I’ll second that…my experience at Kolob VC has been notably worse than in the main canyon. I agree, the less you say to the ranger folk the better off you’ll be.
I was being nice and friendly on the trail up to Telephone one afternoon as we passed a female ranger and engaged into a conversation. Everything was fine until she asked us where we were going and we replied, Telephone canyon…She immediately grew stern and demanded I show her my permit. There was no friendliness from that point onward.
Overall, I felt like I was being treated much like someone guilty of doing something wrong. She was very stern and even demanded I show ID to prove that the permit was legit! The permit was readily available, but my ID was near the bottom of my pack. She impatiently waited while I unpacked EVERYTHING before pulling out my ID. I walked away from that encounter steaming, feeling as if I’d been accosted. It grated me the wrong way. I don’t really see the rangers as there to help my trip, or to increase the enjoyment of whatever endeavor I’m on. They are to be avoided at all costs and dealt with as little as possible.
Park employees see us walking liabilities…potential numbers. They don’t seem truly concerned about the enjoyability of our experience at Zion. The permit system is not set up to help us, the canyoneers, it is set up to control, manage, and mitigate any potential liability situations. It is a sad state of affairs.
Park employees are there to protect the park from us; overall they are very protective and secretive with information, becoming suspicious whenever someone has as trip planned anywhere outside the officially sanctioned paved trail system.
Tom makes a good point that the fee system supports nothing other than the fee system itself. It is outrageous in my opinion! Besides, the admin costs to run the system must be truly exagerated, because it should not be too expensive to do what they do in issuing a permit. $5 to make a reservation…$10-20 for a permit…it does not cost that much to maintain a database and a couple of printers to print off paper permits. This cost is on top of the $20 entrance fee, on top of the $16 camping fee, on top of the taxes you already pay that goes toward the Department of the Interior…ridiculous!
Time to write another letter I think…
Disgruntled and willing to support any anti-permit initiative,
Mark
— In Yahoo Canyons Group, j b
First time picking up permit at Kolob VC, never had
this problem at
the main park vc. Has anybody else been scolded
about finacial
responsibility?
Not been lectured about financial responsibility, but > my experience has been that most of the NPS rangers > with whom I have had contact have been highly > unpleasant–Arches, Zion, etc.–and the ones at the > Kolob VC are the very worst of the entire bunch, > despite sincere attempts at courtesy. Best not to say > too much around them.
Jeff
> __________________________________ > > Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Messenger. > http://messenger.yahoo.com/
gajslk
— In Yahoo Canyons Group, “mwlewis26” wrote:
Tom makes a good point that the fee system supports nothing other > than the fee system itself.
They don’t even run it well. They managed to lose my confirmed Left Fork reservation last week. They also managed to lose all the information about our vehicles, etc from one day to the next. All the while being vaguely friendly and clueless. Took us half an hour to pull a permit! We blew off the system after a few days of such idiocy. We’ll try it again next year, but with the odds of getting caught being so low, there’s no reason to put up with a system designed merely to be obstructive.
Sorry about the rant,
Gordon