9:00 - 9:30 am
Resource Issues in Upcoming
Road Construction Projects
Eleanor Clark: Division of Planning, Compliance & Landscape Architecture

Transcript

Eleanor Williams Clark:  Ok, on to the meaty end of the topics.  This series of issues is not going to be just future road projects.  I needed to involve some of the past and current projects in order to identify some of the resource concerns for you.  And, again, you have to understand, as I’m sure most of you do, but Yellowstone Park’s road systems evolved over time.  It’s not a static system in any way and it evolved, basically, through the course of time, to adapt to changing visitor, and trapper,hunter- gatherer people traveling through the park.  And it also evolved in terms of what was possible in terms of equipment.  If you have a very small piece of equipment, you can’t move much material and as equipment became bigger and bigger, road construction changed too. 

Most Yellowstone Park visitors see the Park from their car, on a road.  So roads are extremely important, they’re perhaps as important as Visitor Centers, I would argue. Because that’s how most people spend their time in the park.  If we’re unable to bring park resources close enough to those visitors in a way that’s appropriate and meets the mission of the park then I think we’ve missed some pretty important things.

What is a road?  Well, a road’s a linear little white corridor on a map that traverses all sorts of complicated resources.  As you can see from this map, this is actually Craig Pass, and it traverses all sorts of vegetation types, thermal types, ungulate habitat, all sorts of things.  And in Yellowstone you’re likely to encounter thermal features, ungulate habitat, threatened and endangered species, and for this we’ve developed a park road team.

These are the road team members and I thought I’d just put it up so everyone knows who they are.  They represent different divisional interests and we meet once a week to discuss road elements.  Then we meet all year long to go out and work on roads.

Federal Land Highway Program, that’s what FLHP stands for, basically is organized into three component areas and I thought I’d put these up because I know there’s some confusion. They’re based on engineering technology because road construction was primarily an engineering operation for a very long time.  So PE stands for preliminary engineering, but I want you to note that it takes in all sorts of things that involve you.   Primarily the people in this room are involved in the PE side of things.  PE is project inspection and that pretty much is what Federal Highway does.  The landscape architects in the park go out to help monitor this to make sure that there’s park influence on decisions.

At the end is actual construction.  It’s the type of thing the contractor would do if we were not to do them. Signs, installing vegetation, traffic control, all the sweeps that you do, normally that’s a contracting function but because Federal highway feels that uniformed staff can do a much better job of doing that, that’s why they’ve asked that you do it.     

So the resource issues facing roads are basically inventorying.  That takes a tremendous amount of time and we’re inventorying with purpose, we’re inventorying for significance.  And then we’re looking for impacts.  How does this design impact that resource? 

And then we start the dance of mitigation.  How do we mitigate those impacts?  Because we know they’re going to be there and in Yellowstone’s case, how many impacts?  You know we get into a “Well, is archeology more important or is it a wetlands issue?”  And these are some of the resource issues that we’ve been dealing with.  And I can tell you that, over the years, even though the laws have not changed, the way we manage with respect to those laws has changed.  We’re under an awful lot more scrutiny, we have to do things more carefully, we understand a lot more about our resource so things are changing.  But it takes a lot of time and this is the part that Federal Highway projects fund for all of you to do. 

In past projects, some of the things we’ve learned, are to incorporate new materials; we can utilize that new technology.   Bottom line, still though, is to minimize the impact on fragile resources.  We can repair historic fabric and we can enhance visitors experience.  Here’s some examples:  We have beautiful old culverts down in the drainages of a lot of the Park roads, and in order to save those when we’re widening the top part of that road, from here to here, we have to deal with managing that overburden.  We’ve been able to do that successfully on most projects.  We’ve also been able to repair some of this beautiful masonry. We have all sorts of these CCC walls and some of them are actually earlier than that, that need to be taken care of.  Many times they were built on sand or on areas where the toe, that’s the bottom part of these slopes, isn’t stable, so they’re slumping.  Instead of getting rid of them, we want to repair them, we want to fix them.  Obviously that’s costly but we think it’s very, very important.  It’s part of the mitigation of section 106 concerns. 

