parkies think they'll still be employed via snowcoach visitation, so choking off Sylvan makes sense -- less work for same pay.
Never mind the unit cost of each Sylvan rider now, never mind the risk of a GUIDED TOUR going through the zone and having a surprise. No guide outfit will do that willingly, no coach outfit, at least not for very long before the insurance men show up.
Might as well just button up the park and send all the staff to the bread line during winter.
It's important to keep that projection of unencumbered snowmobile numbers on the table. It brings into sharper focus the process that the Park Service used to effectively quash the growth of winter recreation in that province. Had it been allowed to grow and mature of its own merits, and the Park Service had stepped up with its necessary manpower and enforcement ---fulfill its mission and job description explicitly ---- snowmobiling and snow coach tours over Sylvan Pass connecting to the rest of interior Yellowstone would be a vibrant economic force today. The bitter irony is, in the absence of growth in the snow machine access over Sylvan Pass, the Park Service went ahead and grew its employee and infrastructure base there anyway . Back in the early 90's we had one Ranger at the East Gate and his wife, and a few thousand machines using Sylvan Pass. Today we have 8-10 personnel stationed at the East Gate in winter ( many more in summer, or bivouackers) but nearly zero snow machines. What is wrong with that picture ?
When Ranger Bob Mahn died in 1994, he was nowhere near an avalanche chute, nowhere near Sylvan Pass proper. He was well down the mountain on benign roadway , and just drove off the road in a whiteout. Could've happened to anyone. When anyone tries to couple his solitary unique death to the danger of avalanches on Sylvan Pass, they are being wholly deceitful; mendacious. Mahn's tragic death was a traffic accident, possibly involving poor operator judgment or complacency on his part, sicne there was no sign of a seizure or heart attack etc at the time. He screwed up and paid the price. Dont hang it on avalanches and elevate the threat because of it. It was a simple winter traffic fatality; no more no less
It's far more argumentative to make the point that for nearly 25 years, largely unsupervised snowmobile travel over Sylvan Pass in winter , resulted in NO Deaths and very very few " incidents". Far fewer than summer users protract . And those were years when snowpacks , storms, and temperatures were more intense than today , and the road was narrower with ridiculously flimsy guardrail ( 3/4 inch cable strung between rock posts. In harsher conditions with more snow and little or no supervision , still no snowmobilers got seriously hurt or died. And somehow they got past the avalanches coming and going.
My own Bombardier Ski-Doo Alpine 69-R doubletrack with its high torque Austrian rotary engine was used to bust trail over Sylvan on many occasions. We were always cognizant of what the mountain and snow could do at any moment. We accepted the risk. We were rewarded with one of the great winter recreation experieinces to be had anywhere, and utterly without bureaucratic supervision , or utterly arbitrary and capricious rules.
Does anyone here recall that the recent Governor Dave Freudenthal administration was strongarmed into buying a $ 350,000 state of the art road groomer for use explicitly by the Park Service on Sylvan Pass...a big bright yellow and orange widetrack juggernaut gifted to the East Gate by the State of Wyoming about 4 years ago ?
I do not know when or why the Park Service and especially the Yellowstone administration turned against Sylvan Pass winter travel, but I'm sure it had little or nothing to do with avalanches and a lot to do with a Smokey the Bear hat full of craply ignorant snobbery , instead of brains and any real sense of civil service to the public.
What I'm saying is I know Sylvan Pass can be easily negotiated in winter these days with modern gear on a better road . The Park Service's percieved danger of avalanches is a made-up spectre not justified by the physical reality of Sylvan Pass. It's a red herring; a poor conjecture become a worse policy.
I would ask the Park Service for once to be truely honest with their intentions and just tell us in plain English why they don't want the public using Sylvan Pass in winter, only their own people with their own M.O. because the avalanche argument is just so much yellow snow...
If the East gate cadre and the Lake Ranger District and even the senior management at Mammoth still believes that Sylvan Pass is too dangerous to traverse in winter , or its economics are cost prohibitive , then we need new people in those posts.
