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[pct-l] Stop that museum thief!

Hello All -

Great day yesterday!

We had been waiting impatiently for the cog railway to clear the track all
the way up to the summit of Pikes Peak.  We had never ridden a cog and we
wanted to catch a top-down view of some of the beautiful "CDT" country here
in Colorado.  We have been working our way up the mountain via a series of
day hikes, but so far 10,200 ft elev. is the highest we have gotten (14
mile round trip).

We (wife, daughter, and I...wife's birthday!) took the cog up yesterday
morning and the big rotary plows got us to within 300 ft of the 14,110 ft
summit!  Close enough for me...crystal clear day and the winds did NOT blow
the train off of the tracks <g>.  We got off at about the half-way point on
the way down and spent the afternoon enjoying first the snow and then the
famous old "Barr Trail" as we worked our way down the mountain.  Nice day.

Snow report:  100% snow cover above 10,000 (very wet snow, lotsa
postholing), small clear patches on the sunny slopes from 9-10,000, 50%
cover from 8-9,000, and mostly clear below 8,000.  Got sunned on for about
6 hours, dry cloud cover off and on for about an hour total, and got snowed
on for about another half-hour.  The sun is winning!

The above report is for you PCT'98'ers whose land-nav skills might be a
little rusty.  Do NOT make that sharp right-hand turn just north of
Yosemite...<VBG>.

Hey...nice "museum" thread!

I agree completely with Blister>Free that it's a shame that we have to
consider even the smallest piece of wild when we are deciding how much
impact we can allow ourselves at each personal-impact "decision point".

I find that I also agree with bj's good case for a sane "museum" approach.

Philippe's interesting question about "what true wilderness is" helped me
put my finger on my own personal take on this issue.

We have a number of legal definitions of "wilderness" as part of the
various laws that were passed to create/maintain the protected "Wilderness
Area" set-asides in our public lands in the USA.  There are also other
legal definitions that guide preservation of specific "wild" sites (within
our National Parks, National Historic Sites, Wildlife Refuges, etc.).
Other laws can even force private property owners to protect evidence of
"wildness" on their own lands.  I would guess that some of us on this list
would be interested in these various definitions of "wild"...perhaps
someone on the list has them close to keyboard.

I see an ecosystem as a kind of dynamic "balance" that has been created by
the complex array of gazillions of forces (animal, veggie, and mineral <g>)
that interact within that system.  It is dynamic because it is constantly
changing...one force gets stronger/weaker and the rest "adjust" until a
natural balance is restored...over and over and over...every second of
every day.

Usually we humans are oblivious to the gazillions of minute "adjustments"
that are being made every eye-blink...and we kinda blindly call it the
"same" ecosystem that it was a second ago.  If it is a particularly
"robust" (stable) ecosystem, the many and constant changes keep bringing it
back to a familiar balance that we recognize (i.e., have named...alpine,
arctic, desert, southern swamp, eastern forest, pine barren, etc.).

If it is a REALLY robust ecosystem, it can even tolerate some level of
impact by humans and still rebalance (self-repair) into the "same"
ecosystem that it was before.  At some level, the many human impacts will
add up to more change than the old system can tolerate and it will
rebalance into an ecosystem that is "different" enough to be seen as some
other kind of ecosystem by us.

Our interaction with spaceship Earth can be looked at a lot of ways.  We
can do the "either-or" thing (we either got "wild" or we don't), we can
think of "continuums" (wild - mostly-wild - kinda wild - itty-bitty bit
wild - NYC), we can tap-dance with the definition of "wild" itself ("ranch
wild", "mountain wild", "recreation wild", "urban wild", etc.), or we can
use some other measure.

For me, the issue is quite simple.  I am willing to call any ecosystem
"wild" if it tends to come to "balance" independently of man and the many
effects we tend to have where ever we go.

If we want to retain such an ecosystem, I feel we humans have a choice to make:

either minimize our impacts below the threshold where the ecosystem can
"absorb" the human impacts and still rebalance as the "same" ecosystem
(very similar to the pre-human one); or,

we get to live with the new and different ecosystem that our impacts have
created.

