As the "snowbirds" return to the Mesquite, NV area for the fall/winter, so does their path of destruction...

After enjoying a nice, fairly unvisited Gold Butte during the last few months, (just as the weather starts to get nice) the usual motley crew of snowbirds descends upon Gold Butte and Mesquite, NV like a flock of vultures on a fresh kill. Needless to say, I have some more "Wall of Shame" Photos of the fresh damage that is starting to pop up. Could that just be a coincidence? I highly doubt it. I also have some other good photos and information, related to Gold Butte and the Mojave Desert. These things, as well as a new post, should be up this weekend. Stay tuned....

More Corrections.......

In this post I will tackle the the post "Ride 16: Kurt's Grotto and Petroglyphs". It's a whopper of a tale!

A)"The trailhead that they are making is 500 FEET UP IN THE AIR OVER A CLIFF! The trail now will be completely OFF LIMITS to most seniors! And to top it off, just when do they intend to make said trail? Even lame-brains would think to have the "stairs" or "switchbacks" or whatever they intend (it's a secret) in place before they blocked off the entire area!"

So, let me get this straight, you use to drive your OHV up and down a "Cliff" that is 500 FEET IN THE AIR! You are amazing! No wonder the area closed to motor vehicles is torn to pieces. That trail could be started right now, if you and your buddy's run out there with some jackhammers and chisels, and carve a nice stair case in that solid rock! That would make a nice volunteer project. "Volunteer" being the key word there. If most of the work being done out there is not up to your standards, why not be proactive, and lend your "expertise" next volunteer event?

B)"First Rock is still the same - the only area where a sign is the sole limitation and the walk is only a few feet. It is well taken care of, despite being the most accessible."

Excuse me, but is "First Rock" the one with the giant wall of graffiti and restored eroded hill climb to nowhere? Or the rock outcrop with the road driving almost straight through an agave roasting pit? Yeah right! Taken care of by whom? How many times did that area get "restored", only to be destroyed the next day? I think people just got bored destroying the same place over and over, so they're moving on down the road.

C)I will skip the whole repeat of the Falling Man Trail rantings. I have already commented on that issue.

D)"They've brought in mounds of Beaver Tail cacti and planted them in silly, pristine straight rows! They've brought in thousands of dollars worth of barrel cacti and planted them often too deep, not facing the correct direction, in trail bottoms with poor drainage! [I'm running out of exclamation points!]"

Thousands of dollars of cacti, huh? I thought they salvaged those for free from the Coyote Springs Development mess. And now you're a Botanist, as well. You never cease to amaze me! Desert ecosystems take a very, very long time to recover IF people leave them undisturbed. Maybe...these plants were not intended to survive, but merely keep the area from being disturbed over and over? Maybe give it some time to heal on it's own? Provide seed catchments? Just a thought......

E)Oh, and I put the BLM's link at the bottom of my page. But, I would have thought someone as "genius" as you could figure out how to use the Yellow Pages or Google it. Sheesh!

New Corrections for The Last Post Re: Gold Butte

"Offroading Home" is continuing to not allow corrections to his ignorant postings regarding Gold Butte and the restoration efforts going on there. In this post I will go through and make the same corrections, so that the truth is out there for people to see that "Dr J" has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. Maybe that is why he will not post my corrections to his many,many errors.
I will begin with the last post entitled "Ride 17:"Fire" and "Man" Petroglyphs:

A)"Charley and I had heard several (somewhat conflicting) rumors about possible damage at the site – from "someone had chalked them" to "someone had shot them" to "someone had graffiti-ed them." None of which, fortunately, is true.

As you realize from riding the past week, the weather has changed and become quite a bit more humid than usual (for the desert). This has generated a substantial amount of alkaline lechate coming out of the rock – giving the appearance of "chalking." It's been doing it for hundreds of years and will continue for many more. It's how erosion works.

