Snow in the PNW 20-21: We may have Corona but Corona doesn't have us!

[PNWbrit]

What do they use now for the end of season plowing to Sunrise?

The crews from Paradise and I believe that DOT chip in.

It's why it's always so late opening.

[altasnob]

I get it that the NPS lacks funding but it is incredibly frustrating that as our region gets more populated and wealthy (one of the wealthiest places on the planet) the access gets worse. Paradise road used to be open more regularly in Winter. Sunrise used to get plowed and open sooner in the Summer. Is this all due to lack of funding? I feel like roads that the State is in charge of plowing and opening (Chinook, North Cascades, Artist Point) have been pretty consistent with their openings, where as roads the NPS is in charge of open later, and later, and later.

[Bobcat Sig]

I get it that the NPS lacks funding but it is incredibly frustrating that as our region gets more populated and wealthy (one of the wealthiest places on the planet) the access gets worse. Paradise road used to be open more regularly in Winter. Sunrise used to get plowed and open sooner in the Summer. Is this all due to lack of funding? I feel like roads that the State is in charge of plowing and opening (Chinook, North Cascades, Artist Point) have been pretty consistent with their openings, where as roads the NPS is in charge of open later, and later, and later.

Pardon me as I don my tinfoil hat...

All this wealth may not want access. While we, as skier and mountain users want such things; they are plenty of groups that oppose such things and find ways to limit access. So at the risk of sounding like a total conspiracy kook that wandered out of the rat-flu vaxx thread; maybe some of these groups have found ways to limit access by hindering plowing efforts?

[river59]

Long story shart………first time I skied with no socks.

A call back to one of the greats...

https://www.tetongravity.com/forums/...-shit-my-pants

[Falcon3]

A call back to one of the greats...

https://www.tetongravity.com/forums/...-shit-my-pants

That was a wild ride

[Buster Highmen]

Pardon me as I don my tinfoil hat...

All this wealth may not want access. While we, as skier and mountain users want such things; they are plenty of groups that oppose such things and find ways to limit access. So at the risk of sounding like a total conspiracy kook that wandered out of the rat-flu vaxx thread; maybe some of these groups have found ways to limit access by hindering plowing efforts?

Look up Uberuaga Mount Rainier.

He tried to block skiers from accessing MNRP from lift served access at Crystal during their last MDP around 1999 in a completely underhanded and dishonorable way.

The most reasonable ski lift expansions are Cowboy down to Yodelin and East Peak inside the Crystal permit area.

[plugboots]

Any plumbers or electricians want to make a decent salary and live in the Methow Valley? There are three plumbers (and one has Covid), and there may be no electricians. Move to the valley, have steady work, charge basically what you want, ski.

[jackattack]

11.8” of precip over the past 96 hours at mt. baker ski area.

[XavierD]

Good for the base

[d542east]

If you zoom in you can see a touch of the white stuff at the top of the stuart range. Fantastic motivation for more bike riding. The recent rain helps too.

[riff]

I don’t have any thoughts on parking, etc. However, a few inches up there made some fun early turns a few days ago- and found a cool ice cave under the glacier too.


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[Bandit Man]

Riff - you continue to bring the stoke!

[CHAIR_97]

Riff - you continue to bring the stoke!

Man's got his priorities straight

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[Bandit Man]

Looks like Baker hit max number of season passes for 21-22. Hope some of our northern Mags secured their ticket to ride in time!

[Bobcat Sig]

Look up Uberuaga Mount Rainier.

He tried to block skiers from accessing MNRP from lift served access at Crystal during their last MDP around 1999 in a completely underhanded and dishonorable way.

The sketchy real estate deal to a guiding outfit with a monopoly?

[PNWbrit]

The sketchy real estate deal to a guiding outfit with a monopoly?

Crystal skiers crossing the NP boundary.

He probably should have gone to jail for that real estate deal though.

And the Yosemite fire was another colossal fuck up of his.

[Ted Striker]

Looks like Baker hit max number of season passes for 21-22

In less than an hour.

[AK47bp]

Looks like Baker hit max number of season passes for 21-22. Hope some of our northern Mags secured their ticket to ride in time!

Whoa, Baker has tons of snow already.

Wonder if they will be spinning lifts soon?


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[Bobcat Sig]

Crystal skiers crossing the NP boundary.

He probably should have gone to jail for that real estate deal though.

And the Yosemite fire was another colossal fuck up of his.

Lovely. What was the deal with skiers within the park boundaries? And what did he do that was so egregious?

[Buster Highmen]

Lovely. What was the deal with skiers within the park boundaries? And what did he do that was so egregious?

