Proposed Rate Changes for Campgrounds and Backcountry Permits at DVNP

[DAW89446]

https://sierrawave.net/proposed-rate-cha...onal-park/

[Beardilocks]

Definitely not happy about this. I kind of don’t care what they charge for the campgrounds, but I’m drawing the line at charging for hiking permits and starting to charge for back country camping permits.

Somewhere along the lines they added Greenwater Valley Rd to the list of back country camping areas that require a permit. Personally I feel like that’s out of bounds. I would now expect that Trail Canyon will follow next year along with regs banning camping pretty much anywhere you don’t currently need a permit to camp.

I fully understand the need to keep the yahoos in check but where do we draw the line?

I’m also a bit annoyed at the disingenuous claim that the park gets much money from these hikes. Most of it goes to independent vendors that run a chunk of the campgrounds or to Recreate.gov with exorbitant fees added to every transaction.

[DVexile]

Greenwater has been on the list for designated permit only backcountry camping from the start, right along with Echo and such. It is a desert tortoise area. They just didn’t start it at the same time as the others because they didn’t have time or funding to go out and designate and blade the sites.

The park has numerous planning documents. If you read them you won’t be surprised by events! Things move very slow in the NPS and most stuff is in documents years before it happens.

[Beardilocks]

I am aware that some of these changes have been proposed on paper since the mid-90's, especially plans to designate sites in Echo/Hole in the Wall/Cottonwood. That's one of the things that makes them hard to research: You have to go back crazy far, through tons of documents to find the original proposals/plans. And I haven't found their internal search engines of very much help.

I do find it a bit funny that in all that time they didn't come up with a better plan for Cottonwood than putting all the sites in low points in the wash in the narrows where they're wiped out every time it rains, forcing them to close everything until they can get a blade back in there again. But I digress.

Does anyone have access to a map/info of what the permitted/restricted areas in Greenwater Valley are now? I looked extensively on the NPS site and couldn't find anything. Heck, I couldn't find anything on the roads that are already permitted in the park.

[DVexile]

My apologies, bad phrasing in my post. Greenwater has been on the list for *planned* permit only backcountry camping. This is the first I've seen them indicate that permits are now actually going to be required. Seems like they are rolling that out at the same time as the online permitting.

I've not seen anything about where the Greenwater sites will be, much like we didn't see anything about where the Echo/Hole/Cottonwood/Marble sites were.

And yes, it is very challenging to find any of the planning stuff unless you happen to be vigilantly following along. Or more often in my case I go searching for one thing and find another I never knew about.

The online only aspect is definitely annoying due to poor cell availability in the park. At the same time, I know folks entering from the west were extremely annoyed you had to drive all the way to Furnace Creek to get a Cottonwood/Marble campsite permit.

[Brice]

The online only aspect is definitely annoying due to poor cell availability in the park.  At the same time, I know folks entering from the west were extremely annoyed you had to drive all the way to Furnace Creek to get a Cottonwood/Marble campsite permit.

You can get permits at the Stovepipe wells ranger station (if they're open).  Though they have to call Furnace creek and verify a spot is available.  If you need a permit for Greenwater road, then you're facing a long drive no matter what and you may get to a ranger station and find out there aren't any spots available.

There's no doubt the park's current system for reserving these designated backcountry spots is inadequate.  But switching to online only seems like they'd be going from a slow inconvenient system that worked, to a system that doesn't work at all for people who are already inside the park.  I really hope they can come up with some other way of doing it.