I know there are some guys who are not in the club and are interested in getting Carcass Canyon open. They are meeting the BLM to walk the trail. If anyone can make it to shake some hands and show how important this trail (and challange trails in gen) are to us that would be great!

We got a meeting time with them!!!

I'm sorry it's such short notice but we just found out last night.

This Sat! May the 16th, Andrew and whoever else can come is meeting the BLM at 10:30am over in Whitehall. If anyone can make it that would be great! If you can go give Andrew a call at 498 0471 or give Mikes Off Road a call during business hours and he will fill you in on the details.

He said that they do want to shut an area down over there that has running water in it. Carcass Canyon does not so hopefully it will stay open!

Update for anyone watching...

Well the BLM just confuses me But things still look good.

I talked to Andrew a little while ago and he said the meeting went well. They walked/GPSed both Lower and Upper Carcass. He was surprised that anyone could make it up lower and was a little worried about erosion issues there but not totally turned off to lower.

Now this is where I am confused. He said that this section doesn't have any marked trails on it and it sounds like therefore the "if it is a traveled trail than it's ok" doesn't apply. I had never herd of this before and Andrew was unsure of exactly what he was talking about.

The good news is that there is a section next to it that they are closing down because they want to do a study on some water crossings. It's just some odd trail and of little value to wheelers. The BLM guys have been looking for a section to open up to offset/balance the closed one and would actually prefer one with a challenge trail. This is good news because he says it can take up to a year to get a section opened normally. But as long as no one else has objections in his department he should have an official letter to us in a couple of weeks. So early next month we hope to have some good news for you guys!


Oh, and the BLM guy said it looks like everything to the right of the gravel road leading in is BLM (until you hit the BLM gate... then it's all BLM). So it sounds like we are going to be good for parking there as long as we stay to the right of the road. When we get a resolution from the BLM in the next couple of weeks we will get a copy of the maps he was using to verify/back this up.

I still plan to talk to the land owners to keep them from worrying about what is going on in the area...

ROB

Rob,
Appreciate all of the effort you are putting into one of my favorite trails. I hope this works out for us.

Rob, never been there, but I'd like to go once it's official!! Let me know if I can write any letters, etc. if that would help!

Sorry, forgot to update the thread...

Anyone have ideas?

Thanks
ROB


Well I finally got the chance to really talk to Rick... it didn't go to well.

The problem is that the BLM did a travel plan a while ago that forced ORV's onto designated routs similar to the FS rules. Here is some info I goggled on it... http://www.blm.gov/mt/st/en/prog/recreation/ohv.html

This plan only allows them a certain amount of trail miles total with only 1% of motorized trail growth per year. Well that is only 13miles. Rick feels that this trail only benefits a small percentage of motorized users and they don't want to give us the trail because of this. So therefore the only way that he can think to get around this would be to do these special use permits.

Other than the cost of insurance for an event he also wants to limit the amount of rigs to fewer than 10. When I told him that if we put on a onetime event I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with upwards of 50 rigs he seemed shocked.

I really don't know what course of action we should take.... I don't know if we can convince him that there is a need for this trial over other motorized trails. Maybe if they were to close another trail (which they were originally talking about) than maybe they would have the extra room in their travel plan for this trail. Or maybe there is another way to get around the 1% rule that he/we don't know about. I do know that there are a couple of mining clames up there. If we were able to purchase one cheep then we might be able to request axcess.

I just don't know... and don't know if there is any real way to win this...


ROB

Yes, it's time for a letter campaign.

I think a PBB Letter Generator might be too severe. The local BLM might be :shocked: to find out the nationwide interest.

...that said, if they got a letter from every M4x4A member, it could make a pretty powerful statement with a couple hundred letters from Montana addresses.

I'll bet they get less than 100 letters per year unless a major event happens. How about more than a hundred letters about a single trail? That should show some interest.

Shawn





Dear Mr. xxxx

It has come to my understanding that the Carcass Canyon trails are not designated routes on the BLM travel plans. There is a severe lack of high-quality high-challenge trails in Montana. My friends and I travel annually to places as far-flung as Southern California, Eastern and Southern Utah, central Nevada, central South Dakota, and eastern Washington; simply to be able to run trails as difficult as Carcass Canyon.

