Regarding the article, “Plan narrows scope of U.S. Forest Service road maintenance”: The Forest Service has announced that it will be closing more Forest Service roads. It appears that the Forest Service is going ahead with their predetermined agenda even after their “let’s make the public believe they have a say in the outcome” feel-good public meetings of a year ago.
I realize that the Forest Service does not have a lot of money to spend on road maintenance but all I ask is that on roads they will no longer maintain that they please let people continue to drive the roads until nature makes the roads impassable; please do not block the roads with cement blocks, stones or logs;do not dig trenches in the roadbed; do not remove existing culverts; do not decommission the roads by mutilating the road bed as you did to the White Chuck River Road No. 23 (which each year thousands used to access Kennedy Hot Springs and Glacier Peak and now probably less that 50 people per year hike the extra miles on the torn up road bed with steep sided 10-30 foot deep trenches, streams that cannot be crossed eight months of the year and over and around mounds of dirt/boulders/logs that were moved on to the road bed making walking the old road bed difficult and biking impossible.)
Keep the old road beds so that people can continue to walk on them. Remember that each closed road adds miles and miles of walking to get to trailheads making it hard or impossible for the old, young, families and disabled and adds hours and days to get to back country locations.
Gayle Olcott
Arlington
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