Category: Overuse

Muir Woods National Monument implements vehicle reservations

“In an attempt to reduce traffic jams and overcrowding, Muir Woods National Monument will become the first national park unit in the United States to require reservations year-round for all vehicles to enter the park….

The parking lot at Muir Woods has 232 spaces. Reservations will cost $8 per vehicle in addition to the $10 park entrance fee and will be taken starting Jan. 1 at gomuirwoods.com. After that, reservations can be booked 90 days in advance.”

PVR:

The property has become wildly popular over the generations, however, receiving up to 6,000 visitors on some summer weekend days. Motorists have parked cars along the winding roads in the area, causing problems and harming the adjacent Redwood Creek, home to endangered coho salmon.

“Some weekends, we’ll have 250 or 300 cars parked down the road more than a mile from the monument,” Brown said. “People were walking in the road. It wasn’t safe.”

For the rest of this article see: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/11/16/muir-woods-to-become-first-in-national-park-system-to-require-year-round-vehicle-reservations/

 

 

LOVING THE WILDERNESS TO DEATH…

“If you were to hike nearly nine miles into a wilderness area, paralleling a creek through alpine meadows and woods, you might expect to find solitude. But that’s not the case at Conundrum Hot Springs, an extremely popular area of natural pools at an elevation of over 11,000 feet with views of surrounding peaks in White River National Forest. Dozens — and on busy weekends, sometimes hundreds — of overnight visitors hike in. Some even carry speakers and cases of beer. “It’ll be like you’ve gone to someone’s backyard for a pool party,” Karen Schroyer, Aspen-Sopris district ranger, says.”

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One can read the rest of this article here: http://www.hcn.org/articles/recreation-the-conundrum-of-loved-to-death-wilderness?utm_source=wcn1&utm_medium=email

 

Saturday Morning in the ‘Hood

First off,  let me thank and congratulate the USFS and the MCSO. There were NO campers late Saturday morning in ANY turnout on Nacimiento Road. We saw only this one tent, well off the road, and the corresponding car in a small dirt turn out. Rock Knocker thinks it was within the 300 ft. Limit, but I’m not so sure.

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Before we got to this point, there was a truck pulling a travel trailer that stopped in the middle of Nacimiento Rd. Just befor the Ranger Station on the east side of Nacimiento. He was fixing his chain, his lights, his trailer brakes or something. To his credit, he did stop by a turn out that allowed others to get by –  barely on his read end, but all but large trucks could get by.

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And then, up Plaskett – a large group camping at Turkey Flats who were putting out a campfire at 11:50 am. We stopped and told them of the $5000 fine, and they laughed and continued drinking their beer. Note the shovel in the guy’s hands.

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And the open beer cans on the log

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And the case of beer for later

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Rock Knocker got photos of all the license plate numbers, since they were on his side.

I called PV Station and sent emails to my USFS neighbors. They will be having  another campfire tonight unless they are stopped and cited, which I am hoping they will be.

Dispersed Camping on Nacimiento Rd to be banned

The paperwork has been completed to ban dispersed camping along Nacimiento-Fergusson Rd. It is currently out of the district for review before it comes back for signature. We won’t know for sure how long it will be banned until the order comes back into the district. It is not in effect until signed, but it is a very good step.

Monterey County Visitors Bureau Response

Hi Kate

Thanks for sharing this feedback. And I’d also like to thank you for sharing with your followers the list of things we are doing to support responsible tourism in Big Sur (https://bigsurkate.blog/2017/07/21/monterey-co-visitors-bureau-outreach/). One of the main points of that list was to illustrate the wide range of ways we are trying to support the businesses in Big Sur and the people they employ – but do so in a way the emphasizes respect for the environment and the people who live in Big Sur.

As much as we are doing to maintain balance, there is always room for more ideas and collaboration. So appreciate your sharing this latest comment. Some feedback on that:

· Bixby Bridge – clearly we know people are going to take pictures. So much of our messaging is designed to encourage people to be safe and smart. To use proper parking/pull-outs and be cautious at all times… We’ve posted such messaging in our social channels, stress this with travelers who come to our Visitor Center and among other things on our website, we have a Dos & Don’ts page for Big Sur on our website that further elaborates on this.
· On the line of copy about “sleep under the stars” – this was vague so we made more specific and refer directly ‘sleep under the stars… at Fernwood Resorts’. This has been updated in our material.
· One of the comments in today’s post (https://bigsurkate.blog/2017/07/26/moco-visitors-bureaus-disconnect-with-big-sur/) was whether MCCVB was directing people – on purpose or inadvertently – to private property. We certainly do not do this, in fact, we ask travelers to be respectful specifically of private property. But we’ll look at our messaging to see how we can further emphasize.