As you can well imagine, we spend thousands of dollars on fuel, meals, lodging, and entertainment. These dollars would be just as well spent at home in Montana--particularly when our local economies are doing no better than the national economy.

As a member of the Big Sky Four Wheelers club in the Flathead Valley, which is a member club of the Montana 4x4 Association, I can safely say that this trail would get a great deal of responsible use. You will not see a cleaner trail; all Montana 4x4 clubs would be committed to maintenance and stewardship of this route.

I am an avid outdoorsman, and enjoy a variety of motorized and non-motorized pursuits. I love to whitewater kayak and raft, telemark ski, drive my modified 4x4 off-highway, and camp with my kids. Only rafting, camping, and 4x4 wheelin' allow me to bring my 5-year old and 7-year old daughters with me...my other pursuits require adult stamina or judgement, and force me to recreate without them--so recreation opportunites that allow us to play together as a family are precious to me.


Whatcha think?

I was hoping you would respond Shawn. You are a great letter writer (much better than me) ! I was actually thinking about doing something like this and sending a request for letters to each of the clubs, in the forum, on m4x4a, pirate (north central), and send the info with WWalker or the Ellisons to Divide Ride to try to get some letters.

Do you think that this is enough?

Should we address them to the actual Ranger we have been working with or someone or the Dillon BLM office in general?

Thanks for your input!!!

I asked Kurtuleas to stop by and check out this thread and seek his advice on possibly putting this up on the PBB letter generator.

At a minimum, I think we need an individual letter from every person who is able to write one, and a petition to get a mass of signatures (petition) from others who are too lazy to write letters.

The benefit of sending through the PBB letter generator is that comments can be sent through both the Ranger and the Dillon BLM office. You can also involve both of them with a comment like, "Dear Dillon BLM Field Office, we appreciate Ranger Rick's willingness to work on us, but understand that administratively, we need to request that this route be added to a formal route designation"...

PM's sent...

Can someone shoot me their phone number to talk?

I am BY FAR no land-use guru, but I have a couple of ideas.

PM sent.

I would hate to piss the Dillon BLM off so that they are not willing to work with us again. But there are quite a fiew people who are interested in seeing this trail open for everyone.

Kurt, thanks for the PM and great phone call. Good advice.

I would hate to piss the Dillon BLM off so that they are not willing to work with us again. But there are quite a fiew people who are interested in seeing this trail open for everyone.

Kurt emphasized the same thing. Rather than "letterbombing" someone's mailbox with hundreds of emails sent from around the country via the PBB letter generator, he advised:


The 1% more routes thing is possibly not true. We need to check statutes
If they've already done route designation/travel management, we're better off working with them rather than swamping them with letters
They have stated that it was closed for lack of interest. We could use a massive letter campaign to demonstrate interest--but we should have them set up a separate email address first!
Find out specifically why the trail was closed? (Lack of funding, lack of maintenance, abuse, lack of interest, other?)
Start a "Friends of Carcass Canyon" group
Write up a formal proposal...I imagine this could be very similar to the Partnership Agreement BS4W and Skyliners have with the Swan Lake RD on the Blacktail/Wild Bill project.



So, here's where I suggest we go from here:

Rob, can you or Vern call the BLM and ask them if they would consider the route if we can demonstrate enough interest and provide a formal sponsorship/maintenance plan for the trail?

Then, we should start a "Friends of Carcass Canyon" website and hit the 4xForum and Divide Ride now in July while we can mobilize and interest a lot of people quickly.

Write up a proposal by early fall, hammer out details all winter, and hope for a re-opening in Summer '10?

If they've already done route designation/travel management, we're better off working with them rather than swamping them with letters
They have stated that it was closed for lack of interest. We could use a massive letter campaign to demonstrate interest--but we should have them set up a separate email address first!
Find out specifically why the trail was closed? (Lack of funding, lack of maintenance, abuse, lack of interest, other?)


They have done their travel planning.

