Death Valley - 2009 Designated Route Survey Report

[nwoods]

An acquaintance of mine has spent many long hours mapping out routes and trails in the greater Death Valley region to help determine what exists as motorized routes that are still viable. It is hoped that this mapping process will assist the California Wilderness Coalition in determining what the impact is in closing our public lands to motorized access.

I can well imagine that many ExPo members the area can take an interest in the detailed reports, routes, maps and photos collated into these reports. Here is a link to what he has recently prepared:

http://www.deathvalley.com/dv/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=233&Itemid=

The "low res" version of the report is 8mb, and is well worth the few seconds to download and review.

Here is an excerpt from Narrative, by Randy Banis:

The California Wilderness Coalition (CWC) is proposing a number of new and expanded wildernesses across the California desert. Senator Feinstein is entertaining sponsoring legislation for this, but has requested that the CWC to reach out and work with the public lands access community and try to exclude important motorized routes. Already the CWC's proposed wilderness maps have carve-outs and corridors for several motorized routes, but many currently designated open routes still would be closed in the current proposals.

The CWC has studied these areas on the ground and asserts that some routes either does not exist, could not be found, or had little or no recreational value. The leadership of the access community reached an understanding with the CWC that in order for routes to be considered for keeping open it would provide new and accurate evidence that these routes do exist, are drivable, and have recreational value.

There were no fewer than a dozen proposed new wilderness areas, but four of them are located near Death Valley in areas of special interest to me and many of our readers:
- Avawatz Mountains Wilderness
- Kingston Wilderness Addition
- Malpais Mesa Addition
- Soda Mountains Wilderness

There are many components to a political process such as that we face over these new proposed wilderness areas. Agreeing to an accurate inventory, or base map, of routes is an important first step.

Therefore, the purpose of this project is to validate the designated open motorized routes within these four proposed wildernesses in the Death Valley area.