kevbert wrote:The Forest Service didn't like the size of horse groups going into Chamberlain Basin in the Frank Church Wilderness. There were a few organizations and people that opposed them, from the Backcountry Horsemen, to various guides and outfitters. Eventually, the FS established a rule limiting the size of groups, limiting both the number of people and the number of horses. They also established a $5000 penalty for violating the rule. These rules were shown to me by a FS employee during a friendly discussion on possible outcomes for the Big 4 issue. His point: history has shown that the FS almost always gets its way.

Grassstrippilot wrote:Even with the amount that use these strips in a condensed period of time during the summer, you'd be hard pressed to find anything left behind other than tire tracks. It's not like they are having a beerfest there. The supposed issue is ruining someone else's experience with nature, something that I find hard to believe as occurring in mass quantity given the remoteness of the strips. Just not a ton of people out there. It's just that those few that are there are very vocal...with the FS seeming to be the ones with the biggest issue.

Grassstrippilot wrote:Correct me if I am wrong, but from what I understood from the presentation at JC was that this "agreement" was no agreement. After being labeled as "emergency only" strips (can't plan to land there as the presenter said), the FS, without going through the public comment period and other hoops that they should have jumped through, changed the plan to sporadic use only...problem is, there is no definition for "sporadic". In the context of a year, it'd be hard to say it isn't sporadic. In the context of a couple of weeks in June, it would be hard to say that it is sporadic. So, the options now available is 1) engage in a costly legal battle to force the FS to go through the required process to change the management plan and define sporadic (not the desired course of action) or 2) keep massaging the situation and hope for a much less expensive back room, out of sight solution that gets less attention, especially from the ecofreaks.

Anyway, that is what I understood from the presentation. Feel free to correct where needed if you were there. After all, I was sitting close to the range of the speaker limits.

I was not talking about beer cans or other trash. I was talking about wear and tear. People walking the same routes, often more than one after another. Groups wear things faster down than one or two people at a time, widening trails, causing erosion, and generally wear out a site more than the same number of people would have done had they come in one or two or three at a time. It's just a fact of life and, dare I say it, herd behaviour.