Don't know why, but Zahn's Camp airstrip in southern Utah is closed. There are no X's on the runway, but there are a dozen white pickets driven into the runway surface. The pickets are INVISIBLE from 800 feet if the light is wrong...

This from the Utah Back Country Pilots Association's website:

Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Zahn's Camp airstrip is NOT open to air operations--may have obstructions

Zahn's Camp airstrip is NOT open to air operations--may have obstructions Updated: Tuesday, May 20, 2008

At this time there are NO backcountry airstrips within the Glen Canyon Recreation Area that are open to aviators. UBCP realizes that there is a considerable amount of confusion surrounding the airstrips within the GCNRA, and Zahn's specifically. A prominent guidebook does not mention it, BUT neither does any map available to the public from the Rec. Area mention it. That doesn't change the fact that Zahn's is NOT open. Please take note and help to spread the word. Additionally, unconfirmed reports state that the Park Service has taken steps to render the surface at Zahn's unusable. This may entail ditching or obstruction placed on the strip. UBCP does not know if universal "X's" have been placed on the strip to alert aviators, or if the obstructions are visible from the air. Further use of this strip may be dangerous and have legal consequences for those involved and reflects poorly on responsible Utah backcountry pilots everywhere.

Supposedly it hasn't been open for a long time, though its seen a lot of activity.

I wonder why they just didn't put the white Xs that are universally understood to mean the strip is closed.

Zahns camp has been closed for years and years. Why use white X's to mark something "closed" that was never really open. The only reason it still even looks like an airstrip is because of illegal use.

Those who think that it was open and talk about "confusion" should look elsewhere than a club website for their flight planning information.

Of course, thanks to a couple of recent crashes the activity has attracted attention thus the new obstructions.

I find this particular sentence from the UBCP rather irritating:

Further use of this strip may be dangerous and have legal consequences for those involved and reflects poorly on responsible Utah backcountry pilots everywhere.

...considering they were the one promoting the illegal use on their website. They had several illegal strips listed in their database, knowing full well the position of the Park Service on their use. Perhaps they are a little worried about liability after a couple pilots balled up their planes and faced prosecution after consulting information on that website then going flying, maybe. Who knows...

My 2 cents

once & futr,

The answer to your question is really simple... why put white Xs? because you are trying to stop air traffic, you have identified air traffic where it doesn"t belong and you are trying to stop it, and white Xs are a legal, safe way to identify the "strip" as closed.

I think is foolish to put ostructions on there. I mean what if somebody had to make a forced landing and thought it looked like a good or maybe the only place to land and then end up wrecking their airplane on some hard to see obstructions. Like was stated could end up being a liability.

Boy does this piss me off or what. Another case or the Government ( in this case the park service or should I say the park gustapo's ) making up the rules as they go along. Who do these parks belong to anyway ?????
Maybe they belong to the buracrates. They can make a strip dangerous instead of marking in another agencies approved manner (( using X's )). When are the tax payers going to take our country back from the out of control over regulatory buracrates.

Just to clarify what I saw...
I doubt anyone had the intention of booby-trapping the strip, though that did sort of happen. We came into the strip somewhat early in the morning, and with the sun directly behind us, the pickets showed up pretty well. It's just the other 350 degrees you can't see them.

Why no X's? My guess is that whoever was in charge of the project didn't know anything about aviation. If it never was a legal airstrip, then it doesn't surprise me that a non-aviator would have been put in charge of making it unusable. From the ground I'd imagine those pickets look pretty big and obvious. It's silly...stupid even. But I doubt it's malevolent.

It's pretty nice to have places to land that are not FAA regulated, but I guess that works both ways. Some of their rules (white X's, for example) come in pretty handy.

Too bad we can't land there...looks like a nice place.

once&futr_alaskaflyer wrote:Zahns camp has been closed for years and years.

Rant on: Although this surely amounts to pi$$ing into the wind, I have to note the irony of how strips like Zahns were closed only after Lake Powell drowned the Glen Canyon complex--an unbelievable wild canyon labyrinth--and turned it into paradise for . . . water skiers, jet skis and houseboats. But keep those #@&^*% little noisy airplanes out of there. They might disturb the remaining habitat.

