yosemite update

[Drew Wiley]

Latest announcement : Yosemite open for day use only the next three weeks. No facilities open; no shuttle bus. Sounds like a good thing to me; but I probably won't be able to get there anytime soon.

[Alan Klein]

Curious. What are all the government workers doing when these places are shut down? Vacation?

[Two23]

Latest announcement : Yosemite open for day use only the next three weeks. No facilities open; no shuttle bus. Sounds like a good thing to me; but I probably won't be able to get there anytime soon.



Why would they care if small groups were out backpacking?


Kent in SD

[Drew Wiley]

Depends on what's defined as a group. But where would one backpack this time of year? Any sudden change in weather and it becomes a backcountry ski or snowshoe trip with serious avalanche risk. The groomed cross-country ski area is closed. When my nephew lived with me and was contemplating a climbing career, which in fact transpired for about a decade, we bumped into a friend of mine who was then one of the superstars of extreme Himalayan climbing, who had recently returned from K2, and my nephew asked him if he liked to train doing winter backcountry travel in the Sierra - "No, no, no, no.... too dangerous!", he replied in his thick Basque accent.

[Vaughn]

Why would they care if small groups were out backpacking? Kent in SD

Probably the #1 reason: To avoid search and rescue situations in times of a pandemic.


Curious. What are all the government workers doing when these places are shut down? Vacation?

Work does not disappear just because visitors are not around. Maintenance and improvement projects continue. The roads need to be cleared. Planning, training, payroll and all that continues. Right now, much of the seasonal workforce is gone...trail workers are not needed in the winter, for example.

[Drew Wiley]

Alan - Nearly all of our mountain National Parks and Wilderness Areas are almost completely shut down every year by sheer force of nature. Most of the range is inaccessible due to deep snow. Even at the moment with a drought, roads are difficult to keep open, and any inevitable deep winter snowfall after a freezing rain brings severe avalanche hazard. Ordinarily, only the two interstate highways 50 and 80 are kept open over the top of the range, and even they close at times; and other roads are open only as far as the ski resorts.
People who do backcountry ski trips generally do so in Spring when the snow is more consolidated, but the risk varies year to year. Once the melt begins, trying to cross runoff is an even greater hazard. Due to these variables, certain staff are reassigned to others duties off-season, while Wilderness Rangers are mostly only seasonal, and might have different jobs like school teaching the rest of the year. The virus situation further complicates this.
Yosemite Valley itself is somewhat unique in being relatively low elevation and facing west; for this reason, it has been inhabited for millennia. But everything around it except to the west is much higher and covered with snow much longer. I should be able to see snow on the mountains today from our local ridges, from 150 miles away.

[Sal Santamaura]

Curious. What are all the government workers doing when these places are shut down? Vacation?


...Work does not disappear just because visitors are not around. Maintenance and improvement projects continue. The roads need to be cleared. Planning, training, payroll and all that continues. Right now, much of the seasonal workforce is gone...trail workers are not needed in the winter, for example.

Enforcing shutdown rules also belongs on the list of work that still needs to be done. :)

[Drew Wiley]

Sal, even in the Summer it was a hopeless task due to Park understaffing. They had people who got sick and had to isolate too, as well as staff shortages due to office distancing mandates. Jerks took advantage of that to get around routine backcountry rules long in place to protect abused sensitive areas, and piled in, right at the worst possible time when large fires were breaking out and terribly overloading backcountry search and rescue operations. I went through a lot of trouble myself just trying to track down a couple of friends back there somewhere off trail and potentially in real trouble. They got separated and had a close call, but both eventually made it out mere hours before a shift in winds would have brought really serious smoke inhalation issues.

