Each year I do some of my early training hikes, climbs in the Columbia Gorge. I buy the Northwest Forest Pass ($30 a year) to access federal land trailheads on either Oregon or Washington side. It now appears the state of Washington sells a Discover Pass ($35 a year, $10 a day) to recreate on Washington state lands (like Beacon Rock State Park) in the Columbia Gorge. I see some potential confusion here. Why don't the feds and states get together and offer a single Pass to allow recreation in the Gorge?

Why, indeed??
I recently went to court to fight a ticket I received for not having that ol' Discovery Pass(the ranger gave me the usual rhetoric, asking me if I "knew that the pass paid for trail maintenance, bathroom maintenance," etc, etc. Well, the bathrooms were locked when I was there(and on the door was a nice UFS copy proclaiming the virtues of the pass!), the gate at the base of the road leading up to the parking lot(Hamilton Mt.), was locked, meaning one had to walk up the road to get to the trailhead, etc.
Meanwhile, when I returned from my hike, Ms. Ranger was very busy, across the street, writing multiple tickets by the looks of it, in the Beacon Rock parking area. .

The answer is pretty clear, Federal and State budget shortfalls. Pay to play.

In a word... "FUNDING." NW Forest Pass is basically for NFS lands while Discover is for WA state lands.

Yes, it sucks, but The Forest Service, National Parks Service, State Parks and Recreation services are all at the head of the line when it comes to the chopping block. We all might well prepare for locked gates, closed restrooms and either overflowing garbage containers or no containers at all.

Simply, a sign of the times we're in.

I am OK paying a $30/year user charge to go on a specific trail hike/climb. I find it amusing that I will need to take multiple passes in the car to access different trailheads in the Columbia Gorge. You would like to think the process is done efficiently. I sometimes wonder if user charge revenues exceed the cost to administer the user charge, or if the whole process is largely symbolic. Two other behavior questions come up: at what user charge does the hiker choose a non-fee trailhead over a nearby fee trailhead, and how high must the user charge go before the hiker chooses to stay home. In these two cases no revenues are earned by the land owner.

Having worked for the government, I believe these highly unpopular user fees as well as parks closures in Washington State are a way to 'punish' the tax payer for not properly funding the agencies in the first place. I also wouldn't be surprised if a larger portion of the user fees go to adminstration/enforcement costs than goes towards maintainence. I've noticed that unlike Washington State, Oregon which has an income tax, seems to have nicer state parks with more ammenities and are better maintained. Maybe twoshuzz will disagree, but the few Oregon State parks I've visited have seemed to be cleaner and better managed than WA State parks. At the federal level its part of a conspiracy to turn over ownership/management of all public lands to private enterprise. The NW Forest Pass was the first stage.

There's also been public land CUTBACKS in Arizona, but the climate seems to be on the upswing, especially for the rattlesnakes.

I think everybody is tightening up their belts these days ... makes me want to visit Alaska.

lcarreau wrote:
I think everybody is tightening up their belts these days ... makes me want to visit Alaska.

I used to climb in Alaska every other year because it was cheap: $200 SEA-ANC, $100 - ANC-Talkeetna, $350 Talkeenta to the glacier. Those prices have about doubled, not to mention $500 permits fees for Denali and Foraker now (maybe its only $300) so it is no longer such a cheap date. If I ever get well enough to do a big trip it will be to South America. Not any more expensive than AK any more.

The agencies are so busy wasting money, they don't have any left over for actual needs. They waste the money to increase their budget size and power so they can whine louder when actual budget cuts are introduced. That way those proponents for the forest service can say the end of the world is near, when in fact, most of their inflated budget does nothing but provide fur lined toilet seats, trips to Cancun, and endless new regulations that need to be "enforced". After all if they aren't writing new regulations, they can't show "progress." Justifying their existence.

Take for instance the Seattle Watershed. Even though there is NO traffic on any of the roads in the watershed besides the patrol cars, as if they need those at all to start with, they gravel and grade the roads, all of the roads, multiple times a year. Is it any wonder why your water bill is so high?

Just like the forest service. They get HUGE $$$ from the logging companies and they now expect public lands not to be public? Do roads need to be graded multiple times a year? No. Do trails need maintenance at levels they receive? No. They waste all of their trail maintenance budget on useless bridges over dribbles of water fit for horses. You say, but in the 60's they did all that. No they didn't. The trails were HORRIBLY overgrown, and the bridges that did exist over creeks were nothing more than a log flattened on top with maybe a hand rail. When the Forest service is flying in mini bulldozers and treated lumber for water dikes, treated lumber that doesn't last by the way, its no wonder they, "Don't have budget to maintain trails." See Cady Ridge trail. A trail rarely used by anyone at that. Spent in excess of $100,000 to "move" the trail 3 feet for a couple miles through the medows. Oh yea the trail already existed beside the water trench. All they had to do was designate that as the trail and keep using it and maintain it. Instead we now have 2.5 scars through the meadow instead of 1 with the new trail on the edge of the old. Genius!

The Toilets at trail heads never used to exist and no one complained. Why? You are there to use the woods anyways, one can squat like normal. Now the toilets exist just so they can officially charge money. All parking areas without a toilet can't be enforced. Toilets as others have pointed out are generally locked for 8 months out of the year.

Take the Suiattle river road. Instead of just moving the road over 300 feet for maybe 100,000 bucks, they spend more than that doing a stupid idiotic environmental impact study... Its a road, duh. Instead of the judge throwing out the idiot who sued the state on said road project because someone dared to think about repairing a road, the state just dropped ever repairing said road. So, the official cost goes from trivial, to impossible because of environmentalists agenda that has nothing to do with maintenance. Shall we get into the Sol Duc Hot Springs road and how much the idiot environmentalist wackos drove its cost for a simple repair through the roof due to idiotic judges allowing every Tinker damned lawsuits into their courts instead of throwing the frivolous BS out?