Rant off.


CAVU

CAVU wrote:Rant on: Although this surely amounts to pi$$ing into the wind, I have to note the irony of how strips like Zahns were closed only after Lake Powell drowned the Glen Canyon complex--an unbelievable wild canyon labyrinth--and turned it into paradise for . . . water skiers, jet skis and houseboats. But keep those #@&^*% little noisy airplanes out of there. They might disturb the remaining habitat.

Rant off.


CAVU

How else were we to keep those stinky hippies out of the canyons?

And look on the bright side CAVU, those "hallowed" canyons that you speak of are being preserved "from the hand of man" at this very moment!

SixTwoLeemer wrote:And look on the bright side CAVU, those "hallowed" canyons that you speak of are being preserved "from the hand of man" at this very moment!

Yep. I feel good just knowing it's down there, in the muck.


CAVU

Obviously, people have been using it for years, evidently illegally. That being known, it seems like some big X's would be in order in the interest of safety, or just bring in the heavy iron and tear that SOB out.

I appreciate once&futr's response on the subject, by the way. Most NPS employees I know will not defend the agencies' actions, or offer intelligent explanation. He has a wealth of information on these subjects, and is always willing to share the government point of view.

gb

gbflyer wrote:
I appreciate once&futr's response on the subject, by the way. Most NPS employees I know will not defend the agencies' actions, or offer intelligent explanation. He has a wealth of information on these subjects, and is always willing to share the government point of view.

gb

Thanks. I don't know that I would always characterize my posts as "defending" the agency's actions so much as trying to explain them. Just like anyone I don't always agree with my employer, which in the end as someone noted above is the American taxpayer. Not the Alaskan taxpayer, or the Arizona taxpayer, nor the Utah taxpayer, nor the Wyoming taxpayer, nor the Montana taxpayer, or the Idaho taxpayer, or the California taxpayer, or the North Carolina taxpayer or the Georgia taxpayer, but the American taxpayer. I've worked in all those states and the hardest part of my job is explaining to the local person that just because a park or rec area happens to be next door to them doesn't mean that their rights and opinions are any more important than those of a person from Chicago or Vermont or wherever. If they were, it would be a state park, not a national one. A difficult concept to grasp, I know

Whether I agree that the airstrips in GCNRA should be open or closed, or for that matter whether Lake Powell should exist or not, is really beside the point, though I do have my own personal opinion on both issues. Dems da' rules, and if you don't possess all the information pertaining to your flight before you depart then I don't much feel sorry for you when you are busted with a confused look on your face. Before I land on private property I get permission, and when I land on public property I make sure it is legal, and I don't wait until I arrive to see if there is a sign or white X's on the ground to determine if something is open or closed unless of course it is an emergency closure.

I suspect that those stakes are probably carsonite posts...when I worked there (not that long ago) that is what we used - exclusively - to mark closures, etc. Hardly a booby trap even to a light plane. You can kick the things with your bare foot and they bend.

You mark a closed runway at an airport with white x's to show that it is closed. A strip of dirt in the middle of nowhere that has been closed to aircraft for over thirty years? My thinking is that "x" would just mark the spot for continued use and invite the next mishap. It really has been a bad year for pilots in that small piece of real estate surrounding Zahn Bay for some reason.

The UBCP association, which I generally admire, has done their members and other pilots a disservice by not policing their airstrip database better. If they were trying to make a political statement by listing closed areas as open, well...wishing something were true is not the same as making it so. If it was an oversight, well...it was a glaring one. That is my personal opinion by the way

once&futr_alaskaflyer wrote:Dems da' rules, and if you don't possess all the information pertaining to your flight before you depart then I don't much feel sorry for you when you are busted with a confused look on your face.

That's an appropriate attitude for an NPS LEO to have. I wouldn't want or expect less when you're wearing the uniform. I'm also glad to have your perspectives and information on this board.