[Sal Santamaura]

Sal, even in the Summer it was a hopeless task due to Park understaffing...Understood, but my post responded to Alan's question that I inferred was intended to convey "wasteful" overstaffing during the shutdown. :)

[Alan Klein]

Understood, but my post responded to Alan's question that I inferred was intended to convey "wasteful" overstaffing during the shutdown. :)

You're correct. I was thinking of all those people in private industry who were laid off because there was nothing or less to do because of shutdowns. So I'm wondering what happens with all the government workers who were sent home because of shutdowns. Many I'm sure, stayed home doing nothing with full pay. Nice work if you can get it. :)

[Drew Wiley]

Hardly any real industry is shut down here. Most going full steam or even faster than usual. It's service businesses like restaurants that have been hit hard, and they're a major source of the tax base for many cities in this area. We have (or had) more per capita restaurants than NYC. The tourism business has also been hit very very hard, another big cash cow of this region gone bust. I sure wouldn't want to be running an art gallery right now either. Some retail businesses have been affected, but not grocery workers. Tech industries are going full steam, but with new workarounds, doing certain tasks from home offices whenever realistic. Biotech and pharmaceutical are moving faster than ever. Construction projects and their sources of supply are considered essential and still in operation, but with certain common sense rules.
Government itself is too broad and diverse a topic to make stereotypes about what is happening at a daily level. Many court cases are on hold, but everyone I know in the legal profession is still very busy in preparation. The postal service is busier than ever, just like the parcel delivery companies. Police, fire depts, and first responders obviously still have to be on duty. So does the military. Road crews are active. So I can't personally think of many overall Govt positions where people might be sitting around at home waiting. Just the cleanup and restorative operations after our huge fires involve significant official govt activity. Utilities are intensely involved too.
One thing I have noticed is that there are no longer people collecting tolls on our bridges. They automated everything with license plate readers and simply bill you. The side effect is that traffic flows through those toll pinch points way way faster now, with very little backup, so the innovation will become permanent. Even the local air quality will be improved due to more efficient traffic flow. Good for drivers, bad for those folks whose income depended on standing in those little booths all day and night taking your cash.

[pgk]

You're correct. I was thinking of all those people in private industry who were laid off because there was nothing or less to do because of shutdowns. So I'm wondering what happens with all the government workers who were sent home because of shutdowns. Many I'm sure, stayed home doing nothing with full pay. Nice work if you can get it. :)
Whilst there will be differences between the USA and UK, here in the UK anybody working in 'conservation' or 'outdoor management' will ALWAYS have plenty to do. There is stuff to maintain, signs to replace, pathways to check on, maintain where eroded and clear of fallen branches, wildlife surveys, area condition reports and a myriad of other jobs which always get left because workers are too busy. My guess is that the last few months have been allowing some degree of 'catch up' to take place. I used to have to photograph some of these people for PR and they are never idle.

[Kiwi7475]

You're correct. I was thinking of all those people in private industry who were laid off because there was nothing or less to do because of shutdowns. So I'm wondering what happens with all the government workers who were sent home because of shutdowns. Many I'm sure, stayed home doing nothing with full pay. Nice work if you can get it. :)

This is such a fallacy. With the past bills, there have been far more tax dollars going to support the people that lost their jobs than paying govt employees that could not perform any function. Most govt branches are and have been going once safety protocols have been in place. Roles have been adapted, expanded and tasks have been assigned to keep people busy as much as possible. That is true for the private sector as well.

To look at a global pandemic as some small group of the labor force benefited from it or got lucky, is just wrong.

[Vaughn]

And paying gov't workers has helped keep the economy working. Some of the hardest working people in America are the gov't employees. And of those, Park and National Forest Services employees are among the most dedicated and hardest working.

[Alan Klein]

If I insulted anyone, I'm sorry. I was a government employee once (NYC) and worked my butt off. Around 2003 there was a severe budget crunch. They laid off half the employees for lack of work due to shrinking funding. I was fortunate in that I wasn't one of them. It was a tough period. I actually worked harder as I picked up work that was left by some of those who were laid off.

[John Kasaian]

I heard that Degnan's will be kept open, as well as the Village Market and Wawona Gift Shop

[Drew Wiley]

Nice snow on the upper parts of the Valley at the moment, more on the way. One of my nephews still lives nearby and has been hiking up to the rim about once a week, and was on the summit of Mt Dana two weeks ago, just before the Tioga Pass road closed for the season. A few days ago he and his wife hiked up to Glacier Pt from the Valley. He can only do pre-trial research from home due to virus-related court delays, so has an unusual amount of spare time on his hands for once.