National Park Service at Mount St. Helens Would be Best

The debate continues to rage in three counties most impacted by our neighborhood volcano. Should the Volcanic Monument continue to be managed by the U.S. Forest Service, or would administration by the National Park Service make any marked difference for the visitors and more importantly, our local economies.

I come at the question from a unique perspective that has fallen on deaf local ears thus far. I have worked 11 summers with the National Park Service. I understand the management culture, and the mindset of the employees themselves. It is an organization that is extremely bureaucratic, but from top to bottom, the service works for the same mission.


Some more photos will be included as time is available... Minnie Peak and Coldwater Peak is classic world class scenery especially in the winter.

In 2004, I came to work for the Forest Service at Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center and Johnston Ridge Observatory at Mount St. Helens. For more than three years, I worked as part of a supervisory team that covered the Monument on the north side of the volcano. Our philosophy was to treat visitors with a very Park Service-like model. It was very successful and despite the Forest Service uniforms, our visitors assumed that Mount St. Helens was a National Park. Like myself, most of our employees had worked in the National Park Service culture and embraced its values.

The problem at Mount St. Helens is that there is a disconnect between the staff on the ground in front of visitors and those that administer the monument from the national and regional level. The Forest Service is torn between its mission of multiple use and this Monument does not fit the standard operating procedure including funding at national, regional and finally district levels as opposed to line item allocations for each property.



The main question should be what will the National Park do for me? It has been well established that the two agencies are heading in different directions (at least under the Bush Administration). While the Forest Service has been cut year after year, to the point of near irrelevancy, the National Park Service actually saw its budget grow this year.

Assuming all or a portion of the Monument became a National Park Service property, and it received its full funding for a resource with its size and visitation, it might be compared to Lassen National Volcanic Park in Northern California. The budget at Lassen was about $4.5 million while St. Helens featured a frugal expenditure of $500,000. During a 2005 study by the National Parks and Conservation Association, Lassen Volcanic’s budget contributed 362 jobs (Part- and fulltime including NPS employees) that generated $11,523,000 of local personal income and brought in $16,436,000 of spending by visitors from outside local areas on lodging, food, transportation, souvenirs, etc. around the park. I might add that Lassen is in a far more remote location, away from major highways and population centers than Mt. St. Helens.

Getting to Coldwater Lake was almost impossibe during the winter of 2006-07 because the Washington Department of Transportation chose to not maintain Highway 504 past MP35.

The National Park Service is a brand name, an icon that is a draw to its own. Surveys in the 1980s found that the goals of many world travelers included “meeting a park ranger”. The U.S. National Park Service is one of the most respected agencies world-wide.

The NPS may also bring with it “exclusive jurisdiction” that would end bizarre cooperation agreements with local agencies as well as the Washington Department of Transportation. The latter is responsible for the management of Highway 504 as well as the closure thereof. Beyond its closed gates, hikers, skiers and those on snow shoes are not allowed to use the route for recreation during the winter for liability reasons. The road from Coldwater Lake to Johnston Ridge has been closed to any recreational use. The Forest Service had a very difficult time keeping access open to recreational areas on the south side of the mountain during the winter of 2006-07. Lack of access goes against the culture of the Forest Service let alone the Park Service. Of course this may be a moot point based on the fact the NPS would probably keep Johnston Ridge open through the winter. One only has to look at Paradise at Mt. Rainier or the Steel Center and Rim Village at Crater Lake National Park to see the effort presented to keep winter ecological stories available to the public.



I also believe that with the additional budget and management would see the value of reopening Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center. The resource at Coldwater Ridge tells its own stories about the recovery of the landscape after the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. It is a totally different ecological location than the more popular center at Johnston Ridge. The National Park Service understands the value of interpreting differing landscapes even if the majority of the public doesn’t always see that same significance.

Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center was kept open all winter as weather would allow. The public is very interested in the winter ecological story in the blast zone.