However, I don't think that should foreclose debate or discussion about whether the closure makes sense. In some situations, civil disobedience may be the best, or even the only path to bring about sensible change. Were it not for one pilot's courageous actions, Wilson Bar in Idaho would no doubt still be closed to the public and listed as a "USFS Private" facility for which landings were not permitted. But instead of just accepting "dems da rules," he drew a citation and challenged it. The ultimate result was restoration of use of the only public airstrip on the Main Salmon River.

I am not suggesting that the status or situation at Zahns is the same as Wilson Bar, or that management of that area should be the same as the designated wilderness in which Wilson Bar lies. Nor am I suggesting that everyone should automatically cowabunga into whatever landing strip they think shouldn't be closed in order to force the issue. But blind acceptance of the status quo doesn't make sense either (unless it's your job to enforce the rules and you're on the job).

General aviation and backcountry flying have relatively recent (it seems that way to some of us) history of losing a lot of facilities due to government action such as wilderness designations, closures due to encroaching incompatible land uses and development pressures. Just because pilots were asleep at the switch or lost out on the political process in the relatively recent past doesn't mean that the current legal status of these facilities should be carved in stone.

I really didn't mean for my original post to lead into all of this. I just wanted to note that, in the broader historical perspective, landing at Zahns seems to me to be more of a simple infraction like a speeding ticket than some kind of moral outrage on our national heritage. I don't know if you intended to convey the latter, but I thought I picked up a little bit of that tone in your message. If that wasn't your intent, then I was mistaken and I apologize.

Anyway, if someone gets a speeding ticket at Zahns, I hope they'll fight it. Maybe we'll all benefit from the outcome. So that's my opinion, FWIW.

CAVU

CAVU wrote:
I really didn't mean for my original post to lead into all of this. I just wanted to note that, in the broader historical perspective, landing at Zahns seems to me to be more of a simple infraction like a speeding ticket than some kind of moral outrage on our national heritage. I don't know if you intended to convey the latter, but I thought I picked up a little bit of that tone in your message. If that wasn't your intent, then I was mistaken and I apologize.

CAVU

No moral outrage on this issue. Just a healthy opinion about Utah spin and pilots who say "Huh? Wha?" when they should know better

As I said, I have my personal opinions on airstrip status. I don't believe they should exist everywhere, but closing an existing airstrip absent some sort of demonstrated public safety reason or actual, articulable, demonstrated natural resource problem, is usually unwarranted. I send in my comments for environmental impacts statements and rule promulgation too, they have my home as the return address on them.

Fair enough. Thanks for elaborating. Commenting on regs often feels like firing a cannon into space. Not very satisfying and it's rare to see the results, but I agree it must be done and should be the first resort.



CAVU

Regarding the UBCP and the website airstrip database:

When considering the term "useable" as opposed to "open for use", does the same meaning come to mind?

"Useable", to me, means I can land there if I HAVE to.

"Open for use", to me, means let's plan a sortie and go land there on purpose.

Granted, the UBCP database needs some updating and cleanup. However, the database does not claim Zahn's Bay is "open for use". If anyone has some info regarding an airstrip, and knows the database needs to be updated, please submit the change to the webmaster. The whole organization runs on volunteer efforts... nobody gets paid to update the website, organize meetings, petition the BLM, testify in court or in front of the US Congress on behalf of everyone out there who wants to preserve the airstrips in UT, CO, and AZ that UBCP has championed.

I don't think UBCP deserves to be bashed here.

M

In regards to legal or not legal.

In your car do you ever speed, run a red, turn, u turn, follow to close, pass, or any number of other things that are illegal.

Life in general is full of examples of people good and bad breaking laws. I could go on for hours about this.

I think the test of a good, reasonable law is if it keeps us from hurting another human it is good.

Other than that it is open to your own personal limits. If you think you can keep me off public land to save the earth or some animal, good luck.

You better watch your threats Rob. You'll have some buracrate gustapo knocking on your door. I understand there or rules for Gov. employees to report all people that disagree to abide by the rules for saving the earth and or using public land.

If you think you can keep me off public land to save the earth or some animal, good luck.

While I understand the point of view, this attitude is probably a big reason why they decided to close the strip with pickets instead of X's...