WhiteBlaze Pages 2024
A Complete Appalachian Trail Guidebook.
AVAILABLE NOW. $4 for interactive PDF(smartphone version)
Read more here WhiteBlaze Pages Store

Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 1 2
Results 21 to 27 of 27
  1. #21

    Default

    RockDoc, I value your perspective as much as Bissell's. If you're interested in having your perspective heard, I'd appreciate it if you'd be willing to email a picture of yourself hiking, your real name, and your trail name to [email protected]. Obviously I understand if not, but that's why I'm on this forum, to get a variety of opinions. Your call.

  2. #22

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by RockDoc View Post
    Don't talk to this guy. He's not a journalist, but just trying to prove his idea...and there will be consequences.

    The only logical outcome of his article will be permits, fees, quotas, and more restrictions of our freedom.

    Even during "high season" you can hike without anyone else in sight 99% of the time. The trail is a pretty big place.
    RockDoc, I value your perspective as much as Bissell's. If you're interested in having your perspective heard, I'd appreciate it if you'd be willing to email a picture of yourself hiking, your real name, and your trail name to[email protected]. Obviously I understand if not, but that's why I'm on this forum, to get a variety of opinions. Your call.

  3. #23
    Registered User
    Join Date
    03-18-2016
    Location
    Richmond Hill, Georgia
    Posts
    124

    Default

    This issue of overcrowding on the AT is based on a premise much like the debunked "Global Warming" scare or it's newer replacement scare .... "Climate Change." You start out with a premise based on mere speculation (and contrived data), conjure up a doomsday scenario, then struggle to make the facts say what you want to say. For what? More government control/regulation (as in POWER to the politically connected), a dramatic loss of freedom, and $$$$$ to an elite few.

    OkeefenokeeJoe

  4. #24

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Sweet asa Peach 2014 View Post
    This is but a small part of a much larger story, and I'll be sure to let you know if I use any of your answers.
    If you focus on the Jurek plus law-and-order angle for this story you have missed a great opportunity. You have missed it completely. Jurek should be one single line in the story -- no more. Jurek is a nobody and if you focus on Jurek (who's not even a hiker) you're way out on the outer fringe of the story.


    Datto

  5. #25
    Registered User
    Join Date
    02-09-2016
    Location
    Cumming, Georgia
    Posts
    10

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by OkeefenokeeJoe View Post
    This issue of overcrowding on the AT is based on a premise much like the debunked "Global Warming" scare or it's newer replacement scare .... "Climate Change." You start out with a premise based on mere speculation (and contrived data), conjure up a doomsday scenario, then struggle to make the facts say what you want to say. For what? More government control/regulation (as in POWER to the politically connected), a dramatic loss of freedom, and $$$$$ to an elite few.

    OkeefenokeeJoe
    Wow--I can't believe a real outdoors person isn't certain of the reality of climate change. Even in the Okeefenokee, but of course way more obvious the further north you go. And obvious on the coast.

    Calling the reality of physical changes in our atmosphere, and therefore our climate, contrived numbers and government control regulation… say what? Take a physical science class: start with refractometry--and see how CO2 changes the refractive index of air. Then advance to 1896 and read Arrhenius, Nobel laureate, and how he postulated the now obvious fact that more CO2 in our air (like a doubling since then…) will keep more infrared radiation, heat (that's light, present even if you can't see it, and the heat energy from these warmer wavelengths...) in our atmosphere, heating it, and slowly cooking Earth, instead of radiating out into space. I won't ask your version of how frost and dew occurs (also due to radiation into the heavens…cooling the earth, back like ten years ago when nighttime lows were 15 degrees cooler… and humidity (lowest t) mp at night/morning, also shown as the dew point was similarly cooler.

    Deniers are stuck with their anti-science, gubbermint conspiracy blah, blah, blah…and I won't waste much of my energy on helping with elementary school science…but I'll draw a parallel in this trail regulation sensationalism by asking: Just how do you expect the government to regulate and restrict the AT?

    Here in GA, a very heavily used road-riddled section, the AT is all in general USFS national forest land--not state parks, not national parks. General forest. No fees, no law enforcemennt. Litter and norovirus are real problems, not contrived or some conspiracy, just as the car break-ins at trailheads are. And speeding on USFS roads, like FS 42 and 77, etc. And increasing numbers of arson fires near the trail and in remote areas, such as the trail closures and mega-fires in TN and NC right now. (Asheville Citizen Times has more on that, and on this site). A huge jump this spring and last year, too.