Except for the lechate, the glyphs are identical to the photos I took over three years ago when I first met them (I compared the actual photos)."

Completely false: While the process of leaching of the sandstone occurs, I also have photographic evidence(which will not be posted, due to graphic nature) of a Giant Penis drawn directly on top of the glyphs in Mud Wash. The white smudge is the remnants of an attempt to restore the petroglyphs. Not "Lechate". Furthermore, when the vandals climbed up to draw the penis, they broke a section of petroglyphs off the panel and into the wash. Which, I am sure has been recovered for safe keeping.

B)"This post marks a significant change in my attitude (and policy) about publishing exact GEO coordinates of petroglyphs. Until now, I've only published coordinates for sites, routes, trailheads and petroglyphs which were blatantly obvious from the trail.

Now, with the needlessly heavy handed actions of the BLM in the draconian closures, not only is my feeble "protection by omission" unnecessary it would be completely ill-spirited to require people to hike that distance (if they are able) and not know exactly where to look to find them."

How irresponsible can you be? Let's just post the exact pinpoint location of every petroglyph, so that people don't have to explore or have any sense of adventure, plus now any vandal can easily find their way to each glyph. What a steward of cultural heritage you are(insert sarcasm)!

Next!

Maps for Road Closure Designations and the Proposals

As promised, I have added some photos(that if you double-click, open for a larger view), and added some helpful links for recreating responsibly. Now, in this post, I'd like to clear up some confusion having to do with the route designation and road closures in ACEC(Areas of Critical Environmental Concern) within the areas of North Eastern Clark County, which includes Gold Butte. A direct link to these documents and maps of the different road closure proposals is located @ http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en/fo/lvfo/blm_information/nepa/acec_ea.html. The Maps are quite extensive, but for the closures that were finally decided on, you want Alternative A. And for Gold Butte,you want the E's. The Closures are marked in red, while the designated routes are marked in green.Blue roads are open as well, and mark the byways and highways. As you can plainly see, only about 10% or less of the approx. 906 miles of routes was closed in this area. And for those of you who claim to have had no say in this decision, this process took ten years or more to research and decide on and included an ample appeals process in all the affected communities. So, any lack of say is your own fault for having a lack of community involvement. I hope these maps are a help to you all, and help clarify which roads are actually open. Alot of these roads still could be closed, as alot of them are duplicates or go to a road closure(the roads should just be closed back at the main roads intsead of driving a few hundred feet, only to turn around and make a bigger mess). But, for now, we need to follow these designations, otherwise you will end up with more barriers and more restrictons. How are the younger generations supposed to "respect their elders", when they are acting like hoodlums themselves?

The Shameful Behavior in Gold Butte, NV and offroadinghome.blogspot.com 's Silence - Could They Be Related?

Off Roading Home is ignoring my posts to their Blog, so I decided to start my own. What could they be afraid of? If they can't take the heat, maybe it's time for some Snowbirds to get outta the Desert, and migrate somewhere else.

Over the weekend, I will be posting some photos of the ridiculous damages done to the many cultural and biological sites in Gold Butte done by irresponsible users. I will also be posting photos of responsible recreation practices. I'll begin correcting the misinformation provided on offroadinghome.blogspot.com and start providing factual information on the treasures of the Mojave, desert ecology and restoration techniques, volunteer opportunities, and eventually providing maps that show the hundreds of miles of designated routes(still open in Gold Butte) as well as the route closures(which comprise a small fraction of the area). And much, much more....

I am also more than happy to answer any questions that I can, and point people in the right directions for information sources, so we can protect this fragile habitat.

Cheers

Before I begin.........

