Mt. Rainier heavy-handed policing

Did you check @6AM ? -- is it possible that they were overnighters ?

I first checked just before 7am, but the lot was clear yesterday evening.  I suppose vehicles from the designated overnight parking could have been moved in the interim...but five of them?

The lack of enforcement this week, despite suddenly having enough staff to open longer hours starting tomorrow, makes it appear that their entire winter access policy is mostly arbitrary and has little to do with supposed staffing shortages.

Edit to add 2nd sentence

I don't know if calling helped, but I know it didn't hurt. And each call they get erodes their position that they had to make a decision in the blind because they didn't get any/very much input.

The ranger that opened the gate for us yesterday at 8:30 stopped by to let us know what a favor she was doing for us. And today it's open pre 7am?
Arbitrary, for sure.

Five private vehicles were on  the Paradise webcam before 7am today   ???

Did you check @6AM ? -- is it possible that they were overnighters ?

I first checked just before 7am, but the lot was clear yesterday evening.  I suppose vehicles from the designated overnight parking could have been moved in the interim...but five of them?

The ranger that opened the gate for us yesterday at 8:30 stopped by to let us know what a favor she was doing for us. And today it's open pre 7am?
Arbitrary, for sure.

Well, as some of you know, I wrote a script back in 2010 which saves various webcams throughout the Cascades (plus a few elsewhere around the world) every 10 minutes -- including most of the MRNP webcams. So we can easily find the answer in my (increasingly huge, several 100s of GB) archive of webcam images!

The last clear daylight image from Thursday evening at 6:10pm, showing 5 cars:



The first clear daylight image from Friday morning at 6:28am, showing the same 5 cars:



So these vehicles were clearly just illegally parked overnight in the main lot (all designated overnight parking spots are elsewhere), and did not get through the gate early. Mystery solved!

There is definitely a lack of enforcement, but of overnight parking locations, and not of the gate hours. According to the MRNP Twitter feed , the gate opened at 8:42am today:

MountRainierNPS
The gate to Paradise at Longmire is open. All vehicles must carry tire chains. -to
8:42 AM - 6 Mar 2015

By 9:00am, the first car had reached the lot, and several more by 9:10am:



The last clear daylight image from today (Friday) evening at 6:10pm shows 4 cars still there, including 2 of the same ones still illegally parked for more than 30 hours now:

Thanks for clearing that up, Amar!  Apologies to all for my obviously faulty memory.