Dear HCN,
To add a user-fee note
from California: On Mount Shasta, the Shasta-Trinity National
Forest is charging climbers $15 each to go above 10,000 feet, plus
$5 per day to park at backcountry trailheads. The information
officer at the ranger station told me that the fees were being put
in place to avoid placing a quota on the number of climbers. He
also said the fees would stay in the forest, to be used to build
and maintain campgrounds and other recreational
facilities.
Perhaps recreationalists should
expect to pay for services, especially if other users and
contractors of federal resources also pay their way. It’s quite
another matter for fees to be levied on one group to limit their
access (by ability to pay?), and then to use the collected fees to
subsidize projects for other groups.
The
conclusion many of us came to was that the agency is
entrepreneuring, charging new fees because Congress said they
could.
Andy
Selters
Bishop,
California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Adding a height surcharge.
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