CPW '15- 4th of July

[Scott Chandler]

7/1-7/5/15

I can hardly wait for these "special" weeks to be over and I'm just doing my job... Next weekend!

The beginning of July saw the wilderness crew attending a training for two Wilderness Watch interns. I say attending because we weren't being trained, nor were we training, we were just there. The projects of the next few days could have easily been done during this time instead.

At least we camped near Oliver Creek, which is pretty.


The next day I helped the other wilderness ranger lug our base camp into the east side while my boss took a day off. This day it rained... hard... I really hope that isn't a trend.

Then over the 4th, my boss and I took our base camp up to the west end with the our horses. Two days of contacts beyond wilderness standards, butthead horses and long hours that I'll only be paid a fraction of made it really frustrating. I also gave my first ticket of the season and could have given more. It wasn't a fun time. Before we could finish up packing the horses to leave the sky openned up again and we had some serious rain for the whole hike out.

The West Tensleep drainage at least never lets you down in the pretty department.


Hopefully my next sharing of the CPW pretty will involve less whining and more gorgeous views!


Featured image for home page:

 

[Parma]

pardon my ignorance...what does CPW stand for?

 

[andyjaggy]

cloud peak wilderness I think. An area that Scott is quickly making me want to visit.

 

[Vegan.Hiker]

Beautiful pictures Scott.

 

[Scott Chandler]

pardon my ignorance...what does CPW stand for?

@Parma Yeah CPW is my shorthand for Cloud Peak Wilderness. Because I spend my summers working there it grows repetitive to type it out all the time. I usually try to type it out at least once in each post but this one was pretty...hasty.

And too the general community, I'm sorry that this post is fairly whiny and complaititive. It's been a rough month.

 

[gnwatts]

Very nice photos.

 

[Devo]

Sorry it wasn't the most pleasant of trips this time, beautiful photos though!

Curious what are the infractions you see the most, and what determines you giving warnings vs tickets?

Looking forward too your posts throughout the summer like last!

 

[Artemus]

Great mountain range and great capturing of it. Keep the faith.

 

[Scott Chandler]

Curious what are the infractions you see the most, and what determines you giving warnings vs tickets?

Well I see a lot of infractions, courtesy of the Cloud Peak Wilderness having a lot of special regulations and my job being to enforce those. Sadly I catch a few of the many that don't respect wilderness for what it is. Most common are failure to do our mandatory self registration and fires.

As for tickets vs warnings for the most part I'm an educator vs an enforcer. In general people don't know better and with education comply. That said, illegal campfires are a ticket as they are a public safety risk and cause decades worth of damage in our high alpine wilderness. Wilderness is supposed to be untrammeled and a fire is a huge trammel. If people are breaking multiple regs, thus showing a lack of wilderness ethic, that can get a ticket. People that definitely know better... A lot of "officer's discretion" goes in to the violation decision. I hate ruining people's day but it's my job and I care more about Wilderness and what it stands for than someone's idiotic (I know, harsh word) notion that camping needs a fire or their personal beliefs on what they should be able to do.