April 2008

Our April meeting will be held at 7:00 p.m. on April 2 at Skagit Valley College in Robert Hall room T-41. The following shortcut is to a campus map http://www.skagit.edu/images/color_mvCampus.pdf.

1.) Reminder to pay your dues! $25 for your annual Skagit Alpine Club (SAC) membership. Pay them now and get a new SAC sticker!

Please join us at this month’s Alpine club meeting as Ken Wilcox shares a presentation based on the last book by the late, great Harvey Manning. Entitled “Wilderness Alps, Conservation and Conflict in Washington’s North Cascades”, this is the story of wilderness preservation and national park politics in one of North America's most magnificent wilderness parks. Among those who were there in the trenches in the 1960s was Brock Evans:

“This book has so much: the characters, from the First Ones of long ago, to the military explorers, the miners and railroad people, the loggers and grazers, the fools and charlatans, the promoters and speculators, the dam builders and ubiquitous Chambers of Commerce, the politicians—all there, all swaggering and posturing across the stage, sometimes with such forceful schemes that one wonders how there is still, now, so much left. . . .. This is a terrific book, easy going for a general reader, yet also certain to become The Basic Reference for any who come along in the future and want to know What It Really Was Like Then.”

Ken Wilcox is an environmental and outdoor writer and trail planner living in Bellingham. He has served on the board of the North Cascades Conservation Council since 1984, and edited “Wilderness Alps”. This is sure to be an entertaining and informative presentation, don’t miss it!

Want to do some trail work? No matter where you work, wear long pants, have work gloves, have plenty of fluids to drink, and bring a lunch. Each person working will have to sign a liability release form. Parents or guardians of those under 18 must sign for the minor.

For information call 360-424-0407 anytime up until 8 a.m. the morning of the work party. Tools will be provided--hazel hoes, loppers, McLeods, Pulaskis, chain saws, brush cutters. You may bring your own tools if you wish.

If you can only work until noon, please call ahead to see if the work site will be conducive to your leaving early. Sometimes we will be working behind locked gates or far up logging roads and it would not be convenient for people to leave early.

Meeting place is the Cook Road Park-n-Ride, exit 232 from I-5 north of Burlington. Exit the freeway, turn right and then immediately turn right onto Old Highway 99. We meet across the street from the 76 gas station. Meeting time is 8:15 a.m.

GENERAL TRAIL WORK

2008 Skagit Trail work schedule for April through October

Trail work will be done on the FIRST and THIRD Saturday of each month

April 5 and 19 August 2 and 16

May 3 and 17 September 6 and 20

June 7 (National Trails Day) and 21 October 4 and 18

July 5 and 19

Access to hiking trails and rock climbing routes on Mt. Erie is threatened to be shut down. Think I’m kidding? A small group of people is making plans to change how this area and other areas in the Anacortes City Forest Lands (ACFL) are managed. Please attend the April 3rd 7:00 pm ACFL Board meeting at the Fidalgo/Senior Center (1701 22nd Street) in Anacortes. This is the primary public meeting scheduled before the public comment period is over April 30. Attendance at this meeting by as many supporters and concerned Mt. Erie users is crucial to show that local residents care about their continued access to this area. Silence on this issue will be construed as acceptance of the plans by the Board and forest lands manager.

Find out more about this new direction and the contents of the draft management plan:

or call the Anacortes Parks department at 360-293-1918 to find out where else you can view a copy. They can email it to you also. See numbers 1 and 4 of the “Recommendations” section on page 16. It helps to read this draft plan alongside the current 1991 plan (http://www.cityofanacortes.org/Parks/Documents/Comp_Plans/acfl1991.pdf). New power will be granted to the board to either approve or disapprove of trails and rock climbing routes on Mt. Erie. Most of the board members are not interested or even capable of using or reaching most of the sites but they have the power to eliminate them from reasonable legal use by capable hikers and climbers! It is important to understand that not a single hiking or scrambling trail on south and west flanks of Mt. Erie (access trails to scrambling and rock climbing routes) is recognized by the ACFL Board as an approved trail. All travel not on approved trails is banned in the ACFL and the Board and forest lands manager have been moving to implement this ban for the last 2 years [see the statement at the top of page 9 of the draft plan (“Off trail use is prohibited”)]. So, if the board decides to not approve of the trails used on Mt. Erie for the last 40 years they may do so (or maybe they will approve 10 percent of them and feel that is adequate).