We’ve also been able to take some of the areas around existing waysides and enhance them utilizing native materials.  Here’s an interesting example:  The Firehole River has basically an acidic content due to the thermal activity in the area and it has eroded the masonry, both the grouting, which is basically cement, it’s lime, it’s calcium carbonate and the rock.  On some of these piers and what we’ve been able to do is come in and create collars of native stone that will protect those piers but allow them to remain in place.

We’ve been able to widen bridges, like the one on the left without changing the historic character.  We just widened the deck so it overhangs the piers a little more and then on the right, we’ve actually fabricated from that original bridge, concrete.  Which is used, it’s not on the Grandview Road, this is used to basically to implement an historic feeling while showing a cost saving.

Controversial is this rock or fake stone, very controversial because a lot of people are very pure and want only real rock to be in Parks.  I don’t think anyone on the road team, certainly I don’t disagree with that Philosophy.  However, when you look at the cost of real stone and the availability of real stone you have to make a choice.  And here we made a choice, we make choices all the time in the Park.  Anytime a visitor can touch, or look at or spend time in a wayside, we use real stone.   We guard that real stone as a precious resource and an economic resource to use in those situations.

Where is the pass by?  Everyone’s looking at the River in this situation, they’re not really looking at this road and where we can save all of that hillside because that’s what you’re protecting with that wall is that enormous hillside and the restoration needed to take care of that cut.  We feel it’s a good choice.  So you’ll see more of that used carefully. 

We’re also being able to uncover geology.  There are advantages of road construction.  This is the welded tuff cliff that we so carefully guarded at Rick’s Rock and then we get to find we have lots of it. 

We’re also producing overlays in the Park and I wanted to mention that overlays are just a stabilizing way to take care of a resource until you can get around to the actual reconstruction.  Northeast Entrance road isn’t scheduled for reconstruction until, about another twenty years, if it even gets to that.  So we had to do something. And we realized that the three R’s aren’t the “be all, end all”, they’re not the fix but they are a temporary way to manage a resource in the interim.

We also learned a lot dealing with our experts on the East Entrance road.  All the riprap that was necessary, and that’s the protective material, big, large, chunky material, that’s used along waterways.  We found ungulates wouldn’t pass through that, so we had to space those out and break it up, so that the bison and elk and all the other ungulates could actually get down to water.

So we’re always learning and that’s where you all come in.  That’s where we need your assistance.  Here on the west side of the Park, we were able to maintain a very beautiful, curvilinear, historic type alignment and utilize the road character while creating a new road. 

Current projects underway:  East Entrance, Dunraven One and Hayden Valley.  The thing that we’re looking for in current projects, and I would ask most of you to help, is to minimize impacts wherever  possible and that’s true of current projects as well as future projects.  We need a comprehensive, dynamic understanding of the resources within the project.  We need you to tell us why, not just what, because we can then better address the mudsnail issue or the geothermal issue or whatever.  We need a little more data and we need notable details from resource experts and sometimes that means Jennifer Whipple standing out there and jumping on a bog.  We all got it; her bog’s been safe ever since. 

So East Entrance, the issues there, I’ve probably have missed some because it’s a very complicated project, or the watershed and fisheries issue, the T and E species wetlands, the materials source and erosions and cuts. 

We also have a lot of historic fabric on the East Entrance road, even though it’s the second alignment in that area it’s still a very old alignment at this point in time.  This is the historic corkscrew bridge.  The project’s actually going to enhance this bridge because we’re going to provide an area for visitors to stop and pull over and interpret and see it.  Right now, you drive by, and everybody sort of hangs out or whatever to see.  But, we have to protect it during construction so that’s going to be a pretty tricky deal. 

This is a really unique feature and we have two of them over on the East side. These are Arrowhead culverts.  Beautiful, they’re enormous and they took a lot of time and energy to construct.  And, unfortunately, in the mud flow that occurred last July, we basically submerged one.  The materials are so heavy, they’re like concrete, there’s absolutely no way to dig this poor guy out.  So at least we still have one good example.  Then in terms of the material source at the top of the pass, the resource issues there are extremely complicated and they seem to get more complicated daily.  As you all may realize, right below the surface is an ice layer and what’s been going on is that the ice beneath has been melting and shifting and changing due to things like the mud slide that occurred recently.  And due to the water that’s being pumped into this material from the construction  process.  And Hank’s new report, basically, unveils more curiosities about this situation.  But what it’s caused is, actually natural rainwater , any kind of precipitation in this area, as well as construction water is causing some turbidity in a little pond down below.  This also goes into the middle fork.  So these kinds of changes are some of the complications that occurred during a project .  They’re unanticipated, who would have thought ?  We still don’t have all the answers.  When you’re working in a Park and with complicated resources, the complexities are real and they have to be struggled with.  We have to get all our experts together and we keep pursuing these things, because our permitting agencies are concerned are as are we. 