Throughout most of our human history, of course, we have chosen the second
alternative.  "New and improved" has long been our collective motto <g>.
It is just in relatively-recent history that we have become sophisticated
enough with our various sciences to have our noses rubbed in the fact that
"new" might not always be an improvement over the long haul.

Interestingly enough, it's these very "smarts" that have convinced me of
how "dumb" we humans really are <g>.  Every now and then I rise WAY above
myself and I catch a faint glimmer of how incredibly wonderfully complex
our "natural" world really is.  I then remember all the evidence I have
personally seen (just in my short lifetime) of how catastrophically wrong
we can be with our backcountry-use decisions (through shortsightedness,
callousness, greed, ignorance, plain old stupidity, etc.).

I find that I don't have a great deal of faith (yet!) in our ability to
fully understand and then deliberately "improve" ecosystems.  We humans ARE
learning more and more every day...and more and more of us are making
honest efforts to try to muddle our way thru the mishmash of conflicting
eco-information we find laying around.  But, IMHO...we truly ain't there
yet!

Is the "New Forest" actually "wild"?  Is it better than "wild"?  Is it even
possible that it could ever have been "wild" in this day and age (given the
politics, culture, ownership, population pressure, economics, history,
etc.)?  Even if we have the collective will, do we have the collective
smarts to be able to "recreate" a wild ecosystem?  Maybe New Forest is just
the best that we can do when given the realities of the situation (which
ain't any too shabby, when you think about it!).

The good news is that we in the USA might still be able to "preserve" some
very nice "wild-like" areas...instead of having to come back in the future
and recreate them!  Or maybe, at a practical individual level, we can each
try to preserve some of our favorite backcountry places so that we (and our
kids!) can revisit/enjoy them tomorrow.

The fact that cows do a LOT more damage to the PCT than I could ever
possibly do doesn't make me want to blow off my potential impacts when I
hike.  Right now I would have to guess that there are a LOT more cows out
there damaging the PCT than there are humans creating impacts.  Know
what...it won't be too long before we humans will vastly outnumber the
moo-crew!  Both because at some point we are bound to get smart and protect
the PCT from cattle AND because the PCT user-population will slowly start
looking more and more like the AT every year.  If we don't start trying to
get Dave G. on the PCT's "side" now, there certainly won't be time or
resources to do that when there are millions of his clones using the trail
in the future (AT visits are now running into the millions each year!).

The fact that acid rain occurs in our Wilderness Areas doesn't make me want
to shrug my shoulders and quit being careful with my personal impacts.  My
man Popeye said it for me: "I yam what I yam...I does what I can!"  It
kinda looks like all I will ever be able to do to fight acid rain is to try
to choose between sleezebag politician/lawyers.  Not so with my personal
impacts to the backcountry...THEM I do have some control over <VBG>!

Blister>Free...don't get too hung up on treating the AT like a museum <g>.

For one thing, you are going to be surrounded by thousands of hikers who
truly could either care less about their impacts or don't have a clue that
a problem even exists (much less have any personal plan on how to fix it!).

For another, a lot of the damage has already been done to the AT.  Please
don't allow the success of your AT hike to depend on your having a true
"wilderness experience".  What you WILL find is a wonderful social
experience and an outstanding (challenging!) hike in some very nice woods
(nice town-stops, too!).

Every chance you get, suck it up and be willing to make the "hard" choice
to minimize your personal impact to the AT trail corridor (keep the damage
from getting worse!).  Help your fellow hikers appreciate the control that
they DO have over whether or not they personally are adding to the problem.
Make sure that you include "impact" pictures/stories in your journal, so
that you can later help the home-folks understand such things when you do
all those "after dinner" and "free lunch" thru-hiker talks <g>.  Then, come
help us spread the "LNT message"...it's going to take ALL of us!

Good hiking!

Trace No Leaves,

- Charlie II


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