Mt. Rainier: Prospects for Future Access

When I fist came to WA I remember driving up to Cascade Pass and seeing the waterfalls pouring off Johannesburg Mountian and thinking how wonderful it was. Not possible anymore due to road problems. ETC ETC ETC.

Um, actually, you can. I've been pretty impressed at how actively they've worked to maintain Cascade River Road.
www.nps.gov/noca/planyourvisit/road-conditions.htm

I satnd corrected. :-[thanks for the update, that's good news! THERE IS HOPE!!!

Does anybody know what may be proposed as a solution to the problem with the Longmire entrance road?  I remember driving through there and seeing exactly the problem that is being discussed...the road grade being lower than the adjacent riverbed.  That is a hell of erosion over there!

I feel the same way about building homes in places that are prone to flooding and mudslides; from a land use/resource allocation perspective it just doesn't make sense. But the Ayn Rand in me says keep on tenaciously building, rebuilding and repairing the road, as a monument to man's potential.

It has always seemed excessive to me (although really cool!) to have a road open up that high in the Cascades in winter, with so little benefit to the majority of the park users. But while it's open I gladly use it to ski when I'm over on that side! 
-Bill

Does anybody know what may be proposed as a solution to the problem with the Longmire entrance road?  I remember driving through there and seeing exactly the problem that is being discussed...the road grade being lower than the adjacent riverbed.  That is a hell of erosion over there! 

I feel the same way about building homes in places that are prone to flooding and mudslides; from a land use/resource allocation perspective it just doesn't make sense.  But the Ayn Rand in me says keep on tenaciously building, rebuilding and repairing the road, as a monument to man's potential. 

It has always seemed excessive to me (although really cool!) to have a road open up that high in the Cascades in winter, with so little benefit to the majority of the park users.  But while it's open I gladly use it to ski when I'm over on that side! 
-Bill

The park has hired cosultants and has/is putting together plans, etc. Much too detailed to portray here.

As far as winter opening, what we are really talking about is, for the most, part plowing 12 miles of road above longmire some of the time, and most of the time the road above 4,000 ft ( the Nisqually Bridge) in most winter (say 5 miles?) ... not at all like keeping the roads in B.C. open and even the Icefields Parkway and, of course, many citizens objected to the Louisiana Purchase, Seward's folly, Eisenhower building "defense" highways in the west cuz there was no real economic justification, and even I objected to Alaska Senators Stevens & Murkowski spending $50k of our money to support every timber job in AK or Stevens building a $275 million bridge to no where or $1 trillion on Iraq ....

One of the difficulties with re-locating the road is that the Wilderness boundary was drawn quite close to the road corridor.  It might literally require an act of Congress.

I'm not arguing against planning, but past plans have been rather ineffective.  Previous versions of the General Management Plan (revised each decade, I believe) gave a high priority to reducing the NPS 'footprint' in Longmire because of high mudflow hazard.  So how did the Emergency Operations Center (of all things!) get built right next to the river not long before the flood of 2006?  This was the large building on TV with it's corner undermined.

Does anybody know what winter use at Paradise has been? It would be nice to see use figures by season from something like 1995-2005; I know use by skiers was high in 2006-2007, but I think those were mostly park employees . With park closures, limited parking, a dangerous winter this year, and delayed and postponed openings I'm sure use has to be down for the last couple of years. I just wonder what "normal" use is.

In the past, on weekends, on nice days, the parking lots were full with skiers, climbers, hikers, snowshoers, Seattle Mountaineers classes and trips, church groups, scout groups, families at the snow play area, and just plain old sight-seers. During the week during bad weather I would routinely encounter 0.5-2.3 dozen cars and on one occasion when I returned to the parking lot there were no cars at all ... really eery ... with a note on my windshield from LEO Karen saying they had closed the park due to the blizzard and giving me the combo for the gate. As it turned out Karen couldn't just leave and not worry so she was waiting for me at Cougar Rock when I came down, what a sweetheart!

I also wonder at the ramifications of not plowing the road as needed, with the substantial snowpack, snow compression, complete obscuration of road location and structures in the parking lots; how long would a spring or summer opening be delayed ... how early would the park have to close, we usually get a heavy snow at Paradise in Oct and then a bunch later in November. So would closure be like Nov thru late June or July (such as when they get Paradise Valley Road open now, but that would of course be substantially delayed).

Kind of hijacking my own post, which pointed to potential long-term, year round, maybe more or less permanent closures.

Anyhow, I pay $20/yr for a snowpark permit that works in OR and WA, but the only parking lots in the snowpark system I've seen that had more use than Paradise were at the developed ski areas.