This Blog was created in response to the discovery of another blog which you should check out: offroadinghome.blogspot.com. I was appalled by the complete ignorance of this blogger and the multitudes of misinformation provided about the Mojave Desert Ecosystems, Land Management, the concept of Public Lands, Conservation techniques, Desert Flora and Fauna identificatons, and even some conspiracy theories. I would also like this blog to serve as a resource to people who like to recreate responsibly, and would like information on how to do this whether you ride OHV, Horses , or enjoy Hiking, etc. This Blog will mostly focus on Southern Nevada, but these principles can be applied anywhere.
Some very good sources for this sort of information is provided on the Tread Lightly! website: www.treadlightly.org and also the Leave No Trace website: www.lnt.org .
I think I will leave it at that for now. So, everyone can see the blog I am referring to and check out the two websites I suggested. I will continue posting regularly and adding more information sources, recreation opportunities, photos of the damage "not caused" by the Public, and I plan to also attempt to correct the misinformation on the offending blog one post at a time. :)

And because, I doubt it will be posted on the other blog due to censorship or maybe because the truth hurts, I am going to repost a message I attempted to leave on Offroadinghome.blogspot.com. It was in response to his latest post "Ride 3 - Petroglyph Trail".

Here it is:
"I've been on "The Butte" over 50 times in the past three years, and Charley even more. I can honestly say that the ONLY DAMAGE I'VE SEEN INFLICTED IN THAT WHOLE TIME HAS BEEN DONE BY THE BLM AND FIENDS OF GOLD BUTTE!" -quoted from offroadinghome. blogspot.com

I haven't seen such a ridiculous statement in quite awhile.....Do you not see the hundreds of OHV tracks everywhere? Most visible in the cryptobiotic crusts(which can take up to 100 years to recover and play a huge role in the Mojave Ecosystem). Did you not notice the graffiti on the petroglyphs, as well as bullet holes(Really?!..Who shoots rocks)? How about the old CCC structures near Whitney Pockets, some of which have been destroyed forever. And surely in your infinite knowledge of the area you noticed that roads leading to "falling man" and near Whitney Pockets drive straight through Native American Agave Roasting Pits. How about all the garbage left to never decompose in the overabundance of fire pits at each campsite/staging area? These things, are real damage. Speaking of OHV staging areas, who made those multiple acre dumping grounds? Not the BLM or the Friends of Gold Butte. I could go on and on...And neither the Friends of Gold Butte nor the BLM did any of this true damage. Volunteers,Individuals, and the BLM actually restore these things. The thing I think you don't understand is that Desert ecosystems rehab extremely slowly. We're talking decades or longer. Cultural sites are just lost forever when damaged. So, it is important to stay off these areas to give them a chance to recover. Have you ever stopped your ignorant rantings and done any volunteer work yourself? You seem to think you can do a much better job. Prove it, instead of putting down the efforts of selfless volunteers(some of them children and elderly). Shame on you!

And please, please give quit using the "some are too old to hike" excuse. If you can ride an ATV(the "Off-Road Couch", you can walk a little bit. Seriously, where do you stop with that reasoning? Do you envision escalators up mountain peaks, moving walkways instead of trails? Give me a break.

I suggest looking into the Tread Lightly or Leave No Trace websites. Both of which contain a wealth of information, that you and your blog followers should check out and use when doing any sort of recreating.

And remember, education is key. If you follow the designated routes and use good outdoor ethics, as you claim. Why not spread the knowledge to the multitudes of people who aren't as enlightened. The bottom line is, it's public land. If the Public doesn't take care of it and take some ownership, it will continue to be destroyed by the Public until there is nothing left to enjoy. Are you that selfish, that you'd deprive future generations of visitors to these areas the ability to enjoy these areas in the same condition that you've seen them?


BTW...I think it's kind of ironic that the last poster is named Desert "Walker", but it doesn't sound like they do much "walking" in the desert from their post.

And, lastly, I hope you actually let this post on your blog. I enjoy recreation of all types, including ATVs, but I recreate responsibly. If we can get the word out to as many people as possible, and they adhere to the common sense principles of LNT and Tread Lightly, there would be no reason for closures, fences, barriers, etc.

Cheers