East  Entrance; all these little dots are bear sightings.  East entrance has tons of bears.  This is a creature!  And even on the day we were out there with our permitting agent, we saw four.  One of the things that we needed to do, bear  issues on the East entrance road fall into two categories.  They fall into a habitat concern, i.e. loss of habitat, and a crossing concern.  How are bears going to move from one side of the road to the other?  This is an illustration, Lynn Chan actually designed this and we’re going to try it out and see.  We’ve got a large wall here, necessary to protect us from going into the wetlands, which is bear food and the huge meadows down below.  We didn’t want to remove any of material unnecessarily, but that wall is now a barrier and bears can’t cross over it.  So, we decided we would pile up rubble carefully in a designed way, at the base of the wall and create a path, with trees, and things like that going through it, with a sandpit at the top to check who’s passing where.  And a platform, so that little bears, big bears can stage before crossing the road.  As a way for them to get through, because we know they use paths of least resistance.   They use our trails, they use our roads, they’re looking for an efficient way of doing business.  And we’re hopeful that this is going to work to provide a way for bears to cross that area. 

And then we spend time, we have landscape architects out there monitoring construction to make sure that it‘s done in a sensitive manner on the East road and on all roads. These are very big cuts that will last for a very long time and we want them done properly. 

Dunraven.  Issues there are elevation , T and E species, wetlands, culverts and fragile environments.  Guess what?  Bears again.  Different issues on bears here, though.  Here we have several alignments through this area and a lot of them have not revegetated over time.  We have a different issue here, that we don’t have the crossing issue as much as  the habitat issue for T and E species, for grizzlies. 

Whitebark Pine:    Whitebark Pine are not an industry species, they’re not like some of the other pines so there’s not as much known about them.  We’ve been collecting seeds and propagating them at three different nurseries to be able to replant little Whitebark Pine trees. There are also issues with that.  Who’s going to eat them?   How are we going to protect them?  How are we going to make sure the cages around those Whitebark Pines don’t turn into barriers for bears or catch ungulates as they come down the slope?  These are all very complicated situations. 

As we go through a project, though, we make sure we cut as little as possible and as carefully as possible.  We utilize equipment to carefully remove materials; trees that need to be moved out of the way in a way that they don’t damage everything in the vicinity.  It’s done very carefully and we actually go out and mark all the trees. 

The top of the Pass is an area that’s very congested.  It also has three wetland areas around it, so it’s a very sensitive area and has to be handled carefully but we are going to be making it larger and adding more restroom facilities.

Hayden Valley:  Archeology and undulates.  This again, is a three R job, an overlay job, we still have a bit yet to do.  Last year, we lucked out because we had a wet, cold summer and paving went pretty well.  We’re hopeful for the same thing 

Future Projects:  Here’s where you can really have some impact.  Gibbon Canyon, river restoration.  We listened to fisheries talks yesterday, we need everybody’s help when we deal with this.  This is basically the old alignment and this is the new alignment and watch for that feature.  That’s the new alignment in the area and this is it from the air.  You can see that feature, again that’s the Gibbon Falls area.  Basically, the new alignment goes up on the top with a view of the canyon at the caldera rim (type thing) as opposed to going 1.9 miles down along the canyon. It’s an enormous restoration project .  Here’s that view again, and the area to the left, this is actually the new bridge crossing for the new Gibbon River bridge.  It’s right here to here and this point, this will be about 12 feet in the air so we’ll cross over.

This is what the new bridge is going to look like, it’s going to have lots of masonry from the cut, the Gibbon Falls cut, and it’s going to be a fairly long structure.  That’s the bridge abutment site from the ground and you can see that it ties into the natural rock pretty nicely. 

