Re: [pct-l] Banning Horses? Yes!

[Owen Kittredge <owenk@quiknet.com>]

Greg

Well written but I question the soils forming over millions of years.  The
present environment that we see today has formed in the last 10,000
years, the end of last major glaciers. Mother Nature is a lot more resilient
than the sky-is-falling types would like to admit.  Does this give us the
right to trash our environment. . . NO, but decisions must be made with the
correct facts not with inflated numbers to justify the end.  You and I as
scientists have a duty to public to provide correct information.

Owen Kittredge
California Registered Geologist #5853

Greg Hummel wrote:

> Dear Reynolds (first name?),
>
> First, thank you for remaining non-inflammatory and civil in your discussion of our differences in opinion. Understanding and solutions come from civil discussion.
>
> I don't think that the Sierra is suffering degradation from overuse, I know that it is and can point to evidence on almost every trail, every campsite, every trail head. The key word here is "almost". Not all, just almost all. Sure I know of many areas that are untrammeled and relatively undamaged, but those areas closest to access and most popular all almost without exception are showing signs of degradation. By "degradation" I mean that the trail is wider than necessary, or there a several side by side parallel trails thru wet areas, or the side of the trail on a slope has been pushed out, or there are piles of rusted cans and other liter in the campsite, or erosion of the campsite or trail has been accelerated due to the pounding of too much weight crushing and pulverizing the soil into dust that is too easily blown or washed away leaving the rocks below, or, or, or, . . .
>
> My emphasis on HIGH was to indicate that my concern is more focused on those alpine areas at the higher elevations in the Sierra that are the most delicate. The soil profiles that are there, under the meadows and low in the valleys have taken millions (that's right millions) of years to form. Any erosion caused by humans directly or indirectly is un-repairable and non-reversible.
>
> I have been hiking in the upper reaches of the San Joaquin River drainage in the Ansel Adams wilderness area for 27 years. I have hiked out of the Agnew Meadows trail head almost every time over that course of time and I can personally attest to the degradation of the trail head area (where there happens to be horse packer corrals and staging area) and trails up to Shadow, Marie, Garnet and Thousand Island Lakes, among others. These high alpine lakes and surrounding areas are frequented by horse packers due to the good access from Agnew Meadows and the pack station at Red's Meadow. The trail from Agnew Meadows to Thousand Island Lake has been degraded by the frequent pounding from the many horse packers over many years. I know that the pulverization of volcanic and granitic rocks and soils that make up most of that trail bed have not been appreciably degraded by vibram souls as the rubber will wear out before it will begin to crush, scrape, smear or any other mechanical action, the
> rock and soils. The trail bed in several stretches is a deep (say 4 to 6 inches) trench filled with powder, effectively hiding the more resistant rocks, causing frequent near-damaging ankle turns. In other stretches the trail has been deeply eroded and repaired and eroded and repaired. I'm sure that the repairs were made with the assistance of horse packers, but would they have been necessary in the first place if a lower volume or no horses had pounded the trail?
>
> This is only one area in the Sierras that I offer as an example, there are many more that I (and others on the list) can point to. It is still a beautiful and spectacular area that I will continue to visit. However, my experience is degraded from these issues and I wonder what that trail will look like in 200 years. You see I am not just thinking about the short term, my lifetime. The small degradation that I have noticed over twenty seven years would not be disturbing if all I was concerned with was my lifetime. It is the minor creep of damage over long periods of time that goes unnoticed due to the small amount over an individuals exposure to it that accumulates and accelerates and eventually is recognized as a major damage problem. I'm not surprised that you don't recognize the damage. Most people don't look for it. As a geologist I have been trained to observe details closely to identify lineaments, trends, and minor changes in texture as a sign of the beginnings of erosional
> processes.
>
> I think in geologic time scales not human time scales. The pace of damage and degradation in the Sierra due to man is unheralded in terms of the pace of erosional processes in geologic time.
>
> >Your solution is to WRITE letters to politicians to back your position. My
> >solution is to send MONEY to BUY politicians [they call this political
> >donations] to back my position. Who do you think will win?
>
> Well I know my state assemblyman, my state senator and my congressman (and several other congressman)on first name basis from the years of writing letters and taking opportunities to get involved and meet with them and running a business in the political campaign industry. No I don't send money and I think that maybe your money may speak very loud. However, I think that the 70% of the people who are willing to be charged more in taxes and cost of goods to pay for environmental clean-up (stat is from a survey that was done at least ten years ago and widely quoted) and wilderness preservation are more important to them on election day than the money you send. They (even very conservative Republicans) know this stat and respect it, even if they don't share the same sentiments.
>
> >I am trying get you to understand that
> >by advocating shutting out certain people [horse people for example] from
> >the wilderness you are weakening the political base of people who are
> >trying to preserve the wilderness [maybe not exactly as you want to and
> >maybe not as pristine as you hoped but still, by and large preserve it].
>
> I've heard this "divide and conquer" fear strategy before. It carries no weight with me as when making the argument to preserve I prefer to do so from a stance with as little hippocrasy as possible (a difficult and challenging thing to do anyway).
>
> >Interestingly, my reaction to the Tahoe '97 Confrence you refrence was
> >'Another bunch of extremists smelling their own gas'. True DDT was a
> >problem but we [the world] were also supposed to be out of oil by now and
> >the greenhouse effect was supposed to raise the temperature 10 degrees by
> >now.
>
> Well, in fact the temperature of world has risen due to the greenhouse effect and this is widely accepted by the scientific community, not wholely but a majority. The prediction that we would run out of oil was not put out by "extremists", but in fact was put out by experience oil analysts from the oil industry based on some fairly strong evidence. It has been revised several times due to the effects of supply and demand and due to an increase in the technology of finding and producing the ever increasingly elusive oil reservoirs. Instead of throwing around wild statements with little basis in fact, can we please stay focused on the issue at hand?
>
> >I advocate [and have so stated in this forum] raising the fees on packers
> >and limiting the number of stock on the trail of stock per day. This seems
> >to me a reasonable solution to most of the horse shit while still allowing
> >people to use horses [at a significantly incresesd price] and packers to
> >stay in business -- if they will simply allow the law of supply and demand
> >to work. I advocate this primarily because I want to reduce the horse shit
> >on the trail and reduce the sometimes huge horse parties. I believe that
> >this would increase most peoples enjoyment of the trail and increase
> >support for the wilderness.
>
> I think this is an excellent suggestion and merely would like to restrict horses from a few delicate, particularly beautiful areas. We are closer than we think. Thanks for the discussion on this most important issue and the timing couldn't be better in regards to Inyo NF review of horse packer permitting.
>
> Take long strides . . . . .
>
> Greg "Strider" Hummel * From the Pacific Crest Trail Email List | http://www.backcountry.net *



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