I found some info on it but realy haven't had the chance to look at the details yet. http://www.blm.gov/mt/st/en/prog/recreation/ohv.html

It's not that the trail was closed. It's that when they did their travel plan it was not put on the maps. Now that travel planning has long since passed and won't be going on for another 20 years or so they say that they can only add 1% motorized per year. They don't want to add it to their trail list because they feel it only benefits a small percentage of the motorized community.

It's not that the trail was closed. It's that when they did their travel plan it was not put on the maps. Now that travel planning has long since passed and won't be going on for another 20 years or so they say that they can only add 1% motorized per year. They don't want to add it to their trail list because they feel it only benefits a small percentage of the motorized community.

Sweet!! If they think it only benefits a small percentage of the motorized community; as opposed to a small percentage of all users, we can work with that. Can you find out from them what their "threshold" number is? How many users would they feel is a "significant" enough percentage to add it to the maps and make this a 1% add for this year?

We need to do some research on their 1% thing.

Shawn

I have run Carcass with Rob and others a few times. I enjoyed running that trail a lot, but will the opening of this trail in the 1% plan, limit what we can open in the future or just this year? I am all for getting it opened back up, but also intrested in the opening of the trail in the Gallatin Range that Rob was talking about for a Comp. last yr. Maybe we already have the OK for that trail and Carcass would just be another thing entirely.

Also, I would like to be a productive part of this agenda. Once in a while I have some slack time and can use those opprotunities aid in the accomplishment of these goals. I can meet with people or just get the word out, maybe haul a petition, anything to help.

Rog.

Can you find out from them what their "threshold" number is? How many users would they feel is a "significant" enough percentage to add it to the maps and make this a 1% add for this year?

We need to do some research on their 1% thing.

Shawn

I sure can. I have a bunch of questions written down for him from the meeting last night and from our discussion on here to run past him.

I ran the 1% thing by the Ellisons last night and they haven't herd of it either. It just might be BS. Unfortunately the link to their travel plan on the BLM website is busted. The Ellisons think they still have their copy. I might have one too but have to do some digging because I was new to this land use stuff when they did their travel plan... It's something we need to figure out.

but also intrested in the opening of the trail in the Gallatin Range that Rob was talking about for a Comp. last yr. Maybe we already have the OK for that trail and Carcass would just be another thing entirely.

It's BLM vs. FS so it's not an issue other than my time.... I need to bug the FS guys again. Shannon's back at work now so she can remind Brian to get back to me in person :D

You know what I thought was really funny. She was asked to aid one of their trail's crew in physically close down one of the ATV trails slated for closure in this latest FS travel plan and she told them to piss off :flipoff: and to never ask her to help close a trail again. :grinpimp:


anything to help.

Rog.

We can always use the help. I will only be around for about another year so we need to keep others in the loop to keep this thing going after I am gone.

The club did decide last night to go ahead and get a permit to run the trail this fall (the club will pay for everything). For no other reason than to keep tires on that piece of ground and convince them that we are serious. Our plan is to do it in the fall (late Sept/early Oct). Hopefully we can also get a rep from the BLM out there to see what we do and what we are looking for in a trail.

I am going to do some bartering and try and get as many rigs in as possible. The BLM has said that they want less than 10 on there at a time. We will see how many we can get... So we will have a sign up list and allow Mountaineer members first dibs (so get in your dues if your not paid up if you haven't already ;) ) . Then open it up to M4x4A members. Then the general public until all the slots are filled

It sounds like most anyone can do this... it's just going to cost $400-$500 when it's all said and done...

I thought I was paid up for the year.:homer:

It's BLM vs. FS so it's not an issue other than my time.... I need to bug the FS guys again.

Get your FS guys in touch with our FS guy--seriously!!!

You know what I thought was really funny. She was asked to aid one of their trail's crew in physically close down one of the ATV trails slated for closure in this latest FS travel plan and she told them to piss off :flipoff: and to never ask her to help close a trail again. :grinpimp:

Your wife rocks!!! :beer:

Get your FS guys in touch with our FS guy--seriously!!!



Your wife rocks!!! :beer:

They're just lucky they got off with a warning from Shannon. :D