Comments on: Visiting Mt. Rainier http://www.thesca.org/conservation_nation/2007/01/02/visiting-mt-rainier/ Just another WordPress weblog Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:46:08 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Jim Miltimore http://www.thesca.org/conservation_nation/2007/01/02/visiting-mt-rainier/#comment-117 Jim Miltimore Mon, 05 Feb 2007 06:16:48 +0000 http://www.thesca.org/conservation_nation/2007/01/02/visiting-mt-rainier/#comment-117 Mr Satz was correct with his responses. Although the park has been greatly abused in the distant past, much effort has been going into restoring this past abuse. In some areas, such as Paradise, this abuse is no longer evident to casual visitors. All of the Rainier park employees I have met are very dedicated to maintaining the wilderness nature of the park. Especially Dave Uberuaga. I feel he is more than bending over backward to keep things natural. A significant problem in the park is its rugged landscape. The historical area of Longmire, the Nisqually entrance, and the Hiway 410 entrance are all now below the river levels and living on borrowed time. This is because of the rapid aggradation the rivers are undergoing due to glacier meltback and associated morainal erosion. This aggradation has made some bridges almost useless since the river has filled up with sediment. I don't think think 'poor planning' was a cause of current problems so much as lack of scientific understanding in earlly part of the last century of the processes that would occur over the span of 50 - 80 years into the future, compounded by global warming. Some of the road are on steep cliffsides that are hit by flashes of water dumping from the slopes above. It is unfortunate the roads are build in such risky areas. However, there is no other place for them. Repairing these roads will not cause any significant harm. In some cases, they just provided a temporary resting place for some of the debris that rained down. Mostly, they were just obliterated in places. It is hard for those who have not been there to appreaciate the extent of the damage. In some areas the power of nature was truly awesome. Any help in figuring out how to handle keeping a state hiway that is below river level would be appreciated. Keep in mind moving it would be quite damaging. Raising is not practical if one would look at what the forces of nature would do to any fill - even truck size boulders. I look forward to SCA helping the park out. The few SCA contacts I have worked with have done well. Mr Satz was correct with his responses.
Although the park has been greatly abused in the distant past, much effort has been going into restoring this past abuse. In some areas, such as Paradise, this abuse is no longer evident to casual visitors.
All of the Rainier park employees I have met are very dedicated to maintaining the wilderness nature of the park. Especially Dave Uberuaga. I feel he is more than bending over backward to keep things natural.
A significant problem in the park is its rugged landscape. The historical area of Longmire, the Nisqually entrance, and the Hiway 410 entrance are all now below the river levels and living on borrowed time. This is because of the rapid aggradation the rivers are undergoing due to glacier meltback and associated morainal erosion. This aggradation has made some bridges almost useless since the river has filled up with sediment. I don’t think think ‘poor planning’ was a cause of current problems so much as lack of scientific understanding in earlly part of the last century of the processes that would occur over the span of 50 - 80 years into the future, compounded by global warming.
Some of the road are on steep cliffsides that are hit by flashes of water dumping from the slopes above. It is unfortunate the roads are build in such risky areas. However, there is no other place for them. Repairing these roads will not cause any significant harm. In some cases, they just provided a temporary resting place for some of the debris that rained down. Mostly, they were just obliterated in places.
It is hard for those who have not been there to appreaciate the extent of the damage. In some areas the power of nature was truly awesome.
Any help in figuring out how to handle keeping a state hiway that is below river level would be appreciated. Keep in mind moving it would be quite damaging. Raising is not practical if one would look at what the forces of nature would do to any fill - even truck size boulders.
I look forward to SCA helping the park out. The few SCA contacts I have worked with have done well.

