Mt Persis (FS 62 RD.) to be closed

[+GeoRoo]

This may have already come up on here, so sorry if I'm a little out of touch. Longview Fibre has been granted an emergency road closure to gate the road at the turnoff to FS 62 at Hwy 2 near Index. Gate is still open as of yesterday, but could be closed at any time. This will all but kill any hiking or geocaching in the area. 7 caches isn't much, but it is a wonderful area to hike and it would be a shame to lose. My experience with road closures is once they are closed they rarely open again. If you wish to hike Mt Persis, or Index you'll have to walk an additional 10 miles of logging road and 2200 ft. elevation gain to reach the trail head.

 

I've been in communication with Steve Tift (360-424-2014) the land manager for Longview and Barb Bussey (360-677-2414) Skykomish Ranger station and the main concern is the people shooting and the dumping of trash. The majority of the shooting occurs at a large sandpit, so it's more a knee jerk action that's happening here. If we can force the closure of the gate, then by all means let's do it is what I see happening.

 

Steve is very willing to work with hikers, so there is a silver lining. In a good faith effort by hikers I'm organizing a clean up week end after next. June 27-28th. There is some garbage along the Mt Persis trail, but the majority is below in the valley and side spurs. I was up there the other day checking out how bad it's going to be and was surprised at how little I saw. Not the scary dump truck loads I was thinking. You can read about it here. Mt Persis Clean up

 

You may have seen on the news the clean up effort at Lake Isabel last weekend by hikers and float plane people. That went really well, so I'm hoping to build on that effort while there's interest and everyone hasn't scattered 20 different directions for the summer. If you can help out that would be great. We have permission to spend the weekend there, so I'm going to be camping out for the weekend.

[+hydnsek]

This may have already come up on here, so sorry if I'm a little out of touch. Longview Fibre has been granted an emergency road closure to gate the road at the turnoff to FS 62 at Hwy 2 near Index. Gate is still open as of yesterday, but could be closed at any time. This will all but kill any hiking or geocaching in the area. 7 caches isn't much, but it is a wonderful area to hike and it would be a shame to lose. My experience with road closures is once they are closed they rarely open again. If you wish to hike Mt Persis, or Index you'll have to walk an additional 10 miles of logging road and 2200 ft. elevation gain to reach the trail head.

 

I've been in communication with Steve Tift (360-424-2014) the land manager for Longview and Barb Bussey (360-677-2414) Skykomish Ranger station and the main concern is the people shooting and the dumping of trash. The majority of the shooting occurs at a large sandpit, so it's more a knee jerk action that's happening here. If we can force the closure of the gate, then by all means let's do it is what I see happening.

 

Steve is very willing to work with hikers, so there is a silver lining. In a good faith effort by hikers I'm organizing a clean up week end after next. June 27-28th. There is some garbage along the Mt Persis trail, but the majority is below in the valley and side spurs. I was up there the other day checking out how bad it's going to be and was surprised at how little I saw. Not the scary dump truck loads I was thinking. You can read about it here. Mt Persis Clean up

 

You may have seen on the news the clean up effort at Lake Isabel last weekend by hikers and float plane people. That went really well, so I'm hoping to build on that effort while there's interest and everyone hasn't scattered 20 different directions for the summer. If you can help out that would be great. We have permission to spend the weekend there, so I'm going to be camping out for the weekend.

Thanks for the intel, GeoRoo - long time no see! Have you thought of posting the cleanup as a CITO event? That would get the word out more broadly than the forums and also encourage attendance. Just a thought.

 

I'm going to cross-post this in the "Roads and Trails Status" thread, where all this stuff is centralized. Hope that's okay.

[+GeoRoo]

Hi there thanks, I've been a bit out of touch with geocaching the past year, so I didn't know what kind of interest there would be. I'm just getting into the organizing part of the weekend and haven't thought about a CITO event. Do you think there would be interest at this short notice?

[+hydnsek]

Hi there thanks, I've been a bit out of touch with geocaching the past year, so I didn't know what kind of interest there would be. I'm just getting into the organizing part of the weekend and haven't thought about a CITO event. Do you think there would be interest at this short notice?

There might, but I didn't pay attention to the date before...events have to be submitted for publication 2 weeks beforehand, so it's too late for that weekend, anyway. So, just a thought for the future - lots of folks see event postings that don't visit the forums. Good luck!