    Meanwhile, the USFS Law Enforcement budget is being cut each year, so look for more damage and more resource harms. As to increasing trail use, it's obvious to me from my place a few miles below Springer. I cross the trail every few days at several road crossings and trailheads. And, again, to gauge the jump in traffic, drawing on the AC-T, look at the recent article on visits to the 10,000 acre plus DuPont Forest: Ten-folding of visits in just a few years…one set of bathrooms at one trailhead, 642,000 visitors last year, so lovely trails and scenes waterfalls are plastered with July snow (tp). Like the Georgia AT.

    You can hike on remote sections and weekdays and not be pushed off the trail. Or, you can encounter the 240 person US Army "bonding" trip of day trippers day walking three sections/days of the GA AT while being bussed back and forth to Dockery Lake (in 2010 or 2011?) Really. The ultimate pack of boy scouts tourist scouting the trail, along with the Army's Rangers who train here any time, trail or no trail (though they have military bases for that). The Fort Stewart gang hike was scoped and approved by the USFS Chattahoochee Blue Ridge district. Again, no fees, no rules enforcement. Just what regulations are we worried about? Houston, we do have a problem.

    This end of the AT is sparsely populated--only six million folks live within 100 miles of Springer, and most don't hike. But, trail shelters are becoming camps, quadrupling in size around here (Hawk Mtn)...Sure are a lot of out of set drivers ripping the roads this year…and the traffic is also affecting the climate and the watershed. I'll leave it to the thru-hikes to say whether the AT s crowded on not. The road-to-road sections here in Georga are busy, as are the roads. (and the arson and crime investigators andy USFS LEOs since there are so few…)

    this from 2015, more cuts already planned for 2016…and 65% o the USFS budget has just been spent on record levels of wildfire---CLIMATE CHANGE! Heavy usage. Maybe AT and forest visitation needs regulation?


    FOREST SERVICE HATCHETS LAW ENFORCEMENT

    Rangers Told to “Prioritize” in Face of One-Sixth Reduction in Personnel
    http://www.peer.org/news/news-releas...forcement.html

    Wildfires, Once Confined to a Season, Burn Earlier and Longer

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/science/wildfires-season-global-warming.html
    "The federal costs of fighting fires rose to $2 billion last year, up from $240 million in 1985….The United States Forest Service spent more than half of its entire budget on firefighting last year, at the expense of programs aimed at minimizing the risk of fires in the wild, such as planned burns of overgrown patches.The agency finds itself caught in a troubling cycle: With budgets squeezed for treating forests to help prevent fires, it inevitably has to spend more money putting them out."



  6. #26
    Registered User JPritch's Avatar
    Join Date
    02-03-2017
    Location
    Lynchburg, VA
    Age
    45
    Posts
    675

    Default

    Let's say the AT is deemed to be overcrowded by officials. The last thing we need is more legislation (aka red tape and fees) to address the issue. People are wonderful at adjusting, just as nature is, if given the chance. What that means is, people will leave sooner or later, or go an opposite direction, or flip-flop, or not go at all. Wait, they are already doing these things in response to avoiding the "bubble". Seems we are wiser than we give ourselves credit for.

  7. #27
    Registered User Venchka's Avatar
    Join Date
    02-20-2013
    Location
    Roaring Gap, NC
    Age
    78
    Posts
    8,529

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by JPritch View Post
    Let's say the AT is deemed to be overcrowded by officials. The last thing we need is more legislation (aka red tape and fees) to address the issue. People are wonderful at adjusting, just as nature is, if given the chance. What that means is, people will leave sooner or later, or go an opposite direction, or flip-flop, or not go at all. Wait, they are already doing these things in response to avoiding the "bubble". Seems we are wiser than we give ourselves credit for.
    Meanwhile, said officials will only look at "facts" that coincide with their agenda.
    Wayne


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Eddie Valiant: "That lame-brain freeway idea could only be cooked up by a toon."
    https://wayne-ayearwithbigfootandbubba.blogspot.com
    FlickrMyBookTwitSpaceFace



Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 1 2
++ New Posts ++

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •