Changes at Mt Rainier -- road closed Tues, Weds

Anyone know what the new jobs are?

I suppose someone should try asking them, but it seems like their various PR people are not all reading from the same script.  Remember, "critical vacancies" & "skeleton crews" & "hiring freeze" were some of the weaselly excuses given for last winter's weekday closures. 

Some database wizard could probably extract MRNP info and compare 2012 with 2013, but the most recent data I could find are from 2011:  php.app.com/fed_employees11/search.php

Given the many tens of millions of dollars spent on recent & current project work at this park, there are probably also dozens of "term" employees not counted as permanents: 

"The tendency in a bureaucracy is for the upper ranks to be built up over time, and periodically they need to be cleaned out. In a given amount of money, increase the percentage defined as an operating budget, and reduce the amount doled out as project funds. Projects are commonly overestimated, then used to pay for basic operations. In addition to being short sighted and unethical, there are substantial unacknowledged costs associated with this. A huge amount of staff time is spent chasing and administering projects that are really just operations under a different name. The amount of clerk positions in NPS maintenance has leaped in recent years, usually at the expense of people doing the actual work. Also, project funds can't be used to hire permanent employees, so there are a lot of temporary and term people out there who are doing the jobs of permanents. Nobody who hasn't worked in government would believe how much pointless administrative effort on the part of supervisors and HR staff goes into just keeping those people around year after year." (From Reply #135 earlier in this thread).

If you are concerned about our National Parks, don't miss this story and the comments:
www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/10/se...nal-park-system24163

MRNP has announced weekday access changes for the coming winter:
www.thenewstribune.com/2013/11/07/287837...ational-park-to.html

In a nutshell, Paradise will be closed Tu-W until Dec. 21st, at which time 9-5 seven-day access theoretically begins for the remainder of the winter.  New this winter is a fixed 5 pm daily gate closure at Longmire, even in late winter when the days are longer.

Awesome!

I wonder what their plan is for dealing with stragglers. If the downhill gate closes at 5:00PM , the lot at Paradise will need to be cleared out by 4:30PM. I've arrived back at the lot past sunset plenty of times in the past.