jruz

I know what you meant about car-pooling, I had been thinking the same thing (that having more vehicles show might have a better effect than having more people show).

Don't sweat it, the links are good enough.
It's funny how the contact name for this project is "Susan Ranger". What kind of irony is that for a name...

Wow, so we're looking at a potential 3 hour drive? Ouch.

Jim

crash

Sounds like its off road 19 (follows the lil nachies river) on the west side of the road. Unless that is longmires medow I am thinking of (near where the river cross's the road and goes back onto the west side of the road)

GRNTACO

If I do go then 2:15 is a good start. I will know for sure tomorrow.

midiwall

Well, 90 minutes from Our Special Safeway plus your drive time to get there. 2 1/2 total (one way) for me, 3 1/2 for Shannon... and I keep getting confused about where the rest of youse guys live.

GRNTACO

After you make the left at the fork and go over the river it forks again in a half mile and that is were you go right 1902 or left 1922 and there is a big camp/rec area there.

WATRD

When Mark and I went over there for the closure meeting, I met "Susan Ranger". I kept having the urge to tell her that A.), the 60's were over and B.) That granola was not doing her any favors...

Shane

Sounds good to me.


That's ok, they're stupid enough to allow directory browsing so it's not hard to find what they're trying to hide or are too incompetent to link to. Their kung fu is weak.

midiwall

heh... their KungFu is Foo!

(that's how I found the file... though I did find another page later that had a correct link to it)

Yoter

Benny from Central Wa. wont be there. Soory. Benny

jruz

Alrighty...quick roll-call for those who are coming.

Jim - yup
Mark - yup (?)
Shane - ?
.....

WATRD

Maybe (probably) from me... I have to rearrange some baby stuff.

If I can make it, I will be coming from a different direction, so don't wait for me... I will see you there.

Shane

roll-call for those who are coming.

Jim - yup
Mark - yup (?)
Shane - yup

Waterboy

I know my panty waste self hasn't made it out on any gatherings for a while and it looks like I'll have to add this one to the list. I have a rather large family function at 3 in Everett. Let us know how it goes over there.

midiwall

I'll be off of the 'net from about noon on through the weekend. Shannon has my cell # and I'll also PM it to Jim.

As I understand it now, we're aiming to be at the Enumclaw Safeway at 2:15 on Saturday.

Please call me if anything changes.

Kickin'!

jruz

I don't know how you do it...the Internet is essentially legal-crack. Gotta get your daily fix...

Shane

Don't worry, he'll be twitching by dinner time.

GRNTACO

I will not make it today for the meeting. Like I said before my mom is here from Cali. I tried to arrange visitation for tomorrow but they are leaving tomorrow morning so it's today or nothing

Maybe someone can keep the minutes of the meeting and post them here?

jruz

Good thought, maybe I'll bring my Mini-disc recorder and mic.

midiwall

And... we're back!

Well, actually, we've been back for about 12 hours now, but I just now got around to getting into the neighbor's router again for some bandwidth. The things I do for you guys/gals! (and fwiw, Verizon is being a REAL pain to get DSL running here at home)

Okay.. meeting overview...

Folks from Yotatech and WATORA were:

• Jim (jruz)
• Mark (midiwall)
• Shane (shane)
• Shannon (funrunner)

We were 4 people out of 50-60 people present.

The short form is that it was worth the drive.

The majority of the meeting as talking about _ATV and Quad_ trails, NOT Jeep trails. The closings, re-routings, etc. that were mentioned in the newsletter were all ATV/Quad trails. The issue behind these is that there are many "non-system" trails (trails cut by riders themselves, not the USFS) throughout the area and the rangers haven't been policing them.

They will now.

There's a federal mandate coming down to watch this kind of stuff, and the Naches district is looking to be proactive in enforcing riding on system only trails before it becomes federal law.

That was the majority of the meeting... We got to witness the normal rightous yelling and chest-puffing that comes with these things. That was fun.


More details...

By the time we found the site, we ended up about 25 minutes late. We kept an ear open to the general meeting, and then I went and grabbed our own private ranger (Mike Rowan) to backfill us on what we missed. He was very gracious to spend a solid 20 minutes with us alone and answer our specific questions. Kudos to Mike.

Mike also gave us a good bit of info about volunteer hours. One thing that was emphasized was that the money that the rangers get to work on the trails comes from the feds seeing that there are volunteers that care about the trail system.

"Volunteer hours" can come from in a number of different forms. For example, clearing (system!) trails from fallen trees; cleaning up trash; clearing streams, etc. Like we've tried to do at Reiter, we should all be carrying garbage bags with us on rides. If we pick up any trash at all, we can claim those hours as volunteer hours.

To claim hours, we simply keep semi-formal logs of the travel time to the site, the time through the area, a description of what we've done, and names/contact information of those involved. This information is then emailed to Sam Bissel (contact info below) and the hours will be logged.

In conjunction with talking about pulling trash off the trails, Mike also talked about "Safety Sessions". This is a class of sorts that the Rangers really want to see volunteers go through in order to understand what kind of hazards are out on the trails. He told us about all the "ugly" stuff that's out on the trails, including things like hypodermic needles.

This class is given free to all those that want it. Not everyone that rides in a group has to take it, in fact one/two people from a group can take the class and become designated as the "safety contact" for the group. These people would then get updates as they become available, and they can disseminate the information to the rest of the group.

Outside of good information coming from this, it's a great way to get us more face time with Rangers, and solidify us as groups that do care.

The Rangers are open to conduct the safety sessions on our schedules. They prefer weekdays at the station, but they WILL meet with us at a trail head on weekends.


Contact information:

• Sam Bissell
  Motorized trails supervisor
  jbissell@fs.fed.us (not a typo)
  509.653.1438 voice
  509.653.2638 fax
  
  Sam is the contact point for volunteer work and the lead contact for arranging safety sessions.
  
  
• Cary Henning
  Vounteer host/education enforcement
  clhenning@fs.fed.us
  509.653.1431
  
  Cary is the contact point for volunteer _enforcement_ work. An example of this would be that you know you'll be camping in a public area and want to have a designation of "volunteer enforcement" such that you have a smidgen more power to stop trail violators (60mph through a camp ground, 3am rodwy's, non-system trail riders, etc) and collect information from them. The rangers will outfit you with a hat & vest that designates you as being a registered enforcement volunteer. Obviously there is a ying/yang environment in doing something like this, but the option is there.
  
  
• Other rangers present, but without need for contact info:
  • Sue Ranger
  • Mike Rowan
  • Randall Shepard
  • 4 other rangers, 2 Yakima country sheriffs

After the meeting, we ran around the local trail system a bit, (pictures will show up in another thread) and ended back over in Enumclaw for some babble and pizza.

It was a great day... Hotter than heck, but the great company (and the good cause!) made it all worthwhile.

Thank you all for your support!

Mark

Shane

Thanks for posting the synopsis Mark, and thanks to everyone who was able to find/make time to be there.

Overall it was a positive meeting in regards to our uses, like Mark stated above they are not trying to close any of the "system" or marked trails. Their main concern regarding closures is about trails that people have cut (mostly quad and bike riders) to make shortcuts between campsites and between trails. Ranger Mike Rowan even mentioned that they are considering keeping a few of the "non-system" trails that seem useful.

The only major point stated about the 4x4 trails in the area is that some which pass through delicate areas such as riparian areas may need to be rerouted, which is totally understandable. There was no apparent push towards closing any of our trails.