Mapping the Sheltowee

[Speleoguy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2azCZMo9Jhw&feature=channel

[Traildust]

Speleoguy

Thanks for reminding us of the conditions of The Sheltowee Trace in NBSP. I am working to improve the blazing of the Trace in the park and have plans to do a survey hike on the Trace from the Park south to Standing Rock. You have several U-Tube videos posted so I see you have a passion for this area. It is sad what has been done.

steve traildust

[Oldgraybear]

Not long ago I walked the Narrows Road, there is no way I would ride a horse on the road now (unless I hated the horse) and if you think you can ride a bike on it you’ll probably end up carrying it as much as you ride. The “impact craters” the State Park dug are insanely big. Unless you are a totally fit hardcore A. T. hiker you can not walk the Narrows Trail. There is no way any one with any mobility impairments can enjoy the Narrows Bridge anymore. If you are overweight, have small children or just an old guy like me go to another park, this will not be a fun hike. It looked to me as if the Park Managers intend to keep all but the very strong off this trail. If you've never seen the Narrows Road Bridge you probably never will now. How did this happen?

[Speleoguy]

Greetings Steve:

Much damage to our land and to our rights has indeed been done. But we now have a growing "army" who's goal is to get back our rights to responsibly use our public lands. As more and more people learn about the damage to their favorite places - and learn about the ridiculous laws designed to keep them out of these places - their anger grows every moment. SaveOurCave, and several other outdoor groups, are planning meetings and rallys this year. The word is finally getting out! Things will change! Common sense will eventually be restored to the management of our public lands.

If you would like to join our "army" and help get back our rights, send an email to that effect to SaveOurCave@yahoo.com. Your help would be most welcome!

Also, if you need help with your survey project, please let us know. I've spent many hours surveying trails and lands, as have a few of the SaveOurCave members (I think?).

[Speleoguy]

Oldgraybear:

U hit the nail on the head!!! This purposeful damage to the Narrows Road (and this section of the Sheltowee Trace) was discrimination, plain and simple!. The barriers were designed to keep out the old, the weak, the disabled, the overweight, plus discourage its use by those of us who are fit. We know, from words spoken by some of those responsible for this damage, that the real object of the game is to keep EVERYONE out of the Park (except on a few short trails). Most of the Park is a Kentucky State Nature Preserve and humans, after all, are just another invasive species - which must be kept out.

The publicly stated reason for the barriers was to keep off-road vehicles out of the Park. Noble idea, but naive - or stupid - beyond belief. The only reason off-roaders aren't constantly using the road is because most are good, law-abiding people who abide by the laws of the land. Serious off-roaders, like those who drive rock crawlers, pay big bucks to go places where they can traverse barriers which make anything on the Narrows Road look like flat land! I asked a friend who builds crawlers how long it would take him to drive across the guard rail and the biggest trench behind it. His educated guess: less than 3 minutes!!! The crawlers he builds rarely cost over $40,000. Those who drive the $100,000+ crawlers could probably get across in a minute or so.

Thus, one of the most beautiful sections of the Sheltowee Trace was ruined for nothing. There were better options. Sadly, certain of our public servants do not possess the ability to understand this. And what will they do next, to other sections of the Sheltowee Trace???

[Speleoguy]

Oldgraybear:

You might wish to join us at SaveOurCave. It is folks like you who will help us get the Road reopened, Natural Bridge Cave ungated, and our right to freely access and enjoy our public lands restored. You can contact us at SaveOurCave@yahoo.com, or visit us at http://saveourcave.org.

It breaks my heart to know that - if we do nothing - the children of today, and the children of tomorrow, will never have the joy of seeing what people like you and me have been privileged to see.

[Oldgraybear]

It seems to me the State Parks do not have to follow any of the rules the rest of us do. If you run a business and it is not Handicapped Accessible the Federal Government comes down on you for violating the American with Disabilities Act. I’m not saying make all trails handicapped accessible but the trails the mobility challenged could have access to should not be ripped up and ploughed under just to keep a few stupid people off. If they are truly concerned about the damage a four wheeler is going to do why didn’t they just post a reward for a picture of the person or persons doing the damage. In this day of camera phones somebody will want to cash in if you make the reward big enough. If convicted the fine will cover the cost of repair and the reward to be paid out. Some idiot will do more damage to Sky Bridge all too soon, will this justify locking everyone out? You would think in the hard economic times we are in and the massive shortfall the Kentucky budget is now facing the State would be trying to encourage new business growth and more tourist to visit our wonder state NOT keeping as many as possible away.

[Traildust]

Can you name names here? Who made this decision? What does the current head of the State Tourism and Parks office say about this situation?

[Speleoguy]

For obvious legal reasons, it would not be wise to publish names on this forum. A few names are found on the http://www.SaveOurCave.com website, so you may wish to look there. You can also look here: http://kentucky.sierraclub.org/newsroom/newsletter/pdf/news1006.pdf

I have no clue about about the names of every person who was involved in these decisions; I only know the major players (I think). As far as agencies, the major players were the Kentucky Nature Preserves Commission, the Kentucky State Parks Commission, and the U.S. Forest Service. It's possible that Fish & Game may have been involved in the closure too, but I've seen no evidence. All of these entities (and more) were involved in the gating of Natural Bridge Cave.

As far as Tourism is concerned, I would guess that they knew about the Narrows Road closure. They certainly knew about the gating of Natural Bridge Cave because many people contacted them in an effort to get the gating stopped. They turned a deaf ear to the public!!! At SaveOurCave we cannot understand the ignorance of this. The job of Tourism is to promote tourism in Kentucky. When people from Ohio come to NBSP solely to visit the cave - as a number of them have told me - it seems insane that they would be locked out. A few of these folks said that they would never be back. The same can be said about the Narrows Road closure. Most of the store owners in the area told me how much its closure hurt them financially. It is possible that the closure is why some are now struggling to survive or out of business.

