Changes at Mt Rainier -- road closed Tues, Weds

No worries, mates!  Even when Rainier, North Cascades and Olympic are closed to any entry all year, our green VC designers will still be on the job...   :

An eminent and distinguished  public servant,  Earl Devaney, none other than the Inspector General of the Department of the Interior, stated at a Congressional hearing:

"Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I have served in Federal government for a little over 32 years, I have never seen an organization more unwilling to accept constructive criticism or embrace new ideas than the National Park Service. Their culture is to fight fiercely to protect the status quo and reject any idea that is not their own. Their strategy to enforce the status quo is to take any new idea, such as law enforcement reform, and study it to death. Thus an IG recommendation or for that matter, Secretarial directive, falls victim to yet another Park Service work group charged by their National Leadership Council to defend the status quo from those of us who just do not understand the complexities of being a ranger."

www.workingnet.com/thunderbear/288.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Devaney

...there's no way to know for sure, but word on the street in Ashford is that the park has a hundred permanent employees. 

I wanted to correct my earlier erroneous statement and estimate; Mount Rainier National Park has about 125 permanent employees: www.nps.gov/mora/parkmgmt/jobs.htm

There probably are at least a few 'term' and seasonal employees on duty in winter in addition to the above figure.

It's going slowly, but I'm trying to use  php.app.com/fed_employees10/search.php   to 'reverse engineer' an organization chart and get a better sense of management's priorities when dividing whatever operational financial pie they have.

I met Randy King (Supt., Mt. Rainier NP) and his wife XC skiing on the Paradise Valley Road today on our way out from a wonderful bc day. I wished Randy and Sally Happy New Year! and we discussed the closures. He said he thought about me when making the decision to close on Tues and Wed (he likes to tell people about the old fart who skies 100 days/year in the Park)--he said "I said to myself, Andy isn't going to be happy about this!" I told him I wasn't and that I wrote Sens. Murray and Cantwell and Congr. Reichart; he said he was surprised he hadn't hear anything, I said you did hear from Reichart's aide; he said oh yeah. He's asked Guest Services to track declining use of the concessions and Park people to monitor gate receipts. He said the closures were principally due to loss of snow removal people and he didn't know if they could open at regular hours again; the LEO group is against 7 days/week with reduced plow staff. I said it would be very nice if they couid go to 7 days/week when the days got longer, that the delayed openings made it impractical for longer bc tours. I also said encouraging the responsible people to update the twitter ASAP would be a big help in reducing the amount of frustration and anger at the Park in the Longmire parking lot, when hordes are awaiting a delayed opening.

I met Randy King (Supt., Mt. Rainier NP) and his wife XC skiing on the Paradise Valley Road today on our way out from a wonderful bc day.  I wished Randy and Sally Happy New Year! and we discussed the closures.

Did you ask Randy if the road is really going to be closed tomorrow (Wed, Jan 2), despite no need to plow anything?

No info regarding tomorrow has been posted on the Twitter feed yet, and the latest news release ( www.nps.gov/mora/parknews/winter-holidays.htm ) mentions only that the road would be open daily through Jan 1, so it seems safest to assume the worst: that it will be closed.

Good thing Amar posted ! We were blinded by the good weather,sun and holiday cheer and packed our gear for more Tatooshing Tomorrow. What a waste of resources! Bullion or Snoqualomie now I guess ?

Considering the zoo Paradise has been for the past several days, it seems safe to assume it will be closed Wednesday.

The original Twitter notificaton on Nov. 16 stated only that Paradise would be closed in winter Tu-W because they were the days with lowest visitation.  This tweet was deleted sometime in late November.  A tweet on Nov. 21, updated to amend the original unpopular backcountry camping restriction, elaborated:

"New this winter and starting November 27, the road between Longmire and Paradise will be closed to public travel on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Longmire and the park will remain open seven days a week, barring major storm events.

"We are strategically deploying available park staff and resources to provide access to Paradise Thursday through Monday, the five days of the week with greatest visitation," King said.

Visitation statistics show that Tuesday and Wednesday are, on average, the park's least visited days, with fewer than 60 visitor vehicles coming through the Nisqually Entrance on a typical day. By focusing staff on fewer days, the park will be better able to provide access and services during times of greatest visitation, including more consistent road plowing and emergency patrols for visitor safety."

A Dec. 8 TNT story, linked in Andy's reply #113 above, emphasizes the closures were needed to prepare for threatened budget cuts.

Now Supt. King thinks it's mostly due to the critical vacancies, which weren't mentioned until the Dec. 11 meeting in Ashford.  Apparently, only one of the vacancies was advertised and that for only two weeks, three and a half months after the previous rotary operator died of a heart attack.

This has the feel of justifications made following a decision, rather than preceeding and causing it.  The camping update suggests the policy was not completely thought out before it's rather odd announcement.  It appears the new policy is not to open Paradise until 10:30 or 11 on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays even with one inch or no new snow; so much for "more consistent plowing". 

Maybe it's the glut of detective shows on TV, but doesn't a shifting story with unexplained holes in it usually imply dishonesty?  Especially when the suspect, I mean agency, has such an extensive rap sheet of enthusiasm for public closures.