Mt Rainier National Park citations $350

If you have already notified the NPS and the court that you intend to defend yourself call the US Attorney's office in Tacoma and ask for the assistant US attorney that has the park, won't be more than one or two people. Ask to speak with them and fall on your ski pole, using of course the high and low glacier bit and gator's blog about glacier conditions near Muir in late summer, referencing how routine day trips on high are. I wouldn't claim any ignorance of the law. Try to back into selective enforcement, and find out if the citing official is the one of the officials that spoke with you. If they were not, then why the discrepancy between your version of events versus the NPS? If you are famous maybe somebody else wanted a feather in their cap? Maybe this thing is iffy enough that the prosecutor won't want to spend time on it? Be nice and bleed a little, but claiming ignorance of the law won't go far.

I was ticketed in winter for camping on a glacier (below liberty ridge) for 75 dollars. I deserved it. I really should have had a permit for camping (it is free). I just didn't expect to see anyone up there and didn't know where the sign in was. I was pretty livid and not very nice to the ranger. I was already angry for being told I couldn't ski near the toe of the carbon glacier (ignored him) and that probably was the reason I had a ranger waiting down at my car for me. 

Anyhow, 375 is steep. When you met the ranger, you should have been ticketed then. It doesn't seem kosher to ticket you later, after the fact. Had you known then, you may have gone back and got a permit (BTW from experience rainier is fairly easy on most of us when it comes to permits. They just want to make sure you do it right next time).

A case in point, I went to climb Little T and was advised I needed a permit to ski above 10k. I skied around the lower slopes and went home instead. You guys may have decided to do the same  thing had you known you would get a 375 dollar ticket. Possibly not even continued your trip.

I don't want to make this a ranger bashing thread, but did want to cite a few instances that related to this story. I've been bad about getting permits and I try to be good about that now.

I thought I would let folks know how this came out. Basically Benj has a lawyer friend and my brother is a (business license) lawyer and they both advised me the same. Which was to nicely negotiate by phone with the federal proscecutor. Apparently federal judges and federal prosecutors are busy and have much bigger fish to fry. Hard to imagine that anything could be more important than a b-c skier and his citation. They were right the prosecutor offered that I could pay either citation (one was $75 and one was $275) so that was an easy decision even for me so I paid with my REI Visa a few days ago. Yay! assuming that goes through I won't have to think about skiing from a jail cell and no trips to court in Tacoma.

By the way our entire trip was below 10k', I think the highest we got was about 9800' where we crossed the Puyallup Cleaver.

Nice outcome, Garth.
High Five.

All my Bush tax cut goes to "user fees" and "permits".  What a shell game!

What tax "cut"? 90% of them have gone to the upper 1% of income.

too true...! ???

thanks for the valuable lesson, Garth (et al). I one arrived in the late afternoon at Scoop Jackson at Paridisio, in November. Full snow coverage. Dumping. Roads were getting worse by the minute. We were told we could either ski to 9,000' in a white out, or drive back down in same, but we couldn't camp on the snow below 9, or sleep in our cars for a few hours before a pre-dawn start. the desk-ranger admitted it was a silly technicality, but wouldn't budge on it. We slept in the car on a bridge at a county (?) park in the rain. after a few cold ones in our car-bivy we realized we should?/could have said we would go to anvil rock, and then just camp anywhere... worst comes to worst, we say we had to emergency bivy...

my theory is that these are issues not so much about government, so much as about large organizations with distant and complicated power loci. businesses have similar problems, but are mitigated by the profit motive, which is dampened in government. on the bright side, MRNP could be FOR profit, right? i've never held an AK, but I might if Rainier were privately owned....