This is the Gibbon Falls area and it will be dramatically changed. We will protect that wall and we’ll have a nice new overlook area. 

This hillside is very, very unstable, it’s basically cobbly and full of conglomerate and it needs to be stabilized so the road will move into the hill and this will become a really nice pedestrian area with a little trail and some things like that. 

This from right here on, is restored.  You can see it here again, all of this road comes out 1.9 miles. (come out).  Very challenging project.  Challenging in terms of  getting it out while trying to construct a bridge, taking out a bridge and all the fisheries and thermal issues that go on here.  Why are we doing this?  Well, we’re doing it because of thermal cones in this area.  This is the bridge, by the way, that will be coming out, as well as the wing wall and the riprap in this area.  We’re going to salvage that riprap and it may end up being used at Artist’s Point. 

So the bridge comes out and you can see what will happen. That river is going to form a new channel.  We have the original “as built” plans from Federal Highways so we have an idea of what it looked like before this road was constructed.  And we’ve been out with all sorts of water resource people and fisheries people to look at how best to manage all these new changes in these features. 

These are some of the bank proposals that we’re looking at.  We’re moving out of some of these areas and this is why …..this material comes out and we go back to original grade.  We have lots of ideas for how to keep erosion down and how to stabilize this area. Lots of material will be coming out of this area,

The thermal cones, which you can see here and in the middle, are really critical to this project.  There was no way to widen this road without cutting into these thermal cones.  We didn’t feel comfortable doing that.  They’re very rare, they’re very important and we felt that was just an inappropriate thing to do.  That’s why we’re changing the alignment. Plus the fact that this area is just known for all the debris flows.  Almost all of those parking areas that have sort of a pink look to them were actually formed by debris flows; pushed out.  So the pink slide areas will be removed as well, we’re going to be removing that material because it doesn’t need to be there any longer.  And I’m sure we’ll still have pink slides coming through but that’s part of the natural process and we feel it’s really important to retain as much of the natural process as possible. 

The other part of  this project that’s quite challenging, is the Beryl Springs bridge repair.  This bridge crosses over one of the hottest thermal features in the Park   It’s right next to the River, and it goes into a hillside.  There is really no way to move that alignment around.  We have checked.  How do you create a bridge with hot steam coming up beneath the deck that isn’t going to just scald the road, corrode, eat everything under the sun?  We’ve actually used concrete, and the fix that was done has lasted about 40 years, 40, maybe 50 years.  But now we’ve got to address it again.

 It’s a very difficult challenge and we have Bob Fornier and Hank Hessler and we have lots of experts helping us with this.  These are challenges and they change daily.  And the concern is that we don’t want to do something in terms of construction, that would cause irreparable damage.  

We’re utilizing new materials on this job.  These are quar(?) logs.  Bison and other ungulates in the ecosystem don’t recognize Quar(?).  It’s a coconut fiber and doesn’t contain any of the nitrogen additives that some of the acid products contain or excelsior products or things like that.  Animals in our system recognize straw and excelsior and they are attracted to it because of the nitrogen.  This just goes unnoticed and we’re able to plant willows in it and chop it up and use it to stabilize things.  We can also create a sod mat which we’ll be using in a given area to control erosion. 

We’re very concerned because we’ve got Artic Grayling just coming into Canyon Creek below the falls on the project and we’ve got a lot of exotic fisheries in that area.  However,  they’re pretty valuable to a lot of people and we want to make sure that the work that we do is done very carefully. 

Rim Drive:  More challenging projects.  These projects will impact a lot of people in this room and we’re starting to have meetings, in fact, I think there’s one scheduled for next week for this whole collection of projects. 

This is sort of a map showing the projects area so that you can see it’s quite an extensive area.  It’s both sides of the Canyon so obviously we’re going to have some scheduling problems in terms of how we’re going to construct.  Some of these areas are end of the road so they may have to have closures at Artist’s Point.  So we’re going to have to manage that. 

Part of road construction and resource impact means dealing with visitors and dealing with concessionaires and dealing with Park staff and these.  It’s not just resources. It’s everything when you get right into it all. 

