The massive winter storms of January were no time for outdoor recreation – it was weather that beckons even the most intrepid outdoor adventurers to hunker down by the fireplace with a cup of tea. Amid consistent rains, high winds and widespread evacuation orders along Monterey County’s various swollen rivers, the closure of public lands was reasonable.
After the worst of the weather, various agencies quickly assessed the damage and reopened parks. County parks were all closed, then reopened as officials conducted damage assessments; only Jacks Peak, where more than 30 trees came down, remains closed since Jan. 4. (They tallied some $3.7 million worth of damage.)
The U.S. Forest Service took a different approach, issuing a full-on closure of the entire Los Padres National Forest – which spans multiple counties along 220 miles – for 60 days. The order, issued by Forest Supervisor Chris Stubbs on Jan. 13, meant no portion of the forest’s 1.8 million acres – land owned by the public, for the public – would be open for public access. Violators would face a $5,000 fine.
“We’re taking this precautionary step to ensure visitor safety as we determine the extent of the damage,” Stubbs said in a statement at the time. “My intention is to re-open closed areas as soon as it’s safe to do so.”
But as the 60-day order comes to an end on March 14, no portion of the forest has yet been reopened, even those deemed to be safe for public access. And it all begs the question – in difficult terrain and in wilderness areas (like the Ventana and Silver Peak wilderness areas of Big Sur), what is safe for public access anyway?
“You assume a certain amount of personal risk and responsibility when you go into these wild areas – that’s the whole point of it,” says USFS spokesperson Andrew Madsen. “When we have sections of trail that have washed away, that’s when we close. If it’s safe to reopen, we are going to reopen.”
It’s understandably impossible for USFS officials themselves to make such a determination on miles of trail. Instead, the USFS contracts with various groups, such as nonprofit Ventana Wilderness Alliance, to do that work. VWA trail crews get boots on the ground to look for damage (like slides and fallen trees) and also start clearing hazards. What they found was that the Monterey Ranger District fared surprisingly well, an opinion handed along to USFS officials.
“Our opinion is that the forest can be open,” says Maria Ferdin, who leads VWA’s volunteer wilderness rangers.
Of course, offering public access to these public lands can be tricky. Big Sur, as well as other portions of the Los Padres Forest, face overuse challenges, and it is difficult to enforce rules meant to curb the negative impacts of overuse (things like illegal campfires and littering are serious problems). Many trails are impassable to hikers even in non-emergency times.
“The thing about the Ventana is the forest itself is highly productive,” Ferdin says. “What we cut in one year grows back very fast the following year. It takes a lot of people and time to get trail cleared. Then when it’s done, you have to go back and maintain it.”
But emergency closures that encompass the entire forest and last for months on end seem to be the new normal. Such orders are issued after wildfires in summer, and slides in winter; bad roads in Santa Barbara County might be keeping Big Sur trails closed.
Forest closure orders require a sunset date, hence the 60-day mark. Stubbs expects to issue a superseding order before March 14 that will reopen what is accessible and safe.
“I don’t take closing the forest lightly,” Stubbs says. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my 30-year land management career, damage this extensive and widespread.”
A preliminary estimate shows $100 million worth of damage, much of it to roads. For an agency with multiple goals – recreation is competing with wildfire prevention and suppression – the funding is quite a long shot.
Meanwhile, trails and backcountry camps that exist only on old maps continue to get overgrown and disappear. “We have a forest that can potentially be the jewel in the crown of the Forest Service, and we’re not there,” Ferdin says. “It’s unfortunate.”
Meanwhile, lands that belong to the public remain closed.
(1) comment
It is reassuring that someone else has the same questions that I do, and that I'm not just some old crank. I'm retired, so I am able to spend close to half my nights each year backpacking or car-camping. I run into closures all over the state, including Los Padres, and the common denominator is a sense of arbitrariness, nannyism, and general lack of information about reopenings. The worst experiences are those that involve driving for an hour or more up a dirt or gravel road only to find the campground or road closed without explanation or information regarding reopening. And when one has driven up the only possible road to the site, one wonders how much effort it would have taken to place a first warning at the entrance to that road so that time and waste of energy (literally) would be saved?
I have experienced first hand the lack of basic safety knowledge on the part of many people... especially regarding the potential for trees and limbs to kill. It just happened in the Bay Area to a mother on a Boy Scout trip in the north San Francisco Bay Area. But I'd like to see a lot more multi-lingual public education on the dangers rather than closures because a natural forest process is accelerated a bit. If there are obvious dangers along or across a road, close it until it is cleared. But the closures until "the damage is repaired" or even assessed along every backpacking trail IS very frustrating. VWS has a good website that describes trail conditions and that should be good enough. If National Forest or other agency liability is the concern, then laws and regulations have to be changed. Many of us backpack off-trail in National Forest or Wilderness Areas, it's one of the advantages of having recently burned areas. Some of us understand that nearly burned out snags can topple in a breeze, especially when they've gained weight from being soaked by rain. If we don't "get" that, then it's on us. We also understand that denuded soil is more prone to erosion, especially when disturbed by our footprints. So we step carefully. Education is valuable. What feels like arbitrary closures can be frustrating and leads to non-compliance with other regulations, that are important. Thanks, Sara Rubin, and thanks Maria Ferdin (Hi! [smile] ) for the work you do!
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