Crustal did a Master Development Plan (MDP) starting in 1997 (?) which cost them a lot of money to contract out to do Environmental Impact Studies (EIS) and present them to the Forest Service (FS) and National Parks Service (NPS), Washington State and Pierce County as well as distributing the various plans and studies to the public including an august array of clowns such as myself.

So the process went on, comments were filed, the usual bureaucratic h00haw took like 3 years to get to 6 final proposals. One including a lift to the top of East Peak.

On publishing the 6 final proposals, those of us thumb twiddlers with enough time and ennui to actually read the fucking things noticed that at the end of every single option, a clause had mysteriously been inserted which disbarred lift served skiers from entering Mount Rainier National Park (MRNP) and required Crustal to monitor and punish any skiers seen committing this massive transgression.

Several of us had spent the last 10+ years waddling around on our prehistoric ski mountaineering technology over a lot of the MNRP, crossing it to get to some primo swaths and swales of unfettered snow as well as the occasional run down to SR410, a vertical drop of nearly 4000 feet of continuous, luscious, boniferous snow, the latter all within MRNP.

So we raised objections and filed an injunction against the MDP and asked the relatively new owner to explain what had gone one.

He claimed cluelessness.

So the FS held a meeting on the MDP at a community center in Renton and a number of we ski freaks went down to try to figure out what had happened and rattle our rusty edges to demand access which had been enjoyed since the inception of the FS permit for Crustal.

At the meeting were Crustal owners and management along with the head of the ski patrol (who we would sometimes see out in these perimeters and outlands) as well as various and sundry enginerding contractors. The FS had an array of green robed officious bureaucrats. But no one from the MRNP, the NPS or the BLM, under whom the NPS and MRNP operate. Only a couple of MRNP officers attended {i] by phone[/i] (pre internt00bz)

So the meeting starts, we all squak and complain and demand how this had happened.

Then the head FS d00d tells us that outside of the process, outside of all the studies, the money spent, the time exhausted, tax dollars smoked, that Mr. Uberuaga in private meetings had demanded that the clauses restricting access be inserted.

Shouting ensued.

Lawyers threatened to sue, since the legally mandated process had been completely circumvented.

After an extremely heated number of exchanges asking why Uberagua and MRNP had inserted the clauses, Uberagua stated that there had been bits of surveyors tape found and that he felt that "skiing was bad for MRNP". Yes that's a quote. No justification, just a statement from on high.

More yelling.

Meeting adjourns.

Bureaucrats deliberate at the FS headquarters in Portland where they decide that they couldn't win the lawsuit, in part because of prior, very similar case law having to do with dropping rental canoes off next to, but not in, the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

So you motherfuckers who ski outside the Crustal permit area, owe me.

[PNWbrit]

Thanks B!

[Bobcat Sig]

Crustal did a Master Development Plan (MDP) starting in 1997 (?) which cost them a lot of money to contract out to do Environmental Impact Studies (EIS) and present them to the Forest Service (FS) and National Parks Service (NPS), Washington State and Pierce County as well as distributing the various plans and studies to the public including an august array of clowns such as myself.

So the process went on, comments were filed, the usual bureaucratic h00haw took like 3 years to get to 6 final proposals. One including a lift to the top of East Peak.

On publishing the 6 final proposals, those of us thumb twiddlers with enough time and ennui to actually read the fucking things noticed that at the end of every single option, a clause had mysteriously been inserted which disbarred lift served skiers from entering Mount Rainier National Park (MRNP) and required Crustal to monitor and punish any skiers seen committing this massive transgression.

Several of us had spent the last 10+ years waddling around on our prehistoric ski mountaineering technology over a lot of the MNRP, crossing it to get to some primo swaths and swales of unfettered snow as well as the occasional run down to SR410, a vertical drop of nearly 4000 feet of continuous, luscious, boniferous snow, the latter all within MRNP.

So we raised objections and filed an injunction against the MDP and asked the relatively new owner to explain what had gone one.

He claimed cluelessness.

So the FS held a meeting on the MDP at a community center in Renton and a number of we ski freaks went down to try to figure out what had happened and rattle our rusty edges to demand access which had been enjoyed since the inception of the FS permit for Crustal.

At the meeting were Crustal owners and management along with the head of the ski patrol (who we would sometimes see out in these perimeters and outlands) as well as various and sundry enginerding contractors. The FS had an array of green robed officious bureaucrats. But no one from the MRNP, the NPS or the BLM, under whom the NPS and MRNP operate. Only a couple of MRNP officers attended {i] by phone[/i] (pre internt00bz)

So the meeting starts, we all squak and complain and demand how this had happened.

Then the head FS d00d tells us that outside of the process, outside of all the studies, the money spent, the time exhausted, tax dollars smoked, that Mr. Uberuaga in private meetings had demanded that the clauses restricting access be inserted.

Shouting ensued.

Lawyers threatened to sue, since the legally mandated process had been completely circumvented.

After an extremely heated number of exchanges asking why Uberagua and MRNP had inserted the clauses, Uberagua stated that there had been bits of surveyors tape found and that he felt that "skiing was bad for MRNP". Yes that's a quote. No justification, just a statement from on high.

More yelling.

Meeting adjourns.

Bureaucrats deliberate at the FS headquarters in Portland where they decide that they couldn't win the lawsuit, in part because of prior, very similar case law having to do with dropping rental canoes off next to, but not in, the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

So you motherfuckers who ski outside the Crustal permit area, owe me.

Damn, dude! I very much appreciate the explanation and the superlatives. I like your writing style. And thank you for your work.

Uberagua seems like a real piece of work. What an asshat.

If I'm understanding it correctly, while the additional expansion died due to Mr. Uber-douche, the offending and erroneous language was removed from the proposals under threat of lawsuit?

[altasnob]

Sounds like a bureaucratic pissing match as Crystal is leasing from the Forest Service (Department of Agriculture; trees are no different than corn fields, right?) and MRNP is under Department of Interior. I could see how national park superintendents would want to maintain control over who enters their park and by what means. If someone used Crystal lifts to enter MRNP and needed to be rescued, the park would have to pick up the costs, correct? Like that dude from Vermont who went out to Three-Way and ended up in Packwood. Regardless of contract language, it seems impossible for Crystal to prevent people from dropping into the park from their lifts. People drop in to Teton NP from Jackson lifts as well.

I was told part of the pissing match was that in order to hike the King, you pass a few feet into the park. I remember there used to be a National Park employee sitting out there with a clip board who would interrogate you on your skiing plans. I never understood what it was about so I would lie.

[Buster Highmen]

Damn, dude! I very much appreciate the explanation and the superlatives. I like your writing style. And thank you for your work.

Uberagua seems like a real piece of work. What an asshat.

If I'm understanding it correctly, while the additional expansion died due to Mr. Uber-douche, the offending and erroneous language was removed from the proposals under threat of lawsuit?

The East Peak chair was provisionally excluded from the accepted Alternative (#6), in part because of a very vocal, miniscule minority, basing on an irrelevant argument. A letter of intent was lodged with the FS supporting the East Peak chair.

The language disbarring lift served skiers from accessing MRNP was removed from all the Alternatives, including the approved one.

One issue was a massive slide in 1999, a huDge snow year, from the top of a run called Kempers, NW facing off Silver Queen Peak, set off by a patrol charge that caused road damage on SR410 near the entrance to the White River MRNP access road. That run is all in MRNP and is now permanently closed, which, while understandable from an avalanche exposure pov, is a shame since it was a crucible for my Crustal sidecountry experience. I still ski it offseason.

The main traverse from the top of Silver Queen (Chair 6/High Campbell) to the Throne and all the access to South back as well as the traverse around the back of the Throne do drop for significant portions into MRNP, so access to that was also not denied.

[ptavv]

If someone used Crystal lifts to enter MRNP and needed to be rescued, the park would have to pick up the costs, correct?

How rescues are funded around the PNW is a touchy issue because the USFS and the NPs all seem to believe that it's in their interests to come up with the biggest possible number in order to "frighten" people into not needing rescue (or, in the alternate interpretation: to not activating a rescue out of fears of having to reimburse). The volunteer SAR organizations in the PNW do the bulk of the work, though they go into the National Parks infrequently from what I understand.

It's ridiculous enough that when the NPS is made to break down the costs the majority of them is made up by Ranger salaries and sometimes some overtime for Rangers. They do occasionally hire contract helicopters to facilitate S&R, but that mission has often (historically, usually) been done by military fixed wing and rotary aircraft who're stationed in the area (North Cascades and Olympics are mostly covered by Navy from NAS Whidbey Island; MRNP mostly assisted by the variety of aviation units at JBLM) and it's true it "costs money" to send the military, but they'd be spinning up those flights and burning that fuel for training missions anyway.

I was told part of the pissing match was that in order to hike the King, you pass a few feet into the park. I remember there used to be a National Park employee sitting out there with a clip board who would interrogate you on your skiing plans. I never understood what it was about so I would lie.

It depends on the snowpack at any given time but yes, often the traverse behind the King to get out to Three-Way peak crosses the boundary line between Crystal (USFS) and MRNP, there are signs all over the place telling people to respect the wilderness. It's dumb. I think them motivation behind a lot of the stupidest restrictions on moving from USFS to NP land freely is the entrenched notion among a lot of people and Park officials that they're "stealing" something that they should've had to pay to use.