Sad day in Tuolumne Meadows

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Bruce Morris

Trad climber
Soulsbyville, California
Nov 7, 2017 - 11:25pm PT
I'm old enough to remember when Tuolumne Meadows got its own climbing shop. Seemed like it put the place on the map as a legitimate rocking climbing venue. I imagine TPR will be back in 2019 though. Heck I can remember stopping in there with my late father after fishing on Saddleback Lake in 1962. You're right, Lynne, about TPR and the Mountain School being the two hubs of social activity in the Meadows for many, many years. The Lembert Dome Parking Lot just doesn't have the same "feel".
Inner City

Trad climber
Portland, OR
Nov 8, 2017 - 08:45am PT
Ah but the wonderful domes are still there....
Bruce Morris

Trad climber
Soulsbyville, California
Nov 8, 2017 - 01:53pm PT
Curry Management and the NPS have wanted to evict the climbing scene and culture from the Meadows as far back as I can remember. But it was hard to do as long as the guide service and the mountain store were entrenched there. This environmental hokum has provided them with the tools to do exactly what they wanted to do as far back as the climbers' camp in Soda Spring in 1973-74. If the environmental argument really made sense, why not dig up the tanks and remove the pumps in front of the gas station and let the mountain school and shop remain at the same location? Or move the YMS back to where it used to be in the Visitor Center? Used to be movies and slide shows there at night if I recall. More like an attempt to evict the lingering remains Berkeley and the Haight from the Park permanently. Just hoping that a restored and revived TPR opens outside the Park in 2019. That would shift the focus and fire-proof the culture from extermination.
Loyd

Big Wall climber
Roseburg, OR
Nov 15, 2017 - 07:57am PT
I remember when we opened the first YMS Mt. shop and Guide service in TM at the TM lodge in a tent. The Shop was in the front and the 5 Guides lived in the back. What a great time that was in TM
Bruce Morris

Trad climber
Soulsbyville, California
Jan 29, 2018 - 01:41pm PT
I think there are people too who visit the Meadows and regard the roped climbers they see on Stately Pleasure Dome as an affront to the "wilderness character" of the Tuolumne high country. They just complain and want less people on the rocks as if their presence there damages the cliffs. I've talked to the former mayor of Belmont and she's implored me not to climb on the rocks and ruin them. There must be a sizeable segment of the environmental community that just want less people climbing on the rocks period. If there is no YMS and no Mountain Shop that will be a way to reduce the number of climbers in the Park. This is just kind of funny where the tour buses are prowling in numbers along the Tioga Pass Road and there's a big lodge. Funny how climbers are always classified as a "problem" just because they are there.
aspendougy

Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
Jan 29, 2018 - 02:42pm PT
In fairness to the planners, I can see what their motive was, even if many of us don't agree with how they did it. Yosemite Valley is becoming more and more crowded, traffic ridden, year by year. By making TM less friendly to climbers and tourists, they are trying to keep the crowds from similarly overwhelming that area.

I recall making trips on the old Tioga Road back in the late 50's, I was a little kid. It was an adventure. I also remember when they opened the new road, how it changed everything, some of the old timers decried that.

Imagine the huge traffic jams that they have in Yosemite Valley up in the Meadows, it is painful to think about.
Fossil climber

Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
Jan 29, 2018 - 07:31pm PT
Population.
Risk

Mountain climber
Formerly TMJesse
Jan 29, 2018 - 10:18pm PT
Yosemite reminds me of a huge stadium with only 50 seats. Most of the park is totally empty of any people year after year. NPS has whittled away at the campgrounds along the Tioga Road, like Smokey Jack, both Tenaya Lake campgrounds (east and west), Soda Springs, Gaylor Creek, and have under utilized plenty of space available for the American public - Porcupine Flat comes to mind. What are there, 29 sites or something? Meanwhile an endless forest behind the campground is void of anyone, ever. In terms of "footprint," the Tioga Road is like a piece of dental floss stretched across your living room!

I have hiked nearly every trail in the park, and many canyons and ridges from corner to corner. The place is mostly 100% deserted except for a handful of fifty-cent-piece sized places on the 30" x 30" park topo map. The problem of over crowding is lack of facilities. Yosemite is festooned with many unnamed valleys, meadows, lakes, walls and summits that never see but an occasional traveler, if ever. I've hiked for days many times and never met anyone else or saw even a single footprint. And, I was looking.

Zinke and fellow goons what to keep people out to make us unconnected so we don't care anymore. Removing the YMS mountaineering school from TM fits perfectly. Fossil Climber and Gerughty helped connect me forever. Don't fall for it; stay connected and pass it on.
JOEY.F

Gym climber
It's not rocket surgery
Jan 29, 2018 - 10:44pm PT
EKat
Your last trip was 2008FL?
So psyched I was there to meet you right place right time
Sorry for drift, good reading here.
Bruce Morris

Trad climber
Soulsbyville, California
Jan 29, 2018 - 10:49pm PT
Truly, what they objected to (and hate and fear the most) is any community developing that might oppose their power. One power always hates another power.
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Jan 29, 2018 - 11:00pm PT
Population growth does not explain the increase in park visitors

The population of the USA was about 180 million in 1960. Today it is 325 million. We are currently seeing our lowest growth rate in decades, less than 1% a year. Immigration is the only thing that gives us a positive rate of growth. If you think crowds in the parks is a problem, just wait until a majority of the population is retired and wanting a check.