There is no $30 maintenance. It has everything to do with increasing the number of forest service personnel. That way when real budget cuts are needed they can scream bloody murder about lost jobs and how much downsizing they will have to do. It has nothing to do with actual maintenance or providing services for the public. It has everything to do with increasing the power and scope of the Forest Service, as that gets them larger budgets, larger budgets gets them free trips to Cancun, to "discuss important topics" of the forest service. Just like the City of Portland (OR) recreation vehicle I saw at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, 3 weeks ago. I am "sure" they had a legitimate "conference" properly wasting tax payers dollars.

You want to get rid of the $30? Tell the forest service to cut their budget, of course the sly bastards will cut the useful part of their budget that actually is THEIR JOB and keep the garbage so they can once again increase their budget as its obvious that the stuff they are SUPPOSED TO DO is not getting done. Bureaucracies are there only to feed their piggy faces at the trough of your pocket book. No, don't blame the end user employees you see and interact with, its not their fault, blame the schmucks at the administrator level.

Wastral wrote:Take for instance the Seattle Watershed. Even though there is NO traffic on any of the roads in the watershed besides the patrol cars, as if they need those at all to start with, they gravel and grade the roads, all of the roads, multiple times a year. Is it any wonder why your water bill is so high?

This very well could be a water quality issue, sedimentation of tributaries and such.

Wastral wrote:they spend more than that doing a stupid idiotic environmental impact study... Its a road, duh.

EISs are required by the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and possibly other federal or state regulations. If someone sued it was probably because some agency was not following the law.

ExcitableBoy wrote:Having worked for the government, I believe these highly unpopular user fees as well as parks closures in Washington State are a way to 'punish' the tax payer for not properly funding the agencies in the first place. I also wouldn't be surprised if a larger portion of the user fees go to adminstration/enforcement costs than goes towards maintainence. I've noticed that unlike Washington State, Oregon which has an income tax, seems to have nicer state parks with more ammenities and are better maintained. Maybe twoshuzz will disagree, but the few Oregon State parks I've visited have seemed to be cleaner and better managed than WA State parks. At the federal level its part of a conspiracy to turn over ownership/management of all public lands to private enterprise. The NW Forest Pass was the first stage.

Can't argue your points at all, EB. An intital brief and cursory plant of the shovel into very shallow ground leads me to believe that well below a single percentage point of Oregon income tax revenue goes to state parks. By the "breakdown" I've seen , roughly 53% of revenue goes to education, 23% safeguarding the health of seniors and children, 17% to public safety leaving 7% to "all others." I have to believe "all others" encompasses a rather large mass leaving state parks and recreation at or near the bottom of the heap, most of those funds going to administrative costs. I would also expect a co-mingling between public safety funding for LEO and other state agencies involved in state park management.

Honestly, over the years I've migrated away from both state and national parks, a mild few exceptions here and there. I believe you are correct in that there does seem to be an evergrowing "push" to turn our federal and state lands over to private enterprise, an effort to remove and redirect those fundings to other areas surely to escalate government waste, perversion and fraud of taxpayer funds. I don't necessarily look at it as punishing the taxpayer as much as I believe it to be more along the lines of punishing the user.

I don't mind paying those fees as much as I object to the growth of more and more individual passes, permits... required for entry, if that makes any sense. For instance, every year I purchase the Oregon Sports Pac for both hunting and fishing. While it allows me to pursue many species on land, water (both fresh and salt), only less than one quarter of that which I'm allowed to harverst hold my interest. By that which goes into my freezer every year, both license and tags purchased individually would this year come in at roughly 40 - 50 bucks under the cost of the "Pac" itself. I simply purchase the pac as a means of providing "extra" funding for ODFW. Perhaps akin to feeding an addict, the optimist within me would prefer to think I'm doing my part to help fund that which I love dearly and to help keep at least our outdoor recreational resources out of the hands of private enterprise.

Public lands are just that IMHO. However, it certainly seems the pursuit to move their management to the private sector is both intact and evergrowing. These issues always seem to pick up steam when budget cuts loom in the not so far distance. As such, I can foresee the move to privatizing those lands down the road. Perhaps the greatest reason for my continual and personal justification for continuing to pay for such passes and permits... the very thought makes me sick.

Here's to your recovery continuing on a rapidily upward trajectory and that you may soon get back to that which you hold dear.

twoshuzz wrote:I don't mind paying those fees as much as I object to the growth of more and more individual passes, permits... required for entry, if that makes any sense.

I think I understand and I completely agree. If you hike, climb, fish, hunt, use snow parks, access federal land, access state land, these all require different passes. Its maddening. I would happily pay $200 or whatever extra in taxes to fund these agencies simply to avoid the hassle of running around buying passes every year or season.

Spot on, EB. + 1.

I'd rather pay for something I enjoy doing, be it fishing, hiking, biking, scrambling, whatever ... truth is, you can't take it with you.

Wikipedi defines four types of goods and services (public, private, club, and common) differentiated by two criteria (excludable, rivalrous). A rivalrous good means when one person consumes the good it then can not be consumed by others. A excludable good means a barrier can be raised to prevent a person from using it. So in matrix form:

public good is non-rivalrous and non-excludable (e.g. free TV, air)
private good is rivalrous and excludable (e.g. food, clothing, car)
club good is non-rivalrous and excludable (e.g. cinema, private park)
common good is rivalrous and non-excludable (e.g. fish stock, timber)

So when federal and state governments charge a fee to hike a trail they have moved this activity from a public good to club good.