Oar your own boat, Build your own fire

I like to oar my own boat and I fear we are losing the capacity to do that because powerful lobbies are pushing people like me off the water and off public land.  What bothers me even more than the fact that we gave away our greatest treasures to concessionaires is the fact that so many people don't even know what we have lost in doing so. We lost freedom and we lost beauty and lost independence. We are losing the freedom to oar our own boats.

(Yes, I tossed in photos from my 2012 Grand Canyon trip for eye candy.)

Sam Reese

I speak of oaring your own boat both literally and figuratively as guiding concessionaires are wheedling their way into boating, climbing, hiking, or doing most anything else outside. I am not alone in this concern and numbers often bear out that those of us that like to “oar own boats” get squeezed off public lands from time to time and it pisses me off.  I totally understand why a person would want to hire a guide and I REALLY understand why a person would want to be a guide. Guides are talented and know the area and help those that don’t.  I like guides and those who hire them. I hired a guide last summer for rock climbing in Indian Creek, Utah last year and he was good. However, guides and guiding companies are starting to make it difficult for people that want to access public land that don’t want a guide and 99.9% of the time, I don't hire a guide.

National Canyon

My problem with the National Park Service's system is that guiding lobbies have become so powerful that it is extremely tedious to access some public lands unless you hire a guide.

Take Grand Canyon National Park for example. NPS has a lottery to allocate permits for private rafting. A person can apply for up to five time slots in a year and you can only raft the river once a year. They charge $25 to apply even if you lose and most applications lose. All of this I agree with. I praise the Grand Canyon NP for limiting the number of people rafting the canyon. It is seriously possible to love that canyon to death.  I don't think it possible to preserve the natural integrity of the Grand Canyon and simultaneously allow unrestricted access to the river.

Hermit Rapid, Moonshadow at the oars.

Cottonwoods, Thunder River, Grand Canyon National Park.

My concern is that guiding companies own too large of a share of the allocation of rafting opportunity. Guiding companies have their own permits and sell them to the highest bidder, essentially pushing anybody off the river that isn’t rich and pushing anybody off the river that wants to oar their own boat. In practice you can’t get on the river unless you hire a guide and the guiding companies want it that way. The odds of winning a slot in the private lottery in the summer are less than 1%. Each person can apply for up to five slots so your odds of winning are less than 5% in any given year.  Let those numbers  soak in.

You could apply for twenty years and not win. However, if you want to run with a guide next summer all you need is to make a reservation and shell out a sizable pile of cash. That and you have to sit as a passenger. That is fine if you want to be a passenger.

Floating the Little Colorado River
 sans raft. Carl Reese

It is not in the National Park Service’s mission statement to have a river plan that caters almost exclusively to the wealthy and it should not be their plan to make everybody ride as a passenger. I understand why many people would want to be a passenger. The rapids are big and dangerous for the inexperienced. I think a person that wants to hire a guide and ride as a passenger should have an equal opportunity to raft the river as a person that wants to oar their own boat but the opportunity is skewed heavily in favor of those who want to hire a guide.

Above Lava Falls

The wait is one year on average if you want to hire a guide and twenty years on average if you want to oar your own boat. That is a travesty, especially considering the National Park aren’t supposed operate for profit and they have a goal of being open to all Americans

The National Park Service's mission statement is: "The National Park Service preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations."  Nowhere in their mission statement does it state they are supposed to increase revenue for the government or the private sector and there is an implied goal to ignore profit margin within park boundaries. We don't mine, log, or even farm national parks. National Park Service did a good job of preserving our best treasures. Operating in the red is acceptable and expected for the Park Service. I support that mission as do the vast majority of Americans.

William Dean Reese live at the Matkat Hotel

This problem is not exclusive to the Grand Canyon. If for any reason a land managing agency has to limit the number of people, soon guide companies take over most of the opportunity. I used the Grand Canyon as an example because they post all their statistics clearly and it’s clear as crystal rapid that NPS is heavily influenced by guiding companies that have become big business. This sort of thinking is all over the place and often related to climbing, hiking, kayaking, and just everything I enjoy doing except playing the guitar. Guide companies basically own Grand Teton. You can apply in January to climb the Grand but you probably won’t get a slot. Grand Teton Park will include a list of guides in the notice informing you that you lost.  NPS personnel have flat out told me that the Park leadership prefers people to climb or raft with guides because they know the guides, have their contact numbers, and it just goes smoother.  Where does smoothness fit into the mission statement for public lands? Edward Abbey mocked public agencies with the phrase, “Ski in a clockwise direction. Let’s all have fun together.”  Sometimes I don’t want to have fun together. I want to be in charge of my own fun and my own life.

  I think we were looking at a red tailed hawk.

So here is where I am going with this.  There is a place for guides. Sooner or later we all want to see something in nature that we don’t have the skills or equipment. Yet I think at each opportunity we want to make it clear that we value the opportunity to go it alone. To be ourselves. The takeover of our lands by guiding companies is part of why public land agencies aren’t adequately serving the poorer communities in our country. The costs of running rivers or most outdoor activities are expensive enough to exclude some poor people and it is a shame that the National Park Service adds to the problem.

Doug Reese, Grand Canyon NP.

We lose something as a society if we allocate our capacity to just live outside and be in charge our experience. I think many of us are so disconnected to nature that we forgot that we can “oar our own the boats.” I happen to be one of the lucky saps that actually won a private permit for the Grand Canyon next year and when I tell some people about it they really can’t fathom that anybody would or even could go without a guide. It’s like they think guides are a different species with the capacity to do things that we can’t do ourselves. We have become a helpless group as a society.

I also recommend that public agencies adjust their allocation of permits to make it possible for us to enjoy the outdoors without hiring somebody to carry us along as a passenger. If you don’t know how to oar a boat, start with a river that doesn’t have rapids but I recommend oaring yourself some of the time. If boating isn't your thing, make your own fire, climb a rock on your own, catch your own fish, shoot a gun, whatever. Ski in a counterclockwise direction.