I think we can agree that the typical park visitor is fairly WASPy. Whites have dropped from 80% of the population in 1960, to about 60% now. Whites are reproducing more slowly than most minorities. Do you see that reflected in park visitors? not really.

Visits to Yosemite jumped almost 20% between 2015 and 2016. The parks could have absorbed the increase in visitors if the increase was limited to population growth. Fact is, a larger percentage of the population wants to visit parks, and has the means to do it. Although overall visitation has risen, per capita visitation has dropped 20% over the last 20 years. People that go to parks are going more often, not just once a year.

Gas prices have a big impact on the number of visitors. The NPS also did a lot of targeted social media campaigns that apparently had some effect. The parks are being loved to death

Bruce Morris

Trad climber
Soulsbyville, California
Jan 30, 2018 - 12:37pm PT
Although overall visitation has risen, per capita visitation has dropped 20% over the last 20 years. People that go to parks are going more often, not just once a year.

In other words, Jon Beck, there is a upper middle class largely white user group that is going to visit Yosemite a larger number of times per annum than other user groups? Repeat offenders clogging the place up?

So, close the Mountain Shop and YMS and those kind of repeat offenders will stay away? That does sound like the logic behind the subtext.

It is true that back in my late parents' day in the 50s and 60s people who worked in factories or belonged to unions had an allocated 2-week vacation every year, usually in late August or around the 4th of July when they all packed into Yosemite at once. Now the migrations up there are more heavy 24/7 365 days per annum. I'm going to take a drive up to the Valley tomorrow mid-week, mid-winter and I bet I'll be able to drive around the Valley and not encounter a traffic jam. But this is late January afterall.

So, they really are attacking the itinerant week-end / seasonal climber recreation user group that comes up there and people-pollutes the cliffs, which is offensive to certain Nazi Nazi bigots who are obviously pushing the current agenda? As usual, they're singling out climbers as a group to pick on. I thought the Access Fund fought that kind of unconstitutional discrimination?

I think someone should crunch the numbers and compare the number of Meadows first ascents in, say, 1975, 1985, 1995, 2005 with the number of FAs today. Clint or Ed Hartouni must know? Less FAs. Less climbers. Less visitation. Tuolumne really needs an up-to-date climbing guide book. Charlie's bouldering guide has put the place on the map again.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Feb 1, 2018 - 09:02am PT
I don't have the recent history of FAs in TM, I'm sorta consumed with that climbing area just down the Tenaya Canyon at the moment.

As far as I know, a new guide for TM is being worked on, and I'm not involved.

The TM camp ground is the largest in the NPS system.

Porcupine Flat has over 60 sites (but that is from memory), first come first serve.

But it is also true that the place is crowded, and that includes the crowds of climbers which has had me seeking other high Sierra venues for similar types of climbing.

On another note, my recent forays onto the JMT and other trails in the vicinity of TM revealed miles of potential climbing within a day's hike of the Meadows. The adventure climbing possibilities are there for those who want to make the effort.
Risk

Mountain climber
Formerly TMJesse
Feb 1, 2018 - 12:11pm PT
Chances are pretty good that one would never encounter another human anywhere in these areas of northern Yosemite




except for maybe here, Rodgers Lake

Bruce Morris

Trad climber
Soulsbyville, California
Feb 1, 2018 - 12:17pm PT
Chances are pretty good that one would never another single human anywhere in these areas of northern Yosemite

Sure, I know of one area in particular only 5 miles from the Tioga Road near Cathedral Creek that has tons of spectacular single pitch cracks plus larger multi pitch routes.

But as you say, a 5-mile hike is a long, long way for weekenders.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Feb 2, 2018 - 08:12pm PT

Bruce Morris

Trad climber
Soulsbyville, California
Feb 2, 2018 - 11:41pm PT
I don't have the recent history of FAs in TM

I don't know either, Ed, but would think that the 70s and 80s clear down to the early 90s were the most prolific FA decades. After that era, I would think that more and more boulder problems, many of high standard and quality, were turned out.

BITD it seemed like the Rescue Team members turned out a lot of Tuolumne FAs, but so did the YMS guides. There was even a sort of rivalry between the two groups.
mouse from merced

Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
Feb 3, 2018 - 06:09am PT
Too Many Is Too Much

A single day in the meadows is worth a thousand days at home.
Everyone seems to know this from Lembert to Fairview Dome.
They come to stare at the cataracts and enjoy the Tuolumne’s foam.
They’re packed in the campgrounds like sardines, like cars in the City of Rome.
Messages 121 - 138 of total 138 in this topic << First  |  < Previous  |  Show All  |  Next >  |  Last >>
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