Recent comments

Truth be known the prices quoted are not really all that out of line and are relative bargains compared to the price of lodgings in much less attractive locales.

I'm with Merryland and much prefer the backcountry over lodges but do enjoy having breakfast and then hoisting a few cold ones later in the afternoon at the North Rim Lodge of the Grand Canyon. The Yellowstone lodges and hotels are fun to hang out in and people watch after coming back from a few days out in the wilds.

The questions Frank raises about the mere pittance that is generated for the parks by all of this lodging business is germane to the issue because the money isn't going back into the parks but into corporate coffers after the consummation of sweetheart concession contracts.

No one likes the idea of privatization but then don't seem to mind the current pillaging that goes on by private multi-nationals operating with impunity while giving back next to nothing.

Thanks Jeremy, I needed that this morning! Brings music to my ears, especially after reading about Bush's desire to continue the war in Iraq.

Hi Jeremy,

Lovely ambiance!

Can I convince you to share a favorite recording for the one-minute vacation project? :)

aaron

If Xanterra was taken out of the picture, with its many very low paid employees that often turn out to be thieves, sex offenders and petty drug dealers, the park service would never be able to justify their huge law enforcement budgets in these mostly remote and generally crime free areas. In many parks Xanterra employees make up the bulk of felony arrests for the mostly bored and underutilized law enforcement wing of the green and gray. The concessionaires provide an essential ingredient to justify guns, door kicking glory and gobs of Homeland Security gravy.

At one park that I worked in the Xanterra housing area was staked out every evening (in season) with night vision goggles and full complement of rangers. I went on a ride along one night with an LE friend to the Lodge area and it was just like being in an episode of COPS. We just can't take that away from them, market economics be damned!

Concessions are government-sponsored monopolies, and these prices reflect that.

It's a abhorrent that Xanterra was awarded a 5-year contract worth $250 million to operate a monopoly in Yellowstone and returns a minuscule 2% franchise fee to the NPS.

Imagine if a public trust managed Yellowstone and a large portion of the $250 million collected in Yellowstone went toward park operation and management. There would be no need to fund the park with ill-gotten, politically tainted, hard-earned taxpayer money.

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Reform the National Park Service!
http://NPS-reform.blogspot.com

All the prices for lodging in Yosemite are very high compared to comparable lodgings elsewhere. Tent cabins in White Wolf are $93. per night for four cots and a Franklin stove. No electricity. The motel rooms at Curry Village are approx. $170. with tiny bathrooms. Yet, these accommodations are almost always full during the summer so using basic Economics 101, they are not overpriced. If people thought they were overpriced, there would be plenty of vacancies. But instead, lots of people are willing to pay the rates for the location.

Wyoming's plan doesn't just call for a hunting season; Wyoming's plan calls for wolves outside a certain area to be classified as vermin. There is a lot of question also whether the number of packs that Wyoming must maintain can be maintained with the policies in place.

Anyhow, I'm not here to get into it about Wyoming's policy; my point was that wolf numbers don't necessarily grow infinitely. When one says that their numbers need to be kept in check, there's a presumed social value being expressed there (just as there is when someone says elk numbers need to be kept in check). Pointing out a stat was to get people to put their own cards on the table. Fido gets run over by cars all the time; livestock out West are also run over by cars; no one worries about that. Wolves are seen as a direct competitor in the way that cars aren't; it's interesting to cut through things to figure out why.

Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World

This is the best news I have heard since my return home to the PNW.
Now to do something about those pesky Mountain Goats in the Olympic National Park ;-}
"Real life ain't always like a Kevin Costner movie."
Nor is it like Disney's "Never Cry Wolf."
Thank the heavens...

All it will take to change the tune for one of these pro-wolf anti-hunting people is to have one of their very expensively bred dogs to be savagely munched on by a very hungry and sly member of canis lupus. So they had better be careful where they let their little Fi-fi out of the Volvo, especially in the northern Rockies. Real life ain't always like a Kevin Costner movie.

I've seen coyote lovers become overnight converts to bounty killing in the same way. The wilderness is really WILD people!

I think wolves are great. If kept in check they do good things for their environment. But it sounds like at least one of the people in that meeting have their heads in the clouds when it comes to how "wild", wild wolves really are. These are not the neighbor's chocolate lab down the street, they are amazing hunting and killing machines. All they want to do is eat meat, livestock or wildlife, and make little wolves and given the right habitat they can do both very well. Look at Idaho for example. Wolves have boomed there in the last few years and are still booming and now Idaho is trying to legally allow hunters to control the wolf population. I would venture to say that most if not all of the pro wolf people at that meeting are anti hunting, but the best way to control over-expanding wolf populations is to allow hunters to harvest them in carefully controlled numbers. I am all for wolves being reintroduced, but the people near Olympic Nat. Park need to understand what these animals are, wild beasts, and not a cuddly dog who plays fetch.