Our concerns here, this is the Chittenden Bridge on the left, that’s where the project starts, goes by Wapiti, Abocon (?), all the way down to Artist’s Point.  One of the important things about the Canyon area, there are very spectacular resources.  You don’t have a sense that you’re looking from one side the other, you feel the Canyon.  We want to make sure that construction activities don’t ruin that feeling, that we don’t get too close to the edge and all of a sudden everybody can see Winnebagos going by on the other side.     

So that’s part of what we’re doing.  The other issue that we have to deal with here are soils and erodeability.   In the 70’s, things were done in this area in terms of drainage that have caused real problems and I’m going to show you some of that in a moment. 

Artist’s Point is a cultural landscape.  Here’s some of the problems that we’re talking about.  See this black scar?  That’s erosion from a drop inlet located right at the base of that parking area and it is eroding the Canyon and causing problems all through this area for the trail up here.   So we need to do something about that, we need to figure out a different way.

So part of what we have to do in our design work is to deal with erosion and some of those kinds of features.  How are we going to make this as spectacular a place as it can be?  Right now it’s pretty sad.  So we’re going to come in, we’re going to use a lot of historic masonry, there’s  lot of material there and we’re going to reconfigure things. 

The Park Foundation has helped us, they have raised nearly a million dollars in partnership to make this project work.  Because some of this is not Federal Highway eligible.  It’s really nice to be able to leverage those partnerships and combine everything that we’re doing into something that really works with the resource and for the Mission of the Park.  It’s not piecemeal anymore, it’s holistic. 

These are some of the things, this is how it used to look on the left.  And the changes that have occurred over time and we’d like to bring back some of that character while making it safe.  Right here, the rocks have fallen off the edge.  We need to come up with a way to stabilize that edge and make it work for visitors that use it now. 

Inspiration Point:  Another tight but beautiful area so we’re looking at ways to make that all function. 

Canyon Horseshoe represents a different cultural landscape of a different era.  This is a mission landscape.  Even though it was based on the idea that visitors were going to be coming in cars they didn’t anticipate Winnebagos.  There is not any oversized vehicle parking designed in this parking lot.  Likewise at Old Faithful.  Currently, busses just take up a bunch of roads.  So we need to address that.  We also need to address the fact that as you come in from this intersection, you are dealing with the intersection, a gas station, the Ranger Station will be in this area and possibly a dump station.  We need to do something about how quickly you get into this point. We’re looking at possibly moving that access down just a bit so that there’s more stacking and staging area and so that the expanded Visitor Center has a little more breathing space. 

The Visitor Center has moved out in the parking lot and that will also cause some changes.  So we need feedback from all of you about how can we make this better, and when we go into construction, how can we make it work?  Because what we’re after is not just the pre planning and how we make all this happen but how do we manage it throughout the life of the project?

Joe Regula (?) has been working on this.  Here are some of the thoughts and designs.  You’ll have plenty of time to look these over because we’re going to be making a round of meetings to involve all of you. 

Dunraven Phase Two:  Lynch and Angermeir(?) are working on this one.  The issues on Phase Two is views and visibility and large expanses of sagebrushy, grassy, type areas that are going to have cuts and fills throughout.  How to make that revegetate quickly so that we don’t have an exotic clover problem?  Or an exotic weed problem? And that’s where we need Dan and all his folks to help. 

And how do we minimize the viewshed?   So we’re going to undulating, that means moving back and forth and changing the angle of those cuts and fills so that they will merge more effectively with this area.  Here you can see two different alignments and you can see that even in 60 years, that upper alignment has not revegetated.  Really difficult area, short growing season, lots of concerns.  Very, very narrow band of topsoil. Here again, and you can see, from one point along the road you can see a whole lot of road.  We’re going to have the same issue on the Mammoth to Gardiner road as well. 

Collecting seeds and planting trees, all of these things will be necessary in this project. The Tower Falls store is part of this project and so is overhanging cliff. 

On overhanging cliff, I don’t know if all of you are aware of this or not, but as you go along you go babump, babump, babump, ba bump as you go traveling along.  That represents V shaped wedges that are faulting.  In ‘96 and ’97 (when)we had high water years, the toe, which is way down on the bottom on Yellowstone River, is moving.  And it’s moving down and transversing all the way up and translating into this material up here.  And our walls are moving.  Big problem.  Huge problem.  Unsolvable problem. So what we’re going to do is stabilize the upper portion and live with it.  We can’t go all the way down to the bottom and build a new terrace.  It’s enormous but we have (?) technical information that will work. 