Again, we appreciate your sharing the outreach we are doing with your followers as well as receiving critical comments so that we can address. In fact, we’ve gone to great lengths over the years – not just related to the road closure – to ensure we are not ‘disconnected with Big Sur’. But there is always opportunity for more and better connectivity. So please feel free to reach out to me directly anytime with any suggestions.

Given that Big Sur is one of the most iconic and beautiful places on Earth, we know people are going to travel to experience it. The question is how can we make them more respectful tourists – that is a top priority.

Please let me know of any further questions/suggestions/ideas. We’ll take all the collaboration we can get…

Many thanks

Rob O’Keefe

Thanks, Rob for being so receptive. Now, if we could just find ways to get the “on the ground funding” we need for porta potties, trash collection, and patrolling to prevent campfires and illegal camping. Anything you can do in that regard, we would be very appreciative of, because no matter how much educating we try to do, it will not reach probably more than 1/2 the people it needs to reach. Of the 4000 people a day who contact you, how can we know how many don’t bother?

What do Venice, Italy & Big Sur, CA have in common?

Several people over the weekend brought my attention to an article in the Guardian, which I usually read in any event. This article, however, is not about the politics I usually read, it is about how tourism is destroying Venice, Italy.

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Here is the link to that article: Guardian Article

To entice you to read it, here are a few tidbits:

“Earlier this month an estimated 2,000 Venetians marched against a tourism industry they argue has eroded their quality of life, that is damaging the environment and driving residents away: Venice’s population has fallen from about 175,000 in the post-second world war years to 55,000 today.”

Here in Big Sur, the tourist industry and media accounts are still referring to the same “3 million visitors a year” model that they were using in 1985 when I first moved here. No update on the number of visitors Big Sur is expected to entertain has been provided in the 32 years I have lived here, and it has tripled, quadrupled, or more, in my  conservative estimation, during that time. If Nepenthe is serving 1000 meals a day in normal years, as has been claimed in all the recent news articles, then every single one of the  3 million people coming to Big Sur plus a 1/2 million more, are stopping at that establishment each year, and we know that while Nepenthe is an icon, everyone does not stop there. In fact, most do not.

“… Residents were hoping that Unesco would send a strong signal to the authorities by following through with a threat to place the world heritage site on its endangered list. Instead, the organisation recently granted the city another year to come up with measures to protect its monuments and preserve its fragile environment.

‘It feels as if we’re at a point of no return because it’s already out of control,’ said Beltrame. He would like tourist numbers to be limited, while focusing on improving the quality and promoting the city as a hub for scientific and maritime research.”

Here, we already have the Aquarium, the Marine Sanctuary, and maritime research, and more research on the fragility of our environment, the endangered species that call Big Sur home is needed.

Has the degradation of the experience of Big Sur for locals and tourists alike reached the point of no return here, as well? If we were a UNESCO site,  would we be put on their endangered list?

Come to the Big Sur Multi-Agency Advisory Council’s next meeting on August 11th, 2017 and share in the conversation. Details and Agenda will be posted when made available.

Big Sur Shuttle Service

A new service will be instituted beginning July 1st, which will coincide with the opening of the State Park. The website explains what the service offers. Interestingly, only those utilizing the shuttle, or campers in the State Park, will have access to the TapHouse Trail, which the shuttle service calls the Community Trail. Also the service is providing educational information in the form of pamphlets and story-telling. This could be an interesting experiment on how to minimize some of the impact of the overuse of tourists in our area after the bridge is open. It will have several months of a sort-of “trial” run to see how this works. It could easily be part of the solution, which is always good to hear. Please go to their website to check it out:

Big Sur Shuttle Service

And for current State Park Information, check out this website:

Pfeiffer State Park

Meetings tomorrow & Public Comment

First, is this one:
There will be a regular Big Sur LUAC meeting on Tuesday, January 31, 2017. The Big Sur LUAC will be reviewing a landowner building project for the County with a site visit at 9:00AM. After the site visit, there will be a project review and a LUAC determination of the project at the MAF.