Every closure done without the consent of the pubic only erodes the respect that people have for their government and its authority.

Because we each "see through a glass darkly," as the Apostle Paul wrote in the Bible, I hesitate being too damning toward any individual involved in these closures. In their own minds, they doubtless saw virtue in the things that they did. What concerns me more than the actual closures is the lies that have been told along the way - and the total disregard for the opinions of "we the people" who own this beautiful land. If this direction in land management is not quickly changed, we could someday be locked out of most public lands by a few bureaucrats who see themselves as the only ones capable of making competent decisions. Can we say socialism!

[Traildust]

I spoke yesterday with John Halsey, the trail guy at Natural Bridge. They are open to our coming down with blazes and improving the Trace as it runs through and out of NBSP. If I get a resonable weather day in the next week, I will be off to NBSP to take them up on the offer and to talk about the Narrows issue.

Traildust

[Speleoguy]

Good job, Traildust. Just be sure and don't get off trail. :)

[Speleoguy]

Traildust:

Looks like you did a great job marking the Narrows Road section of the Sheltowee. Good work! I was also glad to see that the Park/Nature Preserve folks marked their boundary, although it's still very difficult to always know where the boundaries are.

While you were there, did you happen to walk the Narrows Road from the Park's rear entrance down toward Sand Lick? We walked that section a couple of weekends ago, and I couldn't believe the damage!!! It's so much worst than anything shown on the Narrows Road vid! How the Forest Service could have done this is beyond me. One of their own people confided to me that this kind of purposeful destruction and environmental damage was absolutely not justified. Some people are planning on doing a vid showing all the massive bulldozing and tree cutting the Forest Service has been doing to keep the off-roaders in check in the Sand Lick area. Something had to be done to restrain the off-roader damage, but the destruction done by the USFS goes beyond all reason. Protecting the area can't be done by destroying it; and it's not right to make this beautiful area unusable by mountain bikers, horse riders, and even most hikers!!!

It's time we got all the user groups to come together as one and stop this devastation of our land.

[WC4V]

I can not personally speak for the landscape alteration, done by the USFS, at the Narrows, outside the video. I can personally speak for what lengths have to be taken at times to thwart off-roaders! The new big thing here in Bell County is adventure tourism. They can take old reclaimed strip mines, with existing roads, and virtually destroy every piece of vegetation in sight! Why ride on the roads when we can ride down trees! Areas that are clearly posted and gated are fair game. I have personally witnessed where a cutting torch was used to take down the gate. I hate that it comes to that at times, but might be a necessity.

Steve

[Traildust]

I talked with the ranger at Cumberland and the Ranger at Natural Bridge about this issue. No one was happy doing what had to be done. But something had to be done to stop not just 4-wheeler but to stop car and jacked up hotrods from crusing the road. This negligent act was destroying the sand stone that made up the road.

Since it was forest property they took "drastic" measures which you must admit seem to have stopped the problem. But at what cost. A huge cost and maybe somewhere in the future other methods can be found to accomplish the same thing without digging craters.

We see the problem. Now what are the solutions? Yes the Forest Service could have been a little more gracious to the public and had a hearing, etc.... and next time I am betting they will.

Right now, I want to focus on just getting it marked so hikers and bikers can get through. Where there are large craters, build one-lane bridges to facilitate travel and hope in the future we can get it open to other users.

Saturday at 2:00 I hope to go down and head up the Sheltowee Trace from the south end heading toward Natural Bridge to see for myself. You're invited to join me.

[Speleoguy]

WC4V:

You are very correct about how some members of the off-road community will go to almost any extreme in order to have fun. Unfortunately, it is not their land which is being destroyed - it is our land.

Fortunately, most most off-roaders are responsible people who (within reason) abide by the rules. The Narrows Road provides good evidence of this: One of my tenants builds rock crawlers. I asked him how long it would take to drive across the biggest trench shown in the video (and the guard rail beside it). He said it would take less than 3 minutes! Folks like him travel long distances and pay big bucks to test themselves and their machines against challenges vastly greater than anything found on the Narrows Road. It is only because of respect for the law that they no longer drive the Road.

There are better ways to block motor vehicles than are presently being used. But mechanical barriers are not best answer - mainly because the roads need to remain open for responsible and needful use. According to many members of the off-road community, the best way to control irresponsible activity is peer pressure and extremely stiff punishment for violating the law.

Suggestions made to me range from impounding to full confiscation of the vehicles of those who purposely destroy public land. Most off-roaders seem to agree that the present system of fines is often not a sufficient deterrent. On-the-spot confiscation sounds harsh, especially if the confiscated vehicles are worth tens of thousands of dollars. But this level of penalty would send a message that would be clearly heard. There is precedent for such action. If a game warden catches someone illegally hunting, the warden (in many states) has the authority to confiscate the poacher's weapons and vehicle. There are ways this could be implemented (for vehicle confiscations) so that there would be little or no cost to the government.

There are better ways to manage our beautiful public lands than to destroy them by the hand of the government, or to lock everyone out. To find these solutions, all of the affected user groups (horse riders, off-roaders, mountain bikers, climbers, hikers, cavers, hunters, business owners, etc.) must come together on a "level playing field" and find a way. I have enough faith in the intelligence of Kentuckians to believe that this can be done. Since 2007 we have spent thousands of man-hours and thousands of dollars trying to make this happen, and this year I'm finally seeing signs that it may. A lot of people now believe that it's time we "took back the turf." You're welcome to join us if you wish.