Death Valley Off-Road Adventures

Last week had some GAF jets running thru Rainbow Canyon. A Eurofighter and a Tornado.

 

GAF = German As Fuck ?

Oh, Air Force. Never mind. Them boys a long way from home.

 

I like the first one better

 

Just wanted to throw out this reminder about the remaining two meetings for public comment regarding the future of Saline Valley Warm Springs. If you've been and developed an attachment it is time to state your case for preserving the springs.


Saline Valley Warm Springs Management Plan EIS
Death Valley National Park » Saline Valley Warm Springs Management Plan EIS » Document List
The National Park Service (NPS) invites you to review and comment on the Saline Valley Warm Springs Draft Management Plan and Environmental Impact Statement (draft plan/EIS). Because your feedback is essential to the development of the EIS, we are asking for your thoughtful review and comments during the 60-day comment period, concluding July 2, 2018.
The plan's purpose is to develop a management strategy for the Saline Valley Warm Springs area that will complement the Death Valley National Park General Management Plan (GMP). The draft plan/EIS is intended to provide a framework for: natural and cultural resources management; administration and operations; and managing visitor use at the warm springs area.

You are encouraged to comment on the draft plan/EIS through this website. Comments can be made by clicking on the "Open for Comment" link at the left side of this page and selecting the document and then clicking "Comment Now" button. You may also mail or hand-deliver your written comments to Superintendent Mike Reynolds, Death Valley National Park, P.O. Box 579, Death Valley, CA 92328.

A limited number of hard copy documents are available at park headquarters in addition to public libraries in Bishop, CA, Lone Pine, CA, Pahrump, NV, Ridgecrest, VA, and the Inyo County Free Library in Independence, CA.

The NPS will hold public meetings during the comment period near the park at the following locations:

•Tuesday, May 29, 2018 from 5:30-7:30pm PT at the Ridgecrest Historical Society, 230 West Ridgecrest Blvd, Ridgecrest, CA 93555
•Wednesday, May 30, 2018 from 5:30-7:30pm PT at the Inyo Council for the Arts, 137 South Main St, Bishop, CA 93514

In addition to the public meetings, the NPS will host a webinar on Thursday May 31 at 5:30pm PT. For more information and to register click on 'Meeting Notices.'

As vital contributors to the planning process, we hope you take the opportunity to provide feedback, and if possible, join us at the public meetings. Thank you.

Superintendent Mike Reynolds
Death Valley National Park
P.O. Box 579,
Death Valley, CA 92328

 

For those who don’t have the time to digest the very long EIS the Saline Preservation Society has written a brief “position paper” that makes some comments on parts of the EIS. The SPA paper might be a fast way to get up to speed on the proposed actions that are more controversial to at least some members of the community. Reading the SPA paper would be helpful even if you don’t agree with its positions since you could of course comment either in opposition or support of their positions. Safe to assume a fair number of folks will be commenting on the issues brought up in the SPA paper.

SPA Position Paper:

http://forum.salinepreservation.org/post/spa-position-paper-9744396?pid=1304288944

 

Thanks for posting this. I should have thought of that. I just finished reading the entire NPS document last night. It reminded me of the saying "I'm here from the government, and I'm here to help".

 

Numbers vary but the turn out at the springs for the first meeting was between 50 and 70. Tonight's meeting in Ridgecrest left me more optimistic than going in. It was nice to actually meet the park superintendent.

 

Video of the Bishop meeting below.

Definitely worth watching the first 20 minutes or so where they update on the various misunderstandings to date on what the plan will include or not include as well as their approach to writing the plan. Basically where things are ambiguous that is on purpose - they are actively soliciting input on how to reach their goals. So for example there aren't details on what "designated camping" is precisely because they didn't want to prescribe a specific implementation but rather get input on what would be a good approach.

The plan specifically does not relate to road access or maintenance but I was happy to hear in an exchange early in the Q&A session that it sounds like Inyo is re-evaluating their increased maintenance of SV road. It costs a lot of money and is paid for directly by Inyo tax payers with little advantage to them. Inyo has also noted that a better maintained road results in more rollovers and emergency calls. Again has nothing to do with the management plan - or even the NPS for that matter - but fingers crossed Inyo will go back to their previous policy of benign neglect of SV road.