]]> By: Jim Maximowicz http://www.thesca.org/conservation_nation/2007/01/02/visiting-mt-rainier/#comment-116 Jim Maximowicz Mon, 29 Jan 2007 20:40:48 +0000 http://www.thesca.org/conservation_nation/2007/01/02/visiting-mt-rainier/#comment-116 I've been chewing on this very same question, myself. As a former trail worker in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, I toiled constantly to minimize the effects of excessive human traffic on the land. People will continue to visit these areas. And they should. People should also respect the land they tread on, and mend what they have wounded. This respect cannot grow from pretty pictures in books. This respect has to be cultivated on-site, in the very forests, deserts, and rivers we fight to protect. The urgency of this Rainier project is not to re-build roads and cabins for the sake of human convenience. We need to re-build these roads, cabins, and trails so we can continue to experience these majestic areas, and teach as many people as possible about them. We could step back and let nature consume all traces of human interference, and let only the most rugged men and women venture into this new wilderness. Then how would we teach the importance of conservation, and instill a love for our earth to those who are not built like Ed Viesturs? If human negligence did help cause this disaster, through increased roads or deforestation, then we are obligated to assist in the recovery efforts. More and more people on this earth result in more and more consumption of resources, more pollution, and more of a disconnect from nature. We need to keep these areas accessible, while minimizing our burden on the land. Education is essential for effective conservation. I’ve been chewing on this very same question, myself. As a former trail worker in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, I toiled constantly to minimize the effects of excessive human traffic on the land. People will continue to visit these areas. And they should. People should also respect the land they tread on, and mend what they have wounded. This respect cannot grow from pretty pictures in books. This respect has to be cultivated on-site, in the very forests, deserts, and rivers we fight to protect.
The urgency of this Rainier project is not to re-build roads and cabins for the sake of human convenience. We need to re-build these roads, cabins, and trails so we can continue to experience these majestic areas, and teach as many people as possible about them. We could step back and let nature consume all traces of human interference, and let only the most rugged men and women venture into this new wilderness. Then how would we teach the importance of conservation, and instill a love for our earth to those who are not built like Ed Viesturs?
If human negligence did help cause this disaster, through increased roads or deforestation, then we are obligated to assist in the recovery efforts.
More and more people on this earth result in more and more consumption of resources, more pollution, and more of a disconnect from nature. We need to keep these areas accessible, while minimizing our burden on the land. Education is essential for effective conservation.

]]> By: Jay A. Satz http://www.thesca.org/conservation_nation/2007/01/02/visiting-mt-rainier/#comment-115 Jay A. Satz Mon, 29 Jan 2007 20:06:23 +0000 http://www.thesca.org/conservation_nation/2007/01/02/visiting-mt-rainier/#comment-115 Gary and Corey: You both make very good points and ask a great question that should remain at the heart of any dialogue regarding how people manage wild places in both the national park system and in other natural areas in this country and through out the world. When I said that the impact of the great rains and flooding created the worst impact in the history of this area I was careful to say in “it’s history as a national park”, which was created in 1899. There were of course far greater glacial events, volcanic events, wind events, flooding events and plate tectonics that created the extraordinary landscape we treasure now. For those of us that call the Northwest home, these realities of the power of nature were drilled into our psyche with the eruptions of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 and since. At Mount Rainier National Park, “recovering” from these latest events bring to fore many competing challenges. For example, the roads, particularly the road from the Nisqually entrance station up through Longmire and to Paradise, are not only a means of access to the interior of the park; they are also historic landmarks and byways, designed by the first director of the park service, Stephen Mather. In fact, there is little land in the park that is not either designated wilderness (97%) or protected by national historic landmark status (over 2%), which includes most of the facilities at Longmire as well. Another challenge is the very schizophrenia of the park service mandate under the Organic Act of 1916, the congressional law that established the park service itself. Under the organic Act NPS is required to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations”. These two fundamental tasks can be hard to achieve in the sight of the other. It could be argued (and it sounds like it was initially by some of the park staff) that the road’s destruction offered a remarkable opportunity for natural healing of the land, to reduce use or overuse by the public and as an extraordinary educational recognition of the immense power of nature. This is not too dissimilar from an argument Liz Putnam read from Bernard DeVoto in the early 50’s that the army needed to be put around the national parks to prevent them from being “loved to death”. Liz loved national parks dearly, but instead challenged the notion of closing off the parks and proposed the power of student conservationists to help heal the land. Land managers and land management policy continue to evolve. Mount Rainier used to have powered alpine ski lifts and a golf course at Paradise. Those are gone. Repairing roads and bridges and facilities to protect and educate the public are deemed essential by senior management staff that recognize that the public needs access to our parks in order to care for, and thus advocate for them. The public in this case is not just the “hard core” well experienced wilderness users, but the sometimes not yet initiated park user coming from the almost two million Washington citizens (many of them urban) living within a two hour drive from one of Mount Rainier’s entrances. As for SCA’s work, which will be repairing trails and building bridges, restoring soil and native vegetation to either flood scoured or earth moving machine scoured river and stream banks, clearing camp grounds and building picnic tables and other structures, and educating the public to the natural events that took place during the storms – this is all essential to protecting the resource. SCA’s renowned trail building and maintenance manual Lightly on the Land suggests that trails are pathways that could be considered 100% impact zones. These sacrifice zones of destruction as it were protect the natural landscape and features on both sides by concentrating the flow of human, horse, water and other trail users in one place. To allow access to the trails and backcountry of the park without providing bridges and trails would only do further damage to the unique ecosystem of ancient forests, alpine meadows and glacial fed rivers and streams. I certainly agree that there are times when “fixing nature” not only makes little sense, but can be antithetical to the very idea of supporting and celebrating the natural world. However in the case of the recent natural events at Mount Rainier, I find myself strongly aligned with Superintendent Uberuaga’s commitment to make sure the public has continued access to the park, and that this access provides as much protection to both the visitor and the natural resource they are coming to admire. Gary and Corey:

You both make very good points and ask a great question that should remain at the heart of any dialogue regarding how people manage wild places in both the national park system and in other natural areas in this country and through out the world.

When I said that the impact of the great rains and flooding created the worst impact in the history of this area I was careful to say in “it’s history as a national park”, which was created in 1899. There were of course far greater glacial events, volcanic events, wind events, flooding events and plate tectonics that created the extraordinary landscape we treasure now. For those of us that call the Northwest home, these realities of the power of nature were drilled into our psyche with the eruptions of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 and since.

At Mount Rainier National Park, “recovering” from these latest events bring to fore many competing challenges. For example, the roads, particularly the road from the Nisqually entrance station up through Longmire and to Paradise, are not only a means of access to the interior of the park; they are also historic landmarks and byways, designed by the first director of the park service, Stephen Mather. In fact, there is little land in the park that is not either designated wilderness (97%) or protected by national historic landmark status (over 2%), which includes most of the facilities at Longmire as well.

Another challenge is the very schizophrenia of the park service mandate under the Organic Act of 1916, the congressional law that established the park service itself. Under the organic Act NPS is required to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations”. These two fundamental tasks can be hard to achieve in the sight of the other.

It could be argued (and it sounds like it was initially by some of the park staff) that the road’s destruction offered a remarkable opportunity for natural healing of the land, to reduce use or overuse by the public and as an extraordinary educational recognition of the immense power of nature. This is not too dissimilar from an argument Liz Putnam read from Bernard DeVoto in the early 50’s that the army needed to be put around the national parks to prevent them from being “loved to death”. Liz loved national parks dearly, but instead challenged the notion of closing off the parks and proposed the power of student conservationists to help heal the land.

Land managers and land management policy continue to evolve. Mount Rainier used to have powered alpine ski lifts and a golf course at Paradise. Those are gone. Repairing roads and bridges and facilities to protect and educate the public are deemed essential by senior management staff that recognize that the public needs access to our parks in order to care for, and thus advocate for them. The public in this case is not just the “hard core” well experienced wilderness users, but the sometimes not yet initiated park user coming from the almost two million Washington citizens (many of them urban) living within a two hour drive from one of Mount Rainier’s entrances.

As for SCA’s work, which will be repairing trails and building bridges, restoring soil and native vegetation to either flood scoured or earth moving machine scoured river and stream banks, clearing camp grounds and building picnic tables and other structures, and educating the public to the natural events that took place during the storms – this is all essential to protecting the resource. SCA’s renowned trail building and maintenance manual Lightly on the Land suggests that trails are pathways that could be considered 100% impact zones. These sacrifice zones of destruction as it were protect the natural landscape and features on both sides by concentrating the flow of human, horse, water and other trail users in one place. To allow access to the trails and backcountry of the park without providing bridges and trails would only do further damage to the unique ecosystem of ancient forests, alpine meadows and glacial fed rivers and streams.

I certainly agree that there are times when “fixing nature” not only makes little sense, but can be antithetical to the very idea of supporting and celebrating the natural world. However in the case of the recent natural events at Mount Rainier, I find myself strongly aligned with Superintendent Uberuaga’s commitment to make sure the public has continued access to the park, and that this access provides as much protection to both the visitor and the natural resource they are coming to admire.