Another meeting will be held at approximately 10:30AM at the MAF (depending on when the LUAC completes its project review), with Melanie Beretti from County Planning.

The item scheduled on the County agenda follows:

PUBLIC COMMENT:
The Committee will receive public comment on non-agenda items that are within the purview of the Committee at this time. The length of individual presentations may be limited by the Chair.

SCHEDULED ITEMS

Monterey County Staff are in the process of developing an ordinance, starting with the existing Inland ordinance (Transient Rental of Residential Property for Remuneration 21.64.280), to permit and regulate Short-term Rentals in the Coastal Zone. Staff is in the process of developing a clear definition of Short-term Rentals and updating County codes to reflect these definitions. Staff is also in the process of evaluating proposed ordinances to regulate Short-term Rentals against all of the Local Area Plans to identify unique issues and consider appropriateness of Short-term Rentals in each area. Staff is requesting input from the Land Use Advisory Committees. Please provide input on the development of the ordinance.

Second: Also, there is a BOS meeting tomorrow and  discussion will be had which impacts STR. I’ll try to get up more about this later. Still fighting this crapola flu.

Here is one comment about the BOS meeting sent to Mary Adams’s office:

The discussions about the priority and importance of attracting (and I would hope sustainably retaining) visitors to our local economy is apparently measuring success primarily by the gross TOT collected. (See discussion of focus area on page 7 of the Strategic Initiatives report). THIS IS SERIOUSLY FLAWED REASONING. Transient Occupancy taxes are imposed to address the impacts of public facility use by folks who are not here to pay property taxes or other taxes and fees residents pay to maintain our public infrastructure. Thus properly the gross TOT collected should be first and primarily used to be sure that at least the direct impacts of visitors are addressed. In Big Sur this is certainly not the case now. The celebrated significant increased visitor traffic is resulting in a number of impacts that are being externalized to the resident public, like clearing litter and human waste, safety issues and the traffic woes of which everyone is aware, and this is unsustainable. In this area too primary emergency services are provided by volunteer fire departments, which rely on residents to staff and fund them. Cumulative wear and tear on roads, bridges, parks, trails and other public infrastructure is less immediate but also important. I don’t have direct knowledge of all the other areas affected (the 156 corridor comes to mind) but I am sure they also have needs relating to the direct impacts of increasing numbers of visitors. Please consider asking that the funds collected thru TOT be used first to address identified direct visitor impacts as this tax was created to do before being released for other general fund needs. If help is needed in identifying such impacts it can be provided! (This is of course an important element in the discussion of STR policy as well.) Thus any discussion of TOT as general fund revenue or as a measurement of success should be of the net amount after direct impacts are addressed vs the gross total.

Third, from the USFS re the community fuel breaks. A public meeting with be held 2/15/17 from 5:30-7:30 at the USFS Big Sur Station and on 2/16/17 at the Kind City Office at the same time:

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Fascinating Reading on Big Sur Land Use by the Los Padres Nation Forest, 1977

It is quite the lengthy document, which can be found here: Los Padres Big Sur Land Use If this link does not work for you, google it. Google books has digitalized it, and for those with iPhones or iPads, we can save to our “iBooks.” For those of you who use the devil’s spawn (just kidding, sorta) I have no clue. But to give you a taste on the topics we have been discussing, here are a couple of paragraphs: (remember this was prepared FORTY YEARS AGO!):

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Reminder regarding Overuse and Loving Big Sur to death

Yesterday, I went down the hill. I saw vehicles and campers everywhere, off-road, cutting through fences and installed barriers to get where they wanted to go. And when I came home, most of them were gone, leaving large amounts of tp and trash behind. image

I just want to take this opportunity to remind all that I have created two separate pages, where I am collecting photographs Loving Big Sur to death and data and suggestions on the Overuse of Big Sur Page. I add to both of these several times a week, usually. Some of you are checking these regularly, others seem to have forgotten. The discussion continues and gains momentum on social media sites.  Per readers, these links do not work (and I cannot figure out why – they work for me!) but don’t despair – these same links are up above in the “Info” post and to the right under pages. Those DO work!