I can pencil out the numbers and show you how Sylvan Pass can be worked in winter. And the risks are acceptable. In fact, the risk of an avalanche is part of the winter experience, the thrill of it. That was proven across 3 decades of successful winter travel across Sylvan by the snowmobiling public with no deaths and few accidents. . So I guess it's safe to say the Park Service is not only Risk Aversive, they are of the No Fun Allowed mindset. They are wimps, actually. The Park Rangers I grew up with would love to work Sylvan and keep it open in winter for themselves and the hearty public.
I had to laugh at the assertion above by the " Coalition" of former Park Service people et al when they cite the skewed statistic that Park County Wyoming's collections of lodging tax are not suffering from the diminishment of winter use on Sylvan Pass. They conveniently fail to tell you that Park County Wyoming collects lodging tax in the entire north half of Yellowstone , including Mammoth and its grand hotel, and the real reason Cody's lodging tax collections stay high is Cody innkeepers charge way too much for their rooms, and since the Bed Tax as we call it is a straight percentage. For the purposes of this discussion, that statistic needs to be ignored or at least seriously de-skewed. But it's typical of the dogmatic disinformation surorund Sylvan.
The issues surrounding Sylvan Pass spun out of control years ago, What we are talking about here today barely resembles the situation on the ground along the East Entrance road. It's hard to believe it's all on the same map.
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I am no fan of snowmobiling these days. I could not care less if Sylvan Pass ever opened again to anyone in winter. The cynic in me says it would be cold justice if those Park Service employees that shelter at the East Gate station in winter were forced to drive the 350 miles around , one way , thru Cody and Laurel and Livingston Montana on I-90 to reach Park headquarters at Mammoth to get on a snowcoach down to Lake Ranger Station , 22 miles away by Sylvan Pass directly. Do you really think the Park Service will quit using Sylvan Pass in winter for their own purposes after they tell the public they can't use it ? You don't know the Park Service. Two sets of rules. Hypocrisy abounds.
But what I do care about is the National Park Service and their cronies in " conservation" jerking the public and denying public recreation opportunity for wholly unjustified excuses. Politics, not pragmatics. The disservice they are dealing the public
It's how your National Parks are run these days. Perhaps the new Superintendent in Yellowstone, Dan Wenk, is truely a broadminded man willing to do the right thing over the politically expedient thing. I've had promising conversations with him , as have others. The decision is on his desk in Mammoth. He would have to abrogate about 15 years of bureaucratic special interest dogma to reinstate Sylvan Pass snow travel forthwith , but I am not very hopeful.
I no longer snowmobile so I don;t mind saying this: The situation with Sylvan Pass in winter is a farce. Shakespeare in the Park.
The objective is to keep the public out of public lands because they are now too many and too undisciplined to be trusted to act in a "responsible" manner, by the gatekeepers, and nowhere is there more of a gate to keep than the entrance to a National Park. Closing the gate is the management Alternative C...you know, the Alternative the government wants. That is always Alternative C...A and B are radical enviro alternatives, D and E are radical "resource use" alternatives, and F is the no change alternative. I would assume as to gates and NPS, the NGOs would like most of the gates closed and limited entry. And the resource users would like better roads, more access, and more installed capacity to cater to guests.
If the real public were to be asked what they would want, free of heartbreaking ads from the NGOs about a bison calf run over by a winter coach or some such event, real or imagined, the public would want more access and more installed capacity to be catered to by the Park Service. People being who and what they are...But those are not the people who would choose to be a Park Service employee so that they could have a career of saving wildlife and wild places, neither of which have any need for tourists and visitors unless they are credentialed science types involved in some study that would underline a perceived need to disallow more people to use public lands.