]]> By: Corey DeLaaux http://www.thesca.org/conservation_nation/2007/01/02/visiting-mt-rainier/#comment-114 Corey DeLaaux Mon, 29 Jan 2007 08:51:36 +0000 http://www.thesca.org/conservation_nation/2007/01/02/visiting-mt-rainier/#comment-114 Hi Jay, I would have to express the same question as Gary. While unfortunate that allot of the parks trails, roads, structures, etc. are damaged, this is a natural occurrence. The roads, trails, and structures can and should be rebuilt with hopefully a bit more education than previously was done creating the least impact to the natural surroundings. But would it be wise to further damage the park in recovery efforts through out the rest of the park? The trails, roads and structures can be cleared, repaired, and or replaced with minimal impact to the surrounding area by utilizing whats left of the areas we have already impacted, but I don't think it wise to venture much beyond that with the exception of coarse on removing any man made debris that was washed down stream. Should we venture into areas that don't normally get any heavy impact from humans to make it look the way we think it should? Would not cleanup crews further damage what does remain and risk more contamination of non-native plant species by disturbing what is left? I would also have to question the perspective at which we look at this. Hi Jay,
I would have to express the same question as Gary. While unfortunate that allot of the parks trails, roads, structures, etc. are damaged, this is a natural occurrence. The roads, trails, and structures can and should be rebuilt with hopefully a bit more education than previously was done creating the least impact to the natural surroundings. But would it be wise to further damage the park in recovery efforts through out the rest of the park? The trails, roads and structures can be cleared, repaired, and or replaced with minimal impact to the surrounding area by utilizing whats left of the areas we have already impacted, but I don’t think it wise to venture much beyond that with the exception of coarse on removing any man made debris that was washed down stream. Should we venture into areas that don’t normally get any heavy impact from humans to make it look the way we think it should? Would not cleanup crews further damage what does remain and risk more contamination of non-native plant species by disturbing what is left? I would also have to question the perspective at which we look at this.

]]> By: Gary King http://www.thesca.org/conservation_nation/2007/01/02/visiting-mt-rainier/#comment-113 Gary King Thu, 25 Jan 2007 15:36:54 +0000 http://www.thesca.org/conservation_nation/2007/01/02/visiting-mt-rainier/#comment-113 Jay - great article, thanks for compiling your thoughts and perspective. The one area I would have liked you to confront and expound upon, however, is the dichotomous tension you must have felt during your visit between interpretting what you witnessed as a natural occurance affecting a (relatively unaltered) natural landscape, versus interpreting the "devastated" Rainier landscape from a more humanistic perspective (i.e. the impact on the human imprint --roads, bridges, infrastructure, etc.) More often than not, in human-altered landscapes the root of this type of (flooding) devastation can be traced back to the human-altered landscape itself (increase in impervious surfaces, ground destabilization due to land clearing, logging, development, etc.). In Rainier, I would presume that this was not so much the case. The alteration of the landscape you witnessed was due primarily to the tremendous volume of water which inundated the Park in a relatively short amount of time; a natural phenomenon. With this in mind I'm still left wondering and questioning whether, sans a human imprint in this majestic, rugged and highly-evolved natural landsape, the heavy rains and ensuing, landscape altering run-off should be interpreted more as natural (ecosystem) evolution than unprecedented devastation? Jay - great article, thanks for compiling your thoughts and perspective. The one area I would have liked you to confront and expound upon, however, is the dichotomous tension you must have felt during your visit between interpretting what you witnessed as a natural occurance affecting a (relatively unaltered) natural landscape, versus interpreting the “devastated” Rainier landscape from a more humanistic perspective (i.e. the impact on the human imprint –roads, bridges, infrastructure, etc.) More often than not, in human-altered landscapes the root of this type of (flooding) devastation can be traced back to the human-altered landscape itself (increase in impervious surfaces, ground destabilization due to land clearing, logging, development, etc.). In Rainier, I would presume that this was not so much the case. The alteration of the landscape you witnessed was due primarily to the tremendous volume of water which inundated the Park in a relatively short amount of time; a natural phenomenon. With this in mind I’m still left wondering and questioning whether, sans a human imprint in this majestic, rugged and highly-evolved natural landsape, the heavy rains and ensuing, landscape altering run-off should be interpreted more as natural (ecosystem) evolution than unprecedented devastation?

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