Some other important pickups from these meetings:

- They don't want to remove the lawn, they want to remove the bermuda grass that makes up the lawn right now and replace it with a native grass (good luck getting rid of bermuda grass by the way).
- Great discussion on the palms in this video. Everyone from SPA is saying "the palms don't spread, we have to plant them". The NPS points out the palms at the springs are so recent they haven't reached reproductive maturity (takes approx 30 years). So while they aren't spreading now based on what is happening with more mature stands in other parts of the park they will start to and need management. Plan is to let palms die out, control spreading while that happens, and replace with native trees for shade and wind break.
- Lots of people don't like the wire burro fence. NPS says please comment with opinions and alternatives, they are prescribing the wire burro fence at this stage. One excellent comment in the meeting was that with a burro removal agreement finally in place perhaps the correct thing to do is actually use the springs as a water/bait trap to aid in burro removal rather than build a large scale fence that will be difficult to maintain.

The final meeting which is web based is tonight (Thursday) at 5:30pm PDT.

 

Traffic would definitely be reduced as the road condition get worse, or better, depending on how you look at it.

All you really have to do is leave a bag of cereal out and you could easily collect dozens of donkeys.

 

They made the point that when they made the plan they had no agreement in place for burro removal, no budget to ever do it and haven't removed a single burro since 2005. So the plan assumed at least the current burro population likely increasing with no mechanism to remove them at all. Hence the fence, with no prospect for removal exclusion was the best option.

Now that they do have a burro removal agreement - and especially since it is with an organization big on "humane" round-ups rather than running the burros ragged with helicopters - it probably makes sense to alter the plan based on that new reality. Much easier to humanely remove burros that are attracted to the springs. Fairly trivial to setup a water trap there with far less fencing.

 

All this recent traffic on the DV thread has me excited for winter.

 

Taco bell.

 

This just popped up in my feed. These guys have pretty cool video and pic of almost all the parks but this one is for DV.

https://www.morethanjustparks.com/deathvalley

 

One of the things mentioned in the Bishop meeting is they are considering putting signage at each end of SV road better warning folks that there is no cell coverage and that towing costs can be $2000 or more if they get stuck. Right now there is basically no signing whereas most NPS units would have some sort of sign to discourage the ill prepared.

Of course they could also warn on the sign that tow trucks out rescuing stuck vehicles might also smash into your vehicle on the way out...

 

At the Ridgecrest meeting there were two people who acted like there should be some sort of autoshop at the springs. The park service tried their best to convey that there should be no expectation of any service in the backcountry.

 

Definitely interesting to hear from you guys about the meetings. Thanks for posting up about it.

I have doubts about that "allowing the road to degrade" = less and safer traffic. In the age of Instagram there's only going to be increased traffic regardless of the road conditions, I doubt the condition of the road to the Racetrack discourages many people, it just means more people breakdown on the way out there.....Or are they just specifically concerned about people rolling their improperly equipped vehicles while driving too fast?

 

Fortunately they have a well thought out answer to that one! At the Bishop meeting there was one guy who even right out of the gate objected to their Q&A format. Not surprisingly he wouldn’t shut up for most of the whole meeting. The best part is what the loud mouths say is irrelevant. If it isn’t a written formal comment it won’t be considered input. These sessions are to answer questions, not document feedback. But the people keep arguing anyway.

Better roads always increases visitation. That’s been true for decades. Certainly for any given road condition Instagram increases the visitation but at any given time better roads means *significantly* higher visitation than poor road conditions.

If people break their vehicles no big deal, the idiots can pay Miller’s $2000 and then post thier experience on IG to discourage others. If they roll and get injured that results in an emergency response which costs the tax payer money instead. So yes slowing the morons down with a bumpier road so they break their vehicle instead of themselves is a desirable outcome for the county.

But yeah, thanks to IG and the like visitation will forever more be higher than in the past. But rough roads will reduce visitation compared with smooth roads.

 

The BLM meetings often seem like they are nothing more than public window dressing. And even when they solicit feedback, you get the feeling decisions have already been made.

 

Thats exactly what we experienced during the talks with the Navy and BLM years ago when we were trying to save Johnson Valley and The Hammers from the 29 Palms Base Expansion Land Grab.

 

You cannot not go. And frankly, the OHV community needs to file lawsuits at the rate environmentalists do. People need to be on the record in numbers the BLM cannot ignore.

Clear Creek and Johnson Valley are recent examples of decisions that were made before any meetings ever happened to engage the public. Clear Creek is a great example of decisions that have been reversed and the BLM either ignoring or placing huge road blocks to access when they are reversed.