2. Read the September 2007 Anacortes community telephone survey about what the community wants with the management of the ACFL and other Anacortes parks. This document was available on the city of Anacortes web site but appears to have been taken off recently (but I have a copy). Call the city Parks department at 293-1918 if you want to get a copy. Out of all 300 respondents there was not a single complaint about misuse or abuse by hikers or rock climbers on Mt. Erie. There were however plenty of other complaints. Overall 87 percent of the respondents said they did not want any changes to the management of the ACFL (which includes Mt. Erie)!

3. Provide written comments to the ACFL Board, Parks Board, and City Council. The City Council has ultimate legal authority and sets policy direction for Anacortes. The City Council holds regular meetings at 7:30 April 7 and 21 at City Hall. The council members contact information is on the City web site cityofanacortes.org and letters can be mailed to PO Box 547, Anacortes, WA, 98221. According to the parks director, Gary Robinson, if you want your comments to be heard by the Parks Board they should be send to him by April 1st so they can read them before the April 8th 6:00 pm meeting at City Hall. Gary can be emailed at gary@cityofanacortes.org or called at 293-1980. Letters can be sent to him at: PO Box 547, Anacortes, WA 98221. Ian Munce, the Director of Planning and Community Development, can be reached at 360-299-1942 or ian@cityofanacortes.org letters written to him at: PO Box 547, Anacortes, WA 98221.

4. Tell people that might be interested about this concern and to attend the Board and Council meetings. Residents from Skagit and Island counties as well as people living in western Washington from Tacoma north have regularly enjoyed Mt. Erie for hiking, rock climbing, mountain rescue training, sightseeing, and mountain climbing training for beginners.

Here’s the plan approval process: The ACFL Board and Parks Board receives comments and recommends approval of the draft plans to the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission reviews and recommends drafts to the City Council. The City Council receives comments and passes the plans. This process is moving very fast!

Harold Mead, Maggie Sullivan, and I have enjoyed going on the steep trails and rock climbing routes on Mt. Erie for a long time. We have attended countless ACFL Board and Trail Committee meetings. We have spent countless hours maintaining trails and preserving nature on Mt. Erie to ensure its health and appreciation by others. We believe that you and others should have the right to reasonably enjoy the mountain the way we have now and in the future. Harold and I have participated as members of the Mt. Erie Working Group at the request of the ACFL Board to address concerns about Mt. Erie by a few members of the public. Our knowledge of the past practices, shift in direction by the current ACFL Board and land manager, and reading of the draft plan gives us strong and valid concern about the future access to Mt. Erie by the public. Do not let the interests of a few people take away your right to reasonably use a public resource in a respectful manner.

Mt. Erie has been enjoyed by hikers and climbers for over 40 years and should be available to use in a reasonable manner in the future. The 1991 ACFL management plan states that the primary goal of the forest lands is for enjoyment of local residents for recreational purposes. The public wants this management goal to be the same in the future and that the forest land management does not change. Conservation and environmental protection is a valuable element in the plan to manage the ACFL, but executing that concept should not exclude reasonable use by the public who owns and cares about the forest lands.

Please feel free to contact Harold, Maggie or me about this issue. Better yet, come out to Mt. Erie with us soon to discuss this problem while you help us pull Scotch Broom!

See you at the April 3 7:00 pm meeting in Anacortes at the Fidalgo/Senior Center (1701 22^nd Street)!!!

April Newsletter