Death Valley CLOSED: Fall/Winter 23/24 Trip Planning

[GowerGulch42]

Decided to go digging through some of the laws and regulations. They haven't permanently closed a road (that I've been able to find a record of, excepting those with unrecoverable damage**) since 1994, and it's a bureaucratic nightmare to do so. I wouldn't be surprised if they ask you to tell the park where/when you'll be camping it's a big area and that would be very helpful for S&R, but with over a million visitors per year they're in no position to further restrict camping options. Expanding the NPS campgrounds won't ever happen as they've nearly maxed out the available space for those and don't have the staffing to maintain them. Establishing definite, constrained campsites on the close-in, heavily trafficked areas is a no-brainer and probably the best crowd control measure they've made in a while, no matter how unpopular it is among us. Frankly, those areas like Greenwater, Cottonwood, Hole-in-the-Wall, are so heavily used anyway that I'd never camp there. There's no upside to restricting backcountry camping outside of those heavy use areas.

As for "being reclaimed by nature"… I could say that about any number of the 1000+ miles of unimproved roads in DV. The NPS has a legal responsibility to maintain vehicular rights of way - to close them they have to prove to the Federal Highway Administration that there's sufficient reason for closure, and that would have to also go through a period of public comment, and it would take years. The road the NPS would REALLY like to close is the Eureka-Saline road over Steel Pass. They can't, because it's a reserved right of way. The only a right-of-way can be eliminated and placed into Wilderness is by an act of Congress. There is no law against them putting a "Road Closed" sign in front of a road though, and they can enforce that as long as they like as with Keane Wonder or Titus. The right-of-way remains.

There's still a contingent of "humans are evil" Sierra Club folks at the park and DVNHA, even after the departure of Callaghan.

** Surprise Canyon even is a weird special case - the portion of the road that washed out is property of BLM, and BLM subsequently closed that portion. The NPS portion in Panamint City remained open for a time until they were able to close it because it became inaccessible. The old right-of-way is preserved, and still outside the wilderness.