My point is that over the longterm, this is no way to solve this problem (and it's actually no way to solve any law enforcement problem). There's posters all over my apartment complex to "report suspicious activity." There are two freaking plain clothes police officers living in my building, an attempt to intimidate and scare residents. Even if I see something suspicious, I am not going to report it. There's almost undoubtedly nothing good that will come of it except the continued use of harrassment to drive fear (even if they happen to catch a problem bear - ahem, I mean suspicious person).

In this case, the report was ignored until it was deemed a problem bear, and that leads to the death of the bear. By the time we reach a point where a sign is being posted to warn people of bears, where a chronicle of incidents is being reported, can we trust law enforcement to deal with what is essentially a cultural problem? There is no "suspicious activity" that is worth the fear and persecution that people face, especially people of color and those who don't speak English; there is no reason that bear management should essentially be a law enforcement issue (and however they mask it, that's what it is). --it that way, I'm also responding to posts above.

I was also not stereotyping you; I was trying to explain why I could understand why your report was stereotyped and how it would be reasonable to do that. Whatever the policy is, the individual ranger is going to be as cynical as anyone. The stereotype here is actually the reverse - that the person asked to carry out a policy is identical with those putting out the policy. Just as you and your group were people on a trail who took good precautions around bears, as opposed to most (not all) who get mauled and should not be identified with the larger culture of stupidity, the ranger is in the same position of having to figure out whether to put hikers into a frenzy because of an individual bear report (and in the Tetons, where there are fewer trails, black bear sightings are quite common - for instance, I've never been on the Cascade Canyon trail without some report somewhere). Anyhow, the point is to say that the larger cultural problem points the way to the solution. By the time we are at rangers posting signs and trying to discern your group from everyone else, it's too late. That bear is already in trouble (which is to say that any bear is already in trouble). We're not going to be able to help that bear, (only good news is that there probably is very little that needs to be done to help the hikers, who probably won't be mauled, and should already assume that they are in bear country). So, informed hikers like yourself are better off organizing educational events, working to change the culture for the future. Instead, we have a society that expects the Park Service to fix all the ills and be responsible for doing so. Frankly, they do about as good a job as anyone should expect under the circumstances. Their mistakes have been chronicled and their deficiencies noted (by me among others) - so much so that I believe we have to re-conceive the way we view parks and the entire "management" philosophy.

I just want to see people empower themselves - not just on the trail - but before people are on the trail. In the end, a cultural change will be much more helpful in "bear management" than making this a safety and law enforcement situation. That's the point.

And, because of incidents like this, you know it makes me - perhaps for very different reasons - less likely to report a bear sighting. It isn't that you weren't taken seriously; it's that you might be. And, when you are, the tendency of people in law enforcement is to overreact. We have far too many dead bears this year in and around Grand Teton. What's worse, we have too much additional sensationalization (that is magnified by those who share the stories that are reported). All of this won't help until we do more. In fact, I'm thinking of organizing an event myself. The last two years, I've organized events around Columbus Day to talk about genocide and imperialism, to inform people about the legacy of Euroamerican expansion. I probably can't do that this year because I'll have a newborn. What I can do, though, is talk about bears and hiking. Things are even worse here on the East coast when it comes to that. It is up to us to combat the myths that lead people like you (Randy) to not be taken seriously, even when you do exactly what they tell you to do, as well as those that lead others to be taken too seriously (who is that funny-looking man in the apartment complex?).

Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World

Randy,

I think you make an excellent point. Lately, I've noticed that, in some parks in particular, the condition of NPS trailhead bulletin boards is pathetic. Water stained interpretive brochures. No trail information. And no updated, if any, safety advice. I'm not saying that was the case at Grand Teton. Just something I've noticed elsewhere.

It's disappointing the ranger didn't take your report more seriously. It can be easy for park rangers to forget that many park visitors have more experience in the outdoors than they do. (I have been guilty of this myself.)

I read an article recently about the book "Night of the Grizzlies." In short, the author concluded that the NPS was negligent because they failed to warn hikers that certain paths were used by grizzlies to get to and from a garbage dump. A couple ended up camping on this path. One hiker was killed.

So I don't agree with what Jim implies. That bear problems are primarily the result of the stupidity and culture of park visitors. Yes, the park newsletters are chock full of safety advice. Yet, a park is a dynamic place. Hazards ebb and flow. Accidents and deaths are going to happen. But, if visitors are reporting that a certain trail is being frequented by an aggressive bear, the NPS should make an effort to warn hikers preparing to hike that particular trail. At the very least, your report to that ranger needed to be documented so that a pattern a bear behavior could be established.