May 15, 2008

I was standing outside at work this afternoon.  Hot weather!  The severe-weather alert thingy on my web browser predicted it would get to 101 degrees before nightfall, so the snow-capped Coast Range sure was looking nice!  Last weekend, when Todd Terp and I were out there checking portions of the planned TRNT route for unusable roads--because USFS could not yet confirm the status on a few of them--we found that snow-laden roads still kept us away from some of the higher areas.  I wiped my brow, thinking this might be a good day to go check on those again.

USFS had advised us that one road on our route is "gone".  That's how USFS puts it when advising us that a road is... gone.  Other terms are used for describing cases where maybe there's enough road left for a pedestrian to get past the trouble spot--but when USFS tells us a road is gone, that's a fully detailed description, as surely as when an ER doc tells detectives their suspect is dead.  Such conditions are absolute.  The term "gone" means... it ain't there anymore.

Sometimes they come back.

The USFS in Siuslaw National Forest maintains the roads very well.  On several occasions we've even had to convince ourselves to believe the rapid restorations we've seen after massive winter road devastation.  Still, we can't rely on timely restoration of a road that is "gone", so we needed to devise a reroute for that portion.  In this case that wasn't particularly difficult, and does not disrupt the route's "flow".

However, we then discovered another road that is "gone" (it is a BLM road and USFS hadn't yet learned of the problem).  That road was a key structural element of the route, and the loss of it perturbed us; and it left us a bit heart-broken, too, because it was a special-character road that was in the best place and time for it on the route.  We resigned ourselves to researching alternatives to assess which would be the least disappointing.
Sometimes, though, Murphy just wants to mess with you some--without actually hurting you; so we immediately discovered another alternative that is pleasing enough to make us not mind so much having lost that key road.  The new alternative uses a road we had forgotten long ago because it had been too dilapidated and had never been important to the route.  Neither of those factors is true this year.  Ah, yes, a key road may be gone--but while exploring the nifty 'new' road our disappointment, too, began to slip away!

Having established confidence in the (revised) route, we are now compiling route maps and other details for submission to USFS permit processing, which involves detailed study by USFS forestry scientists, who may impose limits, restrictions, conditions, or closures, based on current circumstances.  Experience and active communication with USFS (which is also proxy for BLM in most cases) helps us anticipate and avoid most issues that would be particularly troublesome in developing the event.  The consistently civilized behavior and cooperation of competitors, workers--everyone involved with the event--assures that TRNT continues to enjoy excellent cooperation with USFS, BLM, and others.

This year's route has us all excited.  Competitors are gonna love it!

This report is covered by annotated photographs in the PHOTOGRAPHS section.