We also need to sneak by overhanging cliff without disturbing it in any way.  We may have to take a tiny piece off the next corner around because that’s actually tighter but we will do it with extreme care and caution and a lot of you will be there to help.  But I want to emphasize the fact that we spend years working on these projects and we think them through very carefully.  It takes a lot to time, a lot of energy.

And then, of course, there’s the bear issue in the Tower area.  These are the black bears this time that are all over everywhere and seem to be more and more so.  Rebuilding that road will help with some of the stacking and staging for bears.  It’s not going to help in terms of bears being in habitat doing what bears do, visitors doing what visitors do but it will help with some of the animal jams. 

Lamar River bridge:  I just wanted to mention this in the Tower area road.  This is an ’08 project and at this point in time, and it may change again, we are looking at a new bridge near the old bridge but just upstream a bit.  That means that we can construct that bridge and then tie over so we’d have traffic flowing all the time.

 The problem is that the old bridge is a very unique bridge.  It has some of the most spectacular engineering underneath.  So in terms of the (?)concerns it’s a unique bridge.  We can’t do half structure construction because it’s just not wide enough.  Our problem is that the heavy loads going over this are really causing problems for this bridge.  So, we’re going to need to be talking to all of you about this.

 At the same time that we’re coming down out of Dunraven we’d like to address some of the parking and asphalt type concerns, circulation concerns in the Roosevelt area with a need to revisit how we’re going to deal with the parking area around the lodge and some of those features as well as the intersection at that area.   

Lot’s happening in the Fishing Bridge area.  It’s extremely rich in archeology, ethnography, T and E species, plus all the fisheries issues and the new issues of Whirling Disease and backwater berms and some of the unique geological features in this area.  It’s a very exciting area.  It also has historic properties.  It has a cultural landscape throughout the middle of it.  We’re still trying to decide whether we’re going to widen just one side or whether we’re going to utilize parts of the parking area around the store and create two one- ways flowing through that area. And we need much more involvement from concession staff and business management staff to be able to make those decisions. But these are some of the complicated issues in these areas 

Norris to Golden Gate:  Another one.  Lots of issues.  We’re looking at a potential reroute in the Frying Pan Springs area because of the fact that we’ve had a lot of serious accidents there.  And there really is no way to get by that area easily. So we are looking at a reroute for that.

Sitting in the middle of the first phase of this project is a National Register Landmark, Obsidian Cliff, a cultural landscape down below and some headwalls that are just beautiful.  I urge you to get out and take a look at them, they’re just gorgeous headwalls.

 Obsidian Creek has a lot of heavy metals in it, lots of arsenic and things like that. So, as we turn over soils and we deal with culvert widening to one side, or whatever, we need to be very careful about what we do in those areas so as to not disturb and release all of those chemicals.

This is the designed landscape at the base here and we have to figure out how to move the road through that area without causing problems.

 And then, there’s the issue of the bridges, this is actually Phase Two, the area near Indian Creek campground.  Over here you can see we’ve got two bridges that are going to have to be dealt with.   This one over Glen Creek and this one into the campground.  And these are going to be interesting, because as you can tell from the vegetation, there are lots of wetlands.  Lots of wetlands issues.  And we’re looking at a potential, this is also a soldier bridge, so we’ve got Section 106 involved in this, and one of the preliminary thinking is, thoughts are, that we would utilize a longer structure here, a longer bridge which means some that changes would occur to wetlands if that does occur.

Eleanor Williams Clark:  Yes?

Male Voice:  You said Glen Creek.  Where are we?  Isn’t that Gardner River?

Eleanor Williams Clark:  It is Gardner River, I’m sorry, yeah.  This is going down to Sheepeater Cliff area right there, sorry. 

Eleanor Williams Clark:   So this area, and we need to incorporate the railings in this to mitigate the Soldier Bridge loss, (S?) already let us know that.  So complicated design, with lots of fisheries, wetlands, archeological, T and E species types of issues.  Habitat is going to be a bigger T and E issue here than crossings because bears utilize corms and digging and outpaths and things like that.   But again we’ll have to have Section 7 consultation on all of this, we will deal with the Corp constantly.  Shippoes (?) will be involved, DEQ, we have a whole list of people we consult with regularly.

