Lindsay of the BLM called me this morning and here's a bit more 'scoop.'
Trail worker volunteers will be at Fishtrap from 8-1 pm on Saturday to work on
the trail. Turns out BLM does 'own' the road from the Miller Ranch turn off,
and did put gravel down. Estimated time to complete gravelling the parking lot
is end of Oct., which is about the same time the new toilet is open for
business. Sounds like they have the porta potty contract until Nov. and
figured it'd be better to let that play out before opening up the new one
(which will be open to the public, 24/7 I think). They didn't get funded to do
more road work in LIncoln County (where our site is at), but will be going to
reapply - I told her I thought the club could certainly supply a letter of
support - she was enthusiastic about that possibility.
Finally and not least, her husband was tracking the K index and actually went
out to the site last night to see if he could see aurora (not) - and noted the
city lights from Spokane visible even there. I grabbed that opening to see if
there were other BLM sites that might be darker, and she's going to keep her
eye out. The Lakeview Ranch north of Odessa (my hometown!) could be a
candidate, but there's lights there. Maybe they could be turned off? It's 3x
farther to go (90 minutes to Odessa, and then a few more to head north), but
might work for those nights when you really REALLY need dark skies (if the
lights could turn off). I invited her to join us @ the next meeting, but
she'll be in MT. She did hop on our website while we were talking and was very
impressed with the pictures of the aurora she found there. So ... Yay! P.
________________________________________
From: sas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [sas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] on behalf of Eric
Strang [estrang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2016 12:46 AM
To: sas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [SAS] Re: Fishtrap report 2.0
Thanks for that update. Very interesting.
Eric
On Sep 28, 2016, at 6:42 PM, Eide, Phyllis <eide@xxxxxxx<mailto:eide@xxxxxxx>>
wrote:
Hi all – here’s some updates I got from Lindsay Babcock of BLM:
Where we have the star party is actually the parking lot for what BLM calls
Farmer’s Landing trailhead. Two years ago they signed off on an environmental
assessment to develop an 8 mile non-motorized loop trail, beginning at the pkg
lot. This weekend will see trail development work begin as part of the
National Public Lands Project – and sadly, looks like they might get rained on.
Not so great for the Star Party as well, perhaps.
The gravel piled up is for graveling the parking lot! YAY! (didn’t get a
timeline for when that would be done). BLM has nothing to do with the road in
(which is county road) – but I have a feeling that after the first load of
gravel jounced along the road from Miller Ranch, one or more of the subsequent
gravel trucks probably let some gravel slip out the back end – thus, there is
some improvement in the road. The new toilet (vault type) is also part of the
overall effort to improve this trailhead – no idea when it will be ‘open for
business’.
If I get some more info from her re: timelines, I’ll be happy to pass that
along! Cheers, Phyllis
PS nice Iridium flare on Sunday night at the ‘Trap. No aurora action from back
yard viewing last night. Maybe tonight?