Yep. I am a cynic. And I can tell you the worst overgrazed piece of public land I have ever witnessed is Yellowstone Natl Park. "Lined" to the nth degree. "Lining" being there not one green needle or leaf below the height a bison or elk can access with its teeth. You will see that on a private land bull pasture in a swale, where the rancher keeps his bulls in the off season when cows are not in need of being covered. On private ground. Fed mostly hay, of course, but the numbers and size of the pasture mostly leads to it being lined. Those pastures have tough fences and tougher animals. You look out at the landscape, and it looks like a painter has drawn a line about 12 feet off the ground, below which not one tree or shrub can have one green leaf or needle.
Managers are zealots, and that is how they become managers. And land management and protection zealots are not people friendly. Building and locking gates is their passion. Closing roads their religion. The cynic has spoken...
Dewey I have been involved in snow safety and avalanche hazard mitigation for over 25 years.
Your statement is beyond stupid.
You don't want to know what I think of the " Avalanche experts" and the 'snow safety' folks at the East Entrance of Yellowstone these days...from direct experience.
I don't see your named cited anywhere in the article. Do you know Sylvan Pass and have you ever " worked" there ? Look at the photo accompanying this article...does that look like our " best and brightest" at work doing avalanche hazard and snow safety work , top deck ?
Are you also hypersensitive and risk aversive and so safety conscious that you forget why we might want to do this in the first place ? Are you a private expert or a public/ agency bureaucrat specialist
Bottom Line : Sylvan Pass is doable by the public , regardless of what government poltroons might otherwise believe.
How could that problem be addressed? One, pre sell tickets the night before. Roll right through instead of stand and idle.
Two, spend some money on decent ventilation.
Three, encourage four-strokes -- which might not be a factor if the entry management had been seriously addressed.
Given the restrictions on riding already in the park, four-stroke rentals don't give up much to your hotted up longtrack. Some two-strokers could be allowed if someone is going to start at Sylvan and head for some riding in West and then go back to the trailer.
Managed use of sleds would have been no more difficult than overnight backcountry permitting. But noooooooo.....
Finley clearly had no interest in facilitating good flows, or adaptive reservations. And if you look at the Coalition, all these parkies are of the "Parks Are Not For People" camp. They read the Arch and shudder.
Here we see:
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In separate letters to Yellowstone Superintendent Daniel N. Wenk and the Office of Management and Budget (the watchdog arm of the White House), the coalition and its allies noted, “Sylvan Pass is the only location in the entire National Park System where the NPS [National Park Service] undertakes highly expensive and highly risky winter avalanche mitigation operations solely to permit recreational use . . . averaging little more than one snowmobile per day.”
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I live next door to the Olympic National Park, where the Hurricane Ridge Road is kept open through the winter with those "risky winter avalanche mitigation operations." This is to keep the road open so that people can access the ski area at Hurricane Ridge as well as using the trail system for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.
Truth in advocacy is just as important to me as truth in advertising.
Since we have avalanche control in the Olympic National Park, too, I wonder how many other NPS units are likewise engaged?
1. You can only ride ANY snowmobile or snowcoach on established highways and main roads inside Yellowstone. No off roading permitted , which is fine with me.
2. Sylvan Pass/ the East Entrance Road is US Hwy 14-16-20. Highways 14 and 16 terminate at Yellowstone's east gate , but US Hwy 20 magically reappears at the west gate in metropolitan West Yellowstone and continues all the way to the Pacific Ocean via Boise ID and Bend OR. The interior roads of Yellowstone are now being rebuilt to federal highway standards, same as primary highways, and in the case of Sylvan Pass it is already up to those standards. It is a structural extension of US Hwy 20 all the way to Fishing bridge junction and beyond.
3. The East Entrance road was rebuilt at a cost of $ 28 million , finished just a few years ago. The past two seasons they have actually re-routed the section on top of Sylvan Pass away from the critical avalanche zone at the toe of the north slope to a much safer alignment on the south side of the neck of the pass, where the howitzer is also located.
