Appeal Tribune Wednesday, December 6, 2017 3B
Backpackers might need to pack a permit
Forest Service moves
forward on plan to limit
entry to 5 Oregon
wilderness areas
ZACH URNESS
SALEM STATESMAN JOURNAL
USA TODAY NETWORK
The U.S. Forest Service is reassessing
a plan that would limit the number of
people allowed into five of Oregon’s most
popular wilderness areas.
The federal agency proposed rules in
June that would require hikers and back-
packers to purchase a permit before
heading into 500,000 acres of backcoun-
try between Mount Jefferson and Dia-
mond Peak.
But after getting more than 500 public
comments — many of them critical of
the plan’s scope — federal officials have
developed alternative plans that are less
restrictive.
Instead of requiring a permit for all
overnight and most day-hiking trips into
Mount Jefferson, Mount Washington,
Three Sisters, Waldo Lake and Diamond
Peak wilderness areas, the new alterna-
tives target primarily the busiest areas.
“A lot of the questions and concerns
we heard from the public was why we
were making it so broad — why it needed
to be wilderness-wide limited entry,”
said Jean Nelson-Dean, public informa-
tion officer with Deschutes National For-
est.
“A lot of the commenters thought it
should be more targeted.”
The permit system was proposed be-
cause of explosive growth in the number
of people hiking and backpacking in Cen-
tral Cascade areas around the Three Sis-
ters and Mount Jefferson.
Unlike state or national parks, wilder-
ness areas are often ill-equipped to han-
dle masses of people, leading to damage
in alpine environments.
In response, Deschutes and Willam-
ette national forests proposed a permit
system that would only allow a certain
number of people to enter from the ma-
jority of trailheads into the five wilder-
ness areas.
The permits would cost between $6
and $12.
Currently, only Obsidian Trail in the
Three Sisters Wilderness and Pamelia
Lake in the Mount Jefferson Wilderness
require a permit to hike or backpack.
The response to the original plan — a
mostly wilderness-wide permit require-
ment — prompted the agency to consider
less restrictive options.
The Forest Service will study five op-
tions and bring them to the public in
spring of 2018, and possibly make a deci-
sion by summer of 2018. The goal is to
have the permit system in place by sum-
mer of 2019.
The five options, from least to most
restrictive, include:
1) Take no action, and require no new
additional permit system
2) Permits required only for very
high use areas, and only require over-
night permits at high use sites in Three
Sisters and Mount Jefferson wilderness
areas.
3) Same as above, but also consider
permit requirement at sites likely to be-
come heavily-used in coming 2 to 5
Backpackers and hikers could be required to get a permit before entering five wilderness areas in Oregon, including the Mount Jefferson area.
STATESMAN JOURNAL FILE
years.
4) Permit required for all overnight
trips and most day-hiking trips into all
five wilderness areas. (This was the orig-
inal proposal).
5) Permits required for every trip,
whether day-use or overnight, into all
five wilderness areas.
The Forest Service will assess the im-
pact of each alternative — considering
everything from local economies to the
wilderness areas environment — and
present the findings to the public in
spring of 2018.
At that point, a second public com-
ment period will take place.
After that, the Forest Service will
take the public comments and prepare a
draft decision, then take comments
again before a final decision is made
around summer of 2018.
At the same time, the agency will de-
velop separate rules on the cost of per-
mits and how the permits would be dis-
tributed, along with considering a camp-
fire ban for several elevations.
“The earliest the entire system would
go online — that people would need a per-
mit — would be summer of 2019,” Nel-
son-Dean said.
No longer a
wilderness experience?
The 1964 Wilderness Act called wil-
derness “an area where the earth and its
community of life are untrammeled by
man.”
But on the Cascade Crest — between
Mount Jefferson and Diamond Peak —
finding solitude in wilderness areas has
been increasingly difficult.
The population boom in Bend and
growth in the Willamette Valley have
brought more people to the mountains
each year, stressing the wilderness
areas to the breaking point, officials
said.
Visitors to the Three Sisters Wilder-
ness jumped to 132,118 last year, up from
just 46,999 in 2011, according to data col-
lected by the Forest Service.
"I don't even consider it a wilderness
experience," said Chris Sabo, trail crew
supervisor for Deschutes National For-
est in a 2013 interview. "It's almost more
of an urban park. The use is very high,
really beyond what this area can accom-
modate."
Closest to Salem, visitors to the Mount
Jefferson Wilderness increased to
28,987 in 2016, up from 22,600 five years
ago. Mount Washington was up 119 per-
cent and Diamond Peak up 97 percent.
Environmental damage
All those extra people have had a pro-
found impact on areas that are supposed
to have little evidence of human influ-
ence.
In addition to simple issues such as
crowded trailheads and limited camp-
sites, wilderness rangers have found in-
creased amounts of poop, garbage and
resource damage.
Wilderness rangers reported coming
across unburied human feces more than
1,000 times. They reported hauling out
more than 1,200 pounds of trash, accord-
ing to documents.
"It's disheartening to go up there and
see some of the behavior," said Jon Erick-
son, former wilderness ranger in the
Three Sisters. "Every week we'd find
people with illegal campfires, garbage
left behind and unburied waste sitting
right inside a camping spot.
"Yes, people are actually pooping at
their own campsite and leaving it there."
Obsidian and Pamelia
One of the reasons officials cited for
using a limited entry system is the suc-
cess at Obsidian Trail and Pamelia Lake.
Both places were becoming crowded
and struggling with overuse in the early
1990s, according to officials. In re-
sponse, a limited entry system was in-
stalled that allows 20 groups into Pame-
lia per day, and 30 day hikers and 40 over-
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Visitors to Cascade
Crest wilderness areas
Data collected by voluntary wilder-
ness permits filled out at trailheads
Three Sisters
u2016: 132,118
u2011: 46,999
Mount Jefferson
u2016: 28,987
u2011: 22,600
Mount Washington
u2016: 8,315
u2011: 3,793
Diamond Peak (eastside access
only)
u2016: 2,716
u2011: 1,378
Download the enhanced Explore Ore-
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Zach Urness has been an outdoors
writer, photographer and videographer
in Oregon for nine years. He is the author
of the book “Hiking Southern Oregon”
and can be reached at zurness@States-
manJournal.com or (503) 399-6801. Find
him on Twitter at @ZachsORoutdoors.
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night visitors to Obsidian each day.
The results have been positive, said
Troy Hall, an Oregon State University
professor who has tracked environmen-
tal conditions at Obsidian.
“I’ve actually been surprised,” Hall
said. “It’s pretty similar now to what it
was 20 years ago, and it’s even improved
a little.
Other places, like Green Lakes in the
Three Sisters that don’t have limited en-
try, have just gotten hammered.”
Hall said limited entry hasn’t always
been an easy sell to the public. In the late
1990s, Mount Hood National Forest tried
implementing a limited entry system,
she said.
“It was pretty soundly rejected,” Hall
said. “The public just wasn’t interested
in taking that extra step.”
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