Putting trained Park Rangers in front of the public is a high priority for the Park Service. Where the Forest Service systematically cut the number of rangers at places like Ape Cave, Windy Ridge and the visitor centers and attempted to replace them with volunteers over the last three years, The NPS culture places a priority of highly trained and skilled rangers with excellent customer service skills.

Finally, the NPS, would not tolerate the condition of the trails in the Mt. Margaret Backcountry or the roads around the Monument. One of the most special wilderness areas in Southwest Washington is now all but unusable due to lack of access. With both the USFS 26 and 99 roads washed out and trails falling off the side of ridges from lack of maintenance, the Margaret Country went almost unvisited during the summer of 2008. Roads around St. Helens that were damaged during the storms of 2006 are just getting reopened, but The National Park Service worked at breakneck speeds to repair damage at Mt. Rainier. They secured nearly $30 million in emergency funds and were genuinely embarrassed that they had to shut down the park or even parts of it for any length of time.



If all or a portion of the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument were transferred to the management of the National Park Service, the culture would change at both the Monument and in the communities around the mountain. Those who use national parks as playgrounds will have new life at Mt. St. Helens with modest improvement in the physical plant, and a more friendly upper management. The only problem local communities would have is how to compete with area major metropolitan areas for residual dollars.

Pacific Corp Restricts Yale Lake Shoreline

Due to recent events, Pacific Corp has closed 12 miles of Yale Lake Shoreline to motorized vehicles and camping due to a series of unfortunate events. The road was originally operated by International Paper but has become an area for dispersed camping. Recently, behavior in the area has included arson, fighting and a well documented illegal use of firearms. A man was allegedly firing a weapon towards a legitimate campground on the opposite shore that sent campers diving for cover.
Pacific Corp also states that wildlife habitat was being damage by the unmanaged recreation. The company’s long term plan is to build a non-motorized trail even though a group of Cougar ORV enthusiasts are lobbying to use it as well.
The area will still be open to day use activities which would include hiking, boating or biking is still permitted.

Didn't I just talk about this kind of behavior?

Give Back by Volunteering to Maintain Trails

Ask Henry Panter what is favorite trail is and he will tell you that the Hummocks, a 2.5 mile loop on the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument is close to the top. “It is constantly changing” he said. Panter was leading a group of 10 volunteers from the Washington Trails Association in making some repairs on the dramatically altered trail.

A large slide split this portion of the Hummocks trail in two.

For my part, it had been about a year since I had been on the trail as an employee of the U.S. Forest Service, and on this day, I didn’t even recognize large portions of the trail. In early 2007, myself and several others flagged a reroute that was designed after the November storms of 2006 blew out a key portion of the right of way. Another section slid away this year and a beaver has built a dam in the last year that submerged two other sections of the path.

A new beaver dam was displacing the trail with high water.

Because the beaver took out the trail with a rising level of water, a new 50 foot section of trail was constructed higher on the slope.

Washington Trails Association (WTA) along with other groups like the Lewis County Backcountry Horsemen volunteer thousands of hours each year to fix storm damage on state and federal trails each summer. Panter, a mechanic from Stevenson considers himself a “professional volunteer” and has put in nearly 200 days of volunteer time on trails over the last decade. The groups other leader, Kevin Koski from Port Orchard has contributed 87 days since 1999. WTA began volunteer trail work in 1993 with a little over 800 hours and in 2007, over 80,000 hours of time was donated to trails in the state.

The two guides volunteer in doing what used to be the jobs of seasonal workers for the U.S. Forest Service, but in this age of declining budgets, volunteers are being called upon to take care of trails on federal lands.

WTA set up numerous volunteer parties over the weekend of June 7th (National Trails Day) and 8th all over the state. On this morning, 8 strangers were brought together by Panter and Koski to solve issues created by the ever changing Hummocks Trail.

Kevin Koski (left) and Henry Panter introduce the basic tools of trail repair and maintenance to a team of volunteer workers on Sunday.

The team of volunteers were introduced to a handful of tools employed in trail maintenance and then shown some basic techniques in trail design. The first lesson was the design and use of water bars to prevent trails from becoming small creeks. After all, water is the number one enemy of a trail. Later the crew built a short reroute to elevate the trail above a rising beaver ponds and then a rock structure that allowed hikers to step over s small stream without getting their boots wet or damaging the wetland. The most basic action was “grubbing” or moving soil to allow for proper drainage off of the trail.

My son Jared (on the left) and Nalini Nadkami from Olympia "grub" to create a drainage bar.

My son Jared is one of the first to test out an elevated step-crossing of a small drainage.

Among the group of volunteers were two Evergreen State College Instructors, a long-time employee (34 years) of the National Park Service and two volunteers for the Mount. St. Helens institute not to mention myself and my hard working 10 year old son. It should be noted that almost to a person, there was almost no experience in building or maintaining trails outside of our two leaders.

For their troubles and time, each volunteer was given a free pass to use forest service recreation areas (worth $5). After two passes are collected, they can be traded in for a free annual pass (worth $30). After 5 days of volunteer work, WTA gives you your own personalized helmet to use on future projects. Seldom does a week go by in the summer when there are not several work parties occurring all over the state. If you are interested, check the WTA site, but hurry. Work party space is limited and it goes fast!

Our group of volunteers took a moment to take in the scenery of the Toutle River and the volcanic landscape.

I was motivated to join this group because in many places I have hiked this year, fresh work on the trails had been completed. Under my breath I have said "thank you", but it occurred to me that guilt was a feeling erased by effort. It struck me funny that there was no one from Lewis or Cowlitz County (besides myself and my son) to help maintain one of our backyard trails. Which leads me to ask, what are you doing next weekend? Care to grub a little?

Elk Died at Mount St. Helens, Here we go Again

It was a harsh winter. The price of gas rose unmercifully. We humans are having to make serious choices. Meanwhile, the long winter and deep snow pack in the Cascades caused a large die-off in the St. Helens area elk herd. It first hit the internet and new media on Thursday . Today, it made the front page of the local paper at the foot of Mount St. Helens itself.



Thus far, no sad photos have appeared in the media. Give that a few days as once again, folks all over the state and region will shed many tears for the elk. I have one word folks. It is nature. It is the natural way of culling the herd. Sure, the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife trucked in 131 tons of hay to try and assist the herd, but clearly this was a vicious winter.

We have to consider why the WDFW is even trying to feed the herd. Sure, they were given an informal mandate in the last good winter of 2005-06 when about 60 elk died after a banner snow year and then late season snows. That figure probably didn’t include the 37 dead elk that I observed in the Upper Toutle and Coldwater Canyons that are outside of the Elk Refuge range, but within the boundaries of the National Volcanic Monument.


Predators made a return to the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. The population of coyotes exploded in 2007 and there were many sightings of mountain lions near Coldwater Lake. Some might think that plenty of food during the winter and spring allowed a fragile population to have sucess.

I believe that the WDFW considers the answer to the problem can be solved by hunters. Fish and Wildlife has negotiated access into the most untraveled and scientifically sensitive areas of the Monument for the purpose of hunting. It is a case of humans trying to interfere with the natural process.

The elk in the Toutle Valley have multiple problems with their ecosystem.

#1-Much of the land is privately owned timberlands. After the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, the timber was salvaged and then replanted. Those stands are now 28 year old, dog-hair, light free, mono-culture stands of Douglas Fir. Areas outside the National Volcanic Monument contain poor browse conditions, even in the mild, low elevation areas of the valley where elk historically have spent the winter to avoid the heavy snow packs in the high country.



#2-What was elk heaven is changing rapidly. The open, prairie landscape that appeared after the 1980 eruption and collapse of Mount St. Helens that supplied the ultimate Western Washington habitat for elk is disappearing. There is less browse as groves of alder try to take the landscape to the next level of climatic vegetation.

The bottom line is that elk are going to die. The landscape can’t support the population that it did during the late 1980s and the 1990s. The population is going to crash. So we have a choice, we can allow the corp of northwest hunters to go in and cull the biggest and the best, or we can allow nature to take the weakest. Regardless, the northwest is going to have to get used to seeing dead elk in the area of Mount St. Helens.

My History-The 2006 Mount St. Helens Elk Die-off

This is a blog post from April 11th, 2006 as I discovered dead elk in the Toutle River Canyon in the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Wildlife managers discovered this week that there was a large mortality rate among the elk this winter.
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My efforts over the last few weeks were put to a bit of a litmus test yesterday. I am aware of two large winter-killed bulls just lying next to the rivers within the monument. If they still had their horns, we will have had some success avoiding the total lawless invasion that it feels like the monument has endured this past few weeks. Prepared to photo document horns cut cleanly with a hacksaw, I hiked out into the backcountry.



What I found was that both bulls still had their adornments. A little respect left them even in their demise.

Don’t Forget Your Snowshoes on your Early Season Hike

Whenever possible I try to drop in and visit Edie Aydelott at the Destination Packwood office. This last week, we talked about the snow. The massive amounts of it, preventing access onto the traditional trails in the foothills. The question was, how would it impact tourism early this summer? A year ago this weekend, my family and I hiked up to Packwood Lake and crossed just a couple of patches of snow. Those conditions are four to possibly six weeks away. The early season is looking troublesome for anyone that enjoys spending time in the high country. We should all be rejoicing for the above average snowfall and what it means for seasonal water supplies, but clearly, I have a very egotistic frame of mind when it comes to my summer backcountry excursions.

Like a cat needing to get outdoors, I have been scratching my own internal calendar for several weeks. My son and I decided to see what the foothills have to offer at this early season juncture. I picked a simple trip to Cathedral Falls, a 0.5 mile hike toward Tumwater Mountain and Vanson Lake on the Goat Creek Trail. It was a just about a year ago, that I first learned about this gem and stumbled my way to it with not a lick of snow in sight.

The falls are a popular local’s choice, but the Goat Creek area is not exactly the Wonderland Trail that is so heavily traveled or access maintained, at Mount Rainier National Park. Goat Creek drains the north slopes of Goat Mountain in the Mount St. Helen’s National Volcanic Monument. It is well outside the blast zone, so coverage of the area in guide books is less than intense and clearly escapes the interest of passing tourists.



To get there, turn onto Kosmos Road between Morton and Glenoma and follow the signs to Taidnapam Park. Cross the bridge over the Cowlitz River and turn right. Continue through an open gate (during fire season, this gate is often closed to protect private lands despite blocking access to public lands) and go for another mile or so, ignoring a couple of minor roads to the left. You will come to a three-way fork in the road, the one to the right has a gate. Take the farthest left fork. This is now USFS road #2750. There is no signage or any indication you are on the right road. Have faith!

Traveling any forest road in the spring, especially in my little Elantra adds an element of heart palpitation. Regular early season users often carry chainsaws so until you run into actual snow, trees are usually cut and shoved off to the side. Nobody reaches the dozen or so trees that blew over and are leaning against other trees and threaten to fall with a wisp of air movement as you pass by it. I kept imagining the trees falling after we drove up hill, trapping us without a saw in my trunk.



About a mile short of the trailhead, the snow became a barrier so I maneuvered my car into a downhill parking spot and started up the trail on foot. Of course there was the annual telltale sign of macho bravado where someone had insisted his truck could make it through the snow, trapping him for what was probably an hour or two until he was able to maneuver free. The scars will show in the road for years to come.

My son and I began our hike in the snow which got deeper and deeper. “My kingdom for a pair of snowshoes” I thought. Nearly an hour later, we had not even reached the trailhead. Disappointed, disgusted and ill-prepared, we turned around and headed back down the hill.

I knew there was a lot of snow in the Cascades this spring, but I am not sure we had reached 2000 feet yet and there was a ton. It may be a month before hikers without special equipment reaches Cathedral Falls, but when they do, the heart of the snow-melt season will put on an awesome display