Road to Burnt Lake - Getting Worse.

Use this forum to report and discuss trails in need of maintenance. This will help organizations like TKO and agencies like the Forest Service get the most recent on-the-ground trail conditions.
Lumpy
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Re: Road to Burnt Lake - Getting Worse.

Post by Lumpy » October 15th, 2014, 12:27 am

Hold the phone for a minute.

I thought some folks that post on this forum actually liked that it can be difficult and expensive to enjoy public lands?

I could be wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time, nor the last.
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Charley
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Re: Road to Burnt Lake - Getting Worse.

Post by Charley » October 15th, 2014, 6:52 am

Lumpy wrote:Hold the phone for a minute.

I thought some folks that post on this forum actually liked that it can be difficult and expensive to enjoy public lands?

I could be wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time, nor the last.
Hah! I remember those arguments. I'm not one of them.
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pdxgene
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Re: Road to Burnt Lake - Getting Worse.

Post by pdxgene » October 30th, 2014, 10:55 am

A couple weeks ago when I had a chat with the head person at ZigZag RS about the Sandy Guard Station broken window the topic of this road came up and supposedly it is on a list to be worked on. That the person formerly in charge is gone and they have a new way of thinking about letting bad roads restrict public access that began with the repair work to the road to Olallie Lake.
I figure give it a chance and we'll see what happens next season.

Once those potholes fill with water I'd be verrrry careful about trying to go around them. It'd be very easy to just slide off the road doing that. At least for now none of them are more than window deep.. :P

I also got an email from Bark the other day saying there are meetings at both Zigzag and Clackamas Ranger Stations next week for the public to give input about forest service roads.

mcds
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Re: Road to Burnt Lake - Getting Worse.

Post by mcds » October 30th, 2014, 4:49 pm

pdxgene wrote: they have a new way of thinking about letting bad roads restrict public access
that's interesting, what were they saying about that?

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Re: Road to Burnt Lake - Getting Worse.

Post by pdxgene » October 31st, 2014, 1:56 pm

mcds wrote:
pdxgene wrote: they have a new way of thinking about letting bad roads restrict public access
that's interesting, what were they saying about that?
The person I talked to was Kathleen Walker. She is the Westside Recreation Program Manager. And that basically the old way of restricting access by letting roads fall apart under the previous person in that position was no longer going to be her policy. And I'd imagine that is the one of the reasons for the public meetings about forest service roads coming up next week?

mcds
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Re: Road to Burnt Lake - Getting Worse.

Post by mcds » October 31st, 2014, 2:42 pm

Thanks. That makes sense. Might as well pull back the TH to limit visitor numbers, rather than pull in negative PR for poor road conditions.

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Guy
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Re: Road to Burnt Lake - Getting Worse.

Post by Guy » October 31st, 2014, 4:26 pm

The person I talked to was Kathleen Walker. She is the Westside Recreation Program Manager. And that basically the old way of restricting access by letting roads fall apart under the previous person in that position was no longer going to be her policy. And I'd imagine that is the one of the reasons for the public meetings about forest service roads coming up next week?
Well I'm glad to hear that. Love the fact that they can let the roads fall apart then call it a "policy & good management" - Jeeze

Personally I'd be against moving this trailhead back to where the black top ends. This is already a high use area, moving the trailhead back would put an out & back hike at over 10 miles & that cuts too many people out of a popular hike in an already popular day use area - Just my 2 cents.
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Grannyhiker
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Re: Road to Burnt Lake - Getting Worse.

Post by Grannyhiker » October 31st, 2014, 5:10 pm

Moving the trailheads back would make many of these hikes inaccessible to parents with small children (the next hiking generation!) and to aging seniors such as myself.

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BrianEdwards
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Re: Road to Burnt Lake - Getting Worse.

Post by BrianEdwards » November 1st, 2014, 8:28 am

Grannyhiker wrote:Moving the trailheads back would make many of these hikes inaccessible to parents with small children (the next hiking generation!) and to aging seniors such as myself.
Amen, whenever a trailhead is moved back, it limits who I can take on that trail. Is there a logical reason for doing this, washouts and other natural disasters aside? Why make trails longer?
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mcds
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Re: Road to Burnt Lake - Getting Worse.

Post by mcds » November 2nd, 2014, 1:59 pm

Consider a hypothetical round area of statutory wilderness within a larger region of USFS land that has 1) a uniform trail density (miles of trails per square mile of wilderness) and 2) a uniform distribution of lakes. Further, let's say that using trailheads that are located at the wilderness boundary, that any point inside the wilderness can be reached on a maximum (or shorter) dayhike by some person or some family. For example, a wilderness circle of radius 3 miles and area of 28 square miles.

Suppose this circular wilderness area is expanded to a radius of 5 miles (about 79 square miles) causing the existing trailheads to be pulled back 2 miles. The center of the wilderness will now no longer be reachable on a dayhike by the person or family. The out-of-reach area is a circle with a radius of 2 miles and area of 13 square miles.

The person/family has lost dayhike access to 13 square miles. But the area to which they now have dayhike access is 66 square miles (79-13), which is a 38 square mile increase over their previous 28 square miles.

By giving up access to 13 square miles of wilderness, the person/family has gain access to an additional 38 square miles of wilderness. That's a 3 fold benefit.

That also means the person/family also enjoys a 3-fold increase in 1) miles of wilderness trails and 2) number of wilderness lakes.

Because to takes many decades for human populations to triple, several generations of hikers will enjoy quieter, less trampled trails and lake shores.

However, those gains would be squandered if the regulations for the new wilderness area is a compromise that weakens the protections of the 1964 Wilderness Act. That's why it is most important for the general public and bulk of the hiking demographic (short-distance dayhikers) to uphold the rigor of the Wilderness Act. Without upholding its rigors, short-distance dayhikers will lose access to fully protected wilderness lands. Long-distance dayhikers and backpackers will retain access, but the majority of us, the short-distance dayhikers, will lose access if the Wilderness Act is weakened by compromise.

Long-distance dayhikers and backpackers will also benfit by the increase in remote wilderness.

In general, short-distance dayhikers will always gain access to more wilderness when a wilderness area is expanded. In real-life situations where the boundary is erratic, it won't always be as high as a 3-fold benefit. In rare situations there will be no net gain. For situations with bizarre geometries, such as the MHNF's Badger Lake and the access road, wilderness designation may (or may not) cause a reduction in wilderness area accessible to short-distance day-hikers depending on their max distance.

So that is an argument for everyone, even families with kids and the elderly to 1) support pulling back trailheads (which, by creating more roadless area, is a necessary step to creating more wilderness), and 2) support the Wilderness Act as it was originally written.

Gain more than is lost.
Gain more solitude.

Only 20% of USFS trail miles are in statutory wilderness.

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