 
Old Faithful Comprehensive Landscape Plan:  Another out year project.  This is an ‘08 project; ‘008-’09.  Hank Hessler (?) helped us with some of the things going on here.  He noted that there’s an interesting coincidence between when all the large paving was done in the ‘70s and changes in the Geyer Basin.   This is a shallow recharge system, hydrologically, and by creating an impervious surface through the asphalt, you’re not allowing any of that runoff to occur the way it did originally.  It doesn’t go into the same places, it goes into drop inlets and things like that.  So we need to take a look at that.  The other thing is that Old Faithful is a cultural landscape and early on people had a sense of what was the front and what was the back.  Now, everybody’s arriving to the back and they’re very confused. 

There’s that slide that looked at the historic landscape and we actually have a landscape plan.  And then you can see what happened when we put in this overpass.  All the water stopped at the base of this and did not  move forward.  Jen feels that this is not only (Jen and Mary) wetland area but this is also prime rare plant habitat.  So we need to address this and this is going to take a lot of time for Mary’s wetland crew and Jen’s crew to go out and look at how to deal with this.

It’s likely that this will be moved to a different location and something else will be looked at.  We’re studying lots of different ways.  The problem is, as you all know, getting into Old Faithful is not too bad, it’s the pulses coming out that represent an engineering challenge and getting people through that area, going both directions, in a timely fashion.

Lot of people, lot of asphalt.  You know, this cross traffic through here is something we’re studying carefully and we hope to eliminate that entirely so that you’ll come into Old Faithful into one, two or three zones and you won’t do this nightmare of crossing over and bumping into pedestrians and everything else.  We really want some spatial separation between pedestrians.  And we want to clean up that landscape.  This isn’t a very park like way to present Old Faithful. 

One of my personal challenges, we talk about bears and dumps and things like that, and that’s kind of the scenario we’ve got going out here.  We’ve got bleachers, people sitting out for 90 minutes in the hot sun, little kids crying, crawling under the bleachers for a little bit of shade.  Everybody afraid they’re going to miss it and is the way we want to do business?  Is this what we want to do?  It’s also causing constrictions here and this area could be opened up for more wetlands.  There’s some things we can do and we’re looking at it ,looking at it comprehensively both for the pedestrian areas as well as the vehicular areas.  

Male Voice:  Eleanor?

Eleanor Williams Clark: Yes?

Male Voice:  While(?) you have the picture up

Eleanor Williams Clark:  Go back?

Male Voice:   Yeah.   Well, dream for us a little bit then .  You’ve got 2000 people out there.  What are you going to do with them?

Eleanor Williams Clark:  Well…

Male Voice:  I’d love to hear

Eleanor Williams Clark:   Ok.  Well, just a dream and we’ve looked at a lot of scenarios and what we’re looking at is potentially  moving this boardwalk back a little bit into the trees a little further and providing some kind of shaded element and we don’t know what yet.  You know, we’re not sure, but to provide something that enhances that experience so they’re not just sitting out in the hot sun.

 We’ve also talked about putting up message boards or something that say “The Geyser’s not going to go off for another 50 minutes, you could do this walk or that walk, or whatever” in the interim and I’ll show you.  I’ve actually got an example of some of the dreaming. 

We’re also talking about utilizing something along the lines of  the old Reamer(?) structure from the Gardiner depot, not exactly, because we don’t want something that’s high maintenance.  We’ve talked about canvas and Mylar.  The problem is that we have high UV here and wind and there’re some problems with that.  But we’re looking at, you know, could we do some kind of shade structure so it’s not just open bleachers?  Can we establish a sense of scale and shelter and a framework for visitors in this area so that when pedestrians don’t get out there and go, “Oh, the ground’s hot.  The Obsidian’s hot. The asphalts hot.”   They’re lost, they’re unhappy, they’re stressed.  This isn’t a good experience.  We’d like to produce some scale and some landscape treatment in this area. 

Male Voice:  Yeah,  but it’s been an historic experience!

Eleanor Williams Clark:   It’ll still be the historic experience!  They’ll just be a little shaded. 

(garbled audience voices, laughter)

Eleanor Williams Clark:  Comfort isn’t a part of