OK, that's a very good start.
Now, recall that some of the trails that the A-T follows in New Hampshire are a century-and-a-half old. In that length of time, rebar would have expanded as it rusted and split the rock, most likely doing even worse damage than the countless boots have done. The same goes for the ironmongery that would be needed to anchor wooden steps on those precipitous scrambles. Carved steps, in New Hampshire granite, would be quite a daunting job. I don't think you could get a water jet cutter up to most of those places, so it would mean thousands of man-years of work with hammerstones. Where will you find the labor? Will it be all-volunteer, or will you have tax money pay for it? If the latter, can we please have a study to investigate whether these approaches are the most cost-effective?
I always know where I am. I'm right here.
I know what will make everyone happy. Solar-powered escalators........
Fear ridges that are depicted as flat lines on a profile map.
I've never been able to understand how being afraid of the boogeyman is intellectual, but that seems to be the case. My point, which the "intellectuals" won't bother to consider, is that the invoking of the Holy Graille, or Holy Hand Grenade, or Holy Climate Change, ought to come with more than a sprinkle of skepticism. In the article referenced in the first post, there is this line,
"With climate change, I believe there will be more catastrophic climate events, such as heavy and extended rain events that really stress trails," Marion said. "We need to create more sustainably designed trails that will handle these rain events as well as increasing traffic."
Where in the world did that come from? What climate change models forecast heavy and extended rain events along the AT? I'm not buying that you can claim any outcome you want, attribute it to Climate Change, and get public money. Anti-Intellectual? Maybe. Anti-Bulls***? Definitely.
"Waning Gibbous" would be a great trail name.
use the google, luke "climate change us northeast"
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/imp...northeast.html
Over the last several decades, the Northeast has experienced noticeable changes in its climate. Since 1970, the average annual temperature rose by 2°F and the average winter temperature increased by 4°F. [2] Heavy precipitation events increased in magnitude and frequency. For the region as a whole, the majority of winter precipitation now falls as rain, not snow. [2] Climate scientists project that these trends will continue.
Jeff Marion's professional page
https://profile.usgs.gov/jeff_marion
"Sleepy alligator in the noonday sun
Sleepin by the river just like he usually done
Call for his whisky
He can call for his tea
Call all he wanta but he can't call me..."
Robert Hunter & Ron McKernan
Whiteblaze.net User Agreement.
When you folks read over the grant application, what specific parts did you think he's got wrong? It sounds like he is in the beginning stages of the project. You could probably contact him at that link and give him some advice.
"Sleepy alligator in the noonday sun
Sleepin by the river just like he usually done
Call for his whisky
He can call for his tea
Call all he wanta but he can't call me..."
Robert Hunter & Ron McKernan
Whiteblaze.net User Agreement.
I think most didn't even bother to further read what the study was aimed to accomplish before they made their comments. I welcome the study. I'll also say "it's about time!" As a Landscape Architect, horticulturalist, naturalist, and long distance hiker I can see a multitude of good coming from it. I'm not one who narrowly envisions the AT only from a human centric perspective. I applaud the improvements at Annapolis Rocks as well which is a definite improvement over the way it was!
Most people do applaud the use of OPM on things that interest them.
Fear ridges that are depicted as flat lines on a profile map.
C'mon people. You cannot limit access to the AT. Not sure you could logistically enforce an admission or use fee over most of the AT.
I agree, but we all know big Gov loves to try, and when change is in the air, it usually starts with a study. Not saying that's what's going on here at all, just playin Devils dummy.
So--what are you going to do--fence it all in? Because that has worked so well thusfar on the Mexican border. :-( You anti-government folks must have better scenarios to contemplate.
I'm not anti Gov, but I'm very much "Don't fence me in"
I see this and other studies or actual construction projects coming out with recommendations for how to better build/maintain tread, the wisest use of checkdams/waterbars/switchbacks, where NOT to locate tread, etc. when relos are done. And maybe identify places where relos should be done. That sort of thing. Like the model created and repeated many times with roots in the Annapolis Rocks project.
I would hope for this as the best scenarios, not limiting use by simply numbers per day.
Folks, we've already closed a number of climate change/global warming threads, so putting that aside, if there are other aspects of the study you want to discuss go ahead but move off the climate change arguing.
Thanks!
"Sleepy alligator in the noonday sun
Sleepin by the river just like he usually done
Call for his whisky
He can call for his tea
Call all he wanta but he can't call me..."
Robert Hunter & Ron McKernan
Whiteblaze.net User Agreement.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Fear ridges that are depicted as flat lines on a profile map.
Indeed!
Moreover, the guy actually has a proven track record, as I indicated earlier, in his studies of shelter design. Rather than brutal solutions like, "build more shelters," "rip out all the shelters, because they're sacrificial areas," "institute a permit system to limit the number of hikers," and the ever popular "do nothing and let things continue their descent to Avernus in a hand-basket," he came up with some fairly minimal interventions: "mark some distributed campsites at a good spacing from the shelter, and require that hikers use them rather than tenting right by the shelter", "distribute the sites just far enough that the sense of privacy makes them more attractive than the immediate shelter area while still near enough to socialize in the evening", "stabilize the surface in front of the shelter where people do camp chores and socialize," and "improve the drainage and surface of a tent footprint at each distributed site, to avoid widespread surface damage." These interventions are considerably less obvious than the brutal ones, and there are equally plausible ones that do not work as well. It takes some experimentation to find these things out. And I can see that I'm reaping the benefits. As I said: the sites that have been redesigned support more hikers in a less damaging fashion than the older sites do.
Of course, there are certain individuals who believe that any government spending, particularly on research, is waste: after all, they know everything already, or something. (I'm not accusing anyone in this conversation of that, but I am sure that everyone can identify politicians who campaign on that premise.) If that is the belief, it leads to the logical conclusion that a tremendous return of money could be bought for the taxpayers by auctioning off the trail and letting someone like Disney take it over as a "wilderness theme park." If it can't be run profitably, then obviously the market has spoken that the people don't really want it, and it would be better to break it up and sell it off in pieces to developers. Think of all the money that would bring for whatever your favorite cause might be. Or perhaps we want to keep it a government monopoly, in which case we need to institute a system of user fees set high enough to make sure that it runs at a profit to the taxpayers. I've actually heard some self-proclaimed libertarian politicians espouse the idea of privatizing the National Park Service and the National Forests - because they perceive a potential financial windfall to the taxpayers in doing so.
If you don't accept that argument - which I concede ought to be a barely plausible straw man - then we have arrived at the conclusion that some amount of government attention to the A-T at taxpayer expense is necessary and appropriate. Now we've opened the door to discussing which interventions are most effective at the lowest cost. Where disagreements arise, we can resolve them by screaming across the political aisle, knowing in advance that our way is the only way, or perhaps we can try to gather actual evidence to support one approach over another. How much is it reasonable to spend to support evidence over advocacy? I don't claim to have an ideal answer, but I'm pretty sure that the answer isn't zero.
I always know where I am. I'm right here.
With all that said, I have no problem with a study to determine how to make the trail less susceptible to damage from use, and I support the idea of taking that information and presenting it to the local trail maintaining organizations. I understand and agree that the surface conditions along the different sections of the trail require different solutions. While I am not advocating spending OPM wildly, I would much rather have people seeking that money write individual grant requests justifying the need for instead of funding a full-time Federal Department of Recreational Trails.