In other words, the Sylvan Pass road is now as good as any major primary highway anywhere not a divided 4-lane or interstate ...full 32 foot width , wide shoulders, excellent subgrade and surface, etc. But paradoxically ---or not --- the highway over Sylvan Pass has been open less since it was rebuilt than before, in any season. Later opening date in May , earlier closing date in October or early November, much more frequent rolling closures and many more restrictions. We paid dearly to make the Sylvan Pass traverse so much better only to see its use curtailed by ' management'. it's great road. I has immensely improved the safety factor for driving in all seasons and climates.
4. The Park Service personnel are making great use of Sylvan Pass but NOT according the public that same privilege. THAT really irks me. They closed the East Entrance to the public on November 4 in the year 2003, a date chosen arbitrarily as much as anything. I was working construction inside Yellowstone that year and drove out to Cody for the last time on the day before Thanksgiving , November 23, having the magic combination that unlocked the various gates. The interior roads had been well maintained and plowed the whole month of November, just not open to the public. But they could have been , just as they could open much earlier in the Spring before another arbitrary opening date , set not by climate season or road condition but by a rigid bureaucratic timetable of convenience without respect for the public. What did I see the most of when driving from Old Faithful to the East gate via Sylvan Pass ? ---full sized moving vans being pulled by semis...Allied, North American , Bekins , Red Ball. If THEY can travel the roads...
It's that " Two Sets Of Rules" thing. The Park Service uses Yellowstone's interior roads for 2 to 2-1/2 months longer than the public each year , routinely.
5. As I mentioned in an earlier post, about 400,000 motor vehicles travel over Sylvan Pass in the summer season , all paying a pretty good sum for entry at a Yellowstone gate or by their regional or national park passes. There is absolutely NO justification for the argument that Sylvan Pass should have to
" pay its own way " in winter; that somehow the miniscule numbers of snow machines should somehow be expected to cover the entirety of the winter maintenance costs and avalanche control. The figure cited is $ 325 ,000 per annum but the truth is nobody knows what it costs. Yellowstone cannot even tell you what they spend on any regular maintenance of any road up there, or for plowing open the Beartooth Highway or Cooke Pass. It's like Pentagon budgetting.. a dollar number floating out there for discussion but not itemized or line itemed at any critical point. It's bogus.
Like I said, part of the deal for keeping the East Entrance open these past 3-4 years was the State of Wyoming had to make a pricey state-of-the-art $ 350,000 groomer/ emergency rescue vehicle available to Yellowstone for East Entrance work. It's a beauty. They should use it more often. A gift from the good people of Wyoming .
After all, the East Entrance Road/ Sylvan Pass is technically in Park County WYOMING. Park County and the State collect taxes inside Yellowstone all yearround..lodging tax, sales tax, fuel tax . And the yearround residents of the north half of Yellowstone are supposed to go vote at the Wapiti School halfway back to Cody.
The state side of the equation of the Sylvan Pass conundrum has never been elevated to the level it deserves.
I could go on , but you get the point. It's really not about avalanches at all
Bottom Line : you and me are not getting all the access to Yellowstone we are paying for.
But there's no telling when the pass will be open due to avalanche concerns, so it's impossible to run a snowcoach business. People from Florida or Chicago could book a trip for January 27, but when they arrive the snowcoach operator might have to tell them, "sorry, the NPS closed Sylvan Pass due to avalanche conditions." Why would anybody book with you? Book a trip from West Yellowstone and you know you can get into the park.
Same issue with snowmobiles. Neither locals nor visitors from other states can plan on getting in the East Entrance and over Sylvan Pass, so snowmobilers make plans to get into Yellowstone from a different park entrance.
Good thing that writing winter use plans for Yellowstone has become a career government job, because in the real world, the people who wrote the winter plan for the East Entrance and Sylvan Pass would be looking for work.
In my current job, absolute and 100% certainty about the safety from avalanche hazard cannot happen, but we try as much as possible to achieve that impossible goal.
I think spending 350K for avalanche mitigation for Sylvan pass is absurd.
I also think that if you want to ride your snowmobile over un-groomed and uncontrolled avalanche terrain like Sylvan pass, you have that absolute right and if you are killed it will not be anyone's fault but you own.
This is more waste of Government money, plain and simple.
Absurdity abounds. I personally think allowing 45,000 Harleys , 20,000 diesel buses , motorhomes of any number and type ( but especially the 1-800-Rent-A-RV units with the National Geographic airbrush panel art driven by untrained primates) anywhere near Yellowstone is really absurd. "Pleasuring ground of the people" , my pink patooty. You cannot reconcile a wilderness sanctuary with any conveyance that requires a paved road and internal combustion. The road up Sylvan Pass should never have been built in the first place. But it is what it is.
I'm glad I was able to take some long horsepacking trips thru the Park and surrounds when I was younger. I still sneak into the Park on coyote trails on occasion. It's an old family tradition. I never knew my uncle Dean who was shot down in the Pacific at the battle of the Coral Sea. Dean and his buddy strapped on 9 foot wooden plank skis with beartrap bindings and Frankenstein boots, and wearing wool and duck canvas they skied over Sylvan all the way down to Jackson Hole , and back over the lake by island hopping , in the winter of 1935. They got the idea from an old friend of the family who was a renowned elk and sheep outfitter that used to stay out all winter in the Thorofare , and yes, Yellowstone , running fur trap lines on skis and snowshoes . He I knew as a kid growing up in Cody. We had real winters back then.
My snowmobiling days were mostly tapering off before everybody else's even got rolling. I did many many traverses of Sylvan Pass on ancient machines before the sport became popular . The White Witch and the Grim Reaper had plenty of chances to take me down in a hurling wall of snow off Hoyt Peak . Never happened. Truth be told, we made our own avalanches with .44 mag pistols just to watch them. You really don't need an M-101 artillery piece to start the dance party ...
I'm inclined to think " Avalanche Hazard and Snow Safety" expert is a bit of an oxymoron. Snow is just too amorphous and fickle to conform to bureaucratic fiat or academic rigor.
The $ 300,000 spent doing a season of snow jobs on Sylvan is just what you say it is: a total waste. Just not in the context you portray it. We got along fine without the Park Service spending a dime or a man-hour on cornice banging. We knew the risks. We went anyway.
The best solution is probably a simple signed waiver of indemnity as a condition for entering the Park in winter---at your own risk , codified --- and costs almost nothing. Just don't expect Ricky Ranger and a St. Bernard to come to your rescue when Mother Nature smotes thee and thine. Yer in the mountains...
I believe only you have used that term.
" Dewey I have been involved in snow safety and avalanche hazard mitigation for over 25 years. "
- has the air of " Expert" drooped over it. 25 years still doing it, so....?
Sorry if I misquoted. So many words.
Don Bachman (quoted in the above article ) is an expert.
I am a damn good at my job and people try and hang "expert" on me at times.
I prefer to say I am damn good at my job. ;)
Again, the American taxpayers should not be expected to keep the park open for the few folks that will be allowed in.
So Sylvan Pass is the only NP property that has regular avalanche control.
http://www.emd.wa.gov/plans/documents/ehmp_5.2_avalanche.pdf
The American taxpayers should not be forced to keep an exclusive resort open for a handful of folks that do not want to be burdened by knowing that other people are using the park and they can hear them. Those who feel the need for a private experience should be willing to pay for it themselves, not expect taxpayers to fund it. I'm sure there are resorts that specialize in that sort of thing.
They've built new residences and shops and facilities that did not exist back during the heyday of a few thousand snowmobies on Sylvan , when only one Ranger and his wife actually wintered over there. Those NPS personnel are using , grooming, de-avalanching Sylvan Pass whether you or me get to or not , according to their whims. They are a detachment of the Lake Ranger District 22 miles away by the East Entrance Road directly , or 360 miles the long ways around by highway plus 50 more miles of over-the-snow travel inside Yellowstone to get to " headquarters".
Taxpayers are paying a lot of money for Sylvan operations in winter , regardless, but not getting much in return , are they ?
The whole Sylvan Pass management situation would fit well in a modern revision of "Alice in Winter Wonderland".