The Mountains Get Trashed Again

plus, how to find dark skies for the Perseid meteor showers, Joshua trees take a beating from fire, Boston gets a new long-distance urban trek, and more

Are the San Gabriel Mountains a Giant Garbage Heap?

trash overflowing near the East Fork of the San Gabriel River in the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument // via Los Angeles Times website

‘Cause hoo boy that’s the image you’re greeted with reading this story in the Los Angeles Times. Fresh on the heels of Steve Scauzillo’s piece on the national monument / forest’s ever-growing maintenance backlog and closures, the Times comes to the table with a spotlight on the popular East Fork area of the San Gabriel River. This is home to the Bridge to Nowhere hike, as well as a stretch of Wild and Scenic River and the Sheep Mountain Wilderness.

The issues writer Louis Sahagún raises are not new and I don’t disagree with anything he highlights in this piece—there are too many people at East Fork and far too little maintenance and enforcement. There is not enough money for personnel and programs and what budget remains gets diverted into firefighting. It’s your classic Modern American Political Situation (‘give me all the things but I REFUSE TO PAY FOR THEM OR HELP IN ANY WAY’). What I do disagree with is his framing that advocacy groups encouraging people to use their public lands are responsible for these issues (disclosure: I am on the advisory board of Nature For All, an organization named in this story).

Another view of the same trail in the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument

Nature For All is working with the Forest Service and other organizations on a comprehensive transportation plan that will help people visit a wider range of areas in the mountains instead of turning a fire hose of visitors at one single location. In crowded parks, this has shown to be very effective at “spreading the love around” and reducing the impact on over-used areas, while also avoiding the very real gatekeeping attitude that easily worms its way into discussions like this. As existing volunteer and advocacy groups continue to age, it’s important to fill those retiring ranks with the fresh energy and ideas of younger people—and you can’t inspire that kind of passion if you prevent those people from ever getting inspired in the first place. In fact, Nature For All’s own Leadership Academy has graduated almost twenty cohorts of exactly this kind of vibrant, passionate steward for the region’s future.

But this is very much a “Yes and…” situation here. YES, the conditions at East Fork are embarrassing and shameful, AND we can help people get to their public lands while also demanding better funding, maintenance, and enforcement from the land managers. I understand Forest Service employees are forbidden from expressing the kinds of real-talk political opinions that would be helpful in situations like this, but I find the Forest Supervisor’s hands-in-the-air comments in the Times article to be completely unsatisfying.

the trail also looks like this

If we’re really looking at solutions, then a combination of a shuttle system like the one Nature For All is working on to spread crowds to trailheads that are equipped to handle it AND timed, restricted permits for over-trafficked areas like East Fork should both be on the table, as that combination has worked in many other national parks and monuments. And maybe if visitors have to get a permit and pass by a ranger on their way in, they might start thinking of the San Gabriel Mountains less like a dump and more like the spectacular, precious, and fragile landscape it is.

Modern Hiking

Good stuff from the Modern Hiker site

The Columbia River Gorge

A few new posts this week from the Modern Hiker crew. I did a really fun loop trail in the Columbia River Gorge that had beautiful viewpoints, fascinating geology, rare native plants, and even a few waterfalls just to round it out.

Then, Cleo Egnal took us to Santa Barbara to show off some of her favorite trails in this beautiful city on the coast—perfect for a getaway if you’re looking to escape some of that SoCal heat right now.

Also, thanks so much to the eight new subscribers who’ve joined up this week, and especially the new annual subscriber who just upgraded to an annual paid subscription after enjoying the newsletter for a while (I’d give you a shout-out here but no name was included in the signup … you know who you are and THANK YOU!!)

As a reminder, you can upgrade your subscription at any time—and you can gain some of the benefits of the paid tier by referring friends to signup, too … even for free subscriptions.

Your Parks

Your Places

Yes, Urban Hiking is a Thing

Photo by Leonel Heisenberg on Unsplash

And it’s not less than hiking a 30-mile trek in the wilderness, it’s just different! On the site, I wrote about my experience hiking San Francisco’s newly-opened Crosstown Trail in a single day (all 17 miles thank you very much and apologies to my feet). That day, really more than any other time I’ve spent in the city, truly reshaped my view of San Francisco and helped me discover beautiful parks and neighborhoods that were new to me.

This trend of marquee urban parks is picking up, and now Boston has its own 27-mile walking route, the Walking City Trail (WCT). Because it’s longer, the WCT can be broken down into section-hikes, just like any long-distance trail. This all started when local journalist and guidebook author Miles Howard was inspired by the Crosstown Trail and started mapping out his own route with volunteers. I met Miles in Palm Springs earlier this year for an AllTrails event and we had an absolute blast talking about city hikes and imagining routes for other places we loved. Read more about the WCT in the Boston Globe (and check out Howard’s Substack, Mind the Moss, too).

Desert Wildfire

Photo by Mil Amirian on Unsplash

California’s largest wildfire of the year—the York Fire in the Mojave Desert—has now exceeded 82,000 acres in size. Firefighters did get a brief respite from a summer monsoon rain and have been able to contain a little over 20% of the fire, which has torn through the Mojave National Preserve and entered western Nevada. It is not yet known how much damage was done to the region’s Joshua trees, but park officials have said that the fire has gone through at least some large tracts of the iconic yuccas as well as juniper and pinyon pine groves. The cause of the fire remains under investigation, although a NPS spokesperson has said the flames started on private land within the reserve.

Tech Talk

Gadgets, Technology, and Hype

Prepare for Peak Perseids

Photo by Fernando Rodrigues on Unsplash

Look up! The annual Perseid meteor shower is currently active and is expected to peak around August 13^th. Experts are predicting a good show around the peak this year because the moon is predicted to only be around 10% illuminated, meaning more chances to see those exciting streaks of light in the night sky.

According to NASA, you can expect to see up to 100 meteors per hour during the peak. For help in scouting out a good viewing location, check out the World Atlas of Night Sky Brightness or plan a visit to your closest International Dark Sky Park.

Leafing Out

Plants!

Are Vines the New Air Conditioning?

Photo by Daniel Corneschi on Unsplash

There’s a great local native plant nursery near me called SymbiOp, and in their most recent email newsletter (yes, I read email newsletters from native plant nurseries. You can’t really be surprised by that), they had a proposition I found really intriguing: planting deciduous vines for home cooling.

The pitch is this: if you plant a deciduous vine on the sunniest side of your home, its leaves will shade the windows and walls during the sunniest months and help keep things cooler indoors. Then in the winter, the vine will drop its leaves and let sunlight in to help warm the house.

Now, obviously, you want to find a vine that’s not too aggressive (ideally native!), and you’re still going to have to do some maintenance, but this form of passive cooling won’t fail when the power grid goes down, and you might even be able to get some nice fruit from the vines, too!

One More Thing

Oh yeah, before I go …

I really, really enjoyed this Oregon Public Broadcasting story about the first post-Covid revival of an indigenous tradition in the Pacific Northwest, where members of various mid-Columbia River tribes travel to Seattle to visit the Muckleshoot Tribe via canoe for a week of celebration in early August. The journey is some 500 miles via the Columbia River and Pacific Coast, and follows the traditional way the indigenous peoples of the region traveled, traded, and communicated before Europeans arrived. Even better—the event is attracting a new generation of young people who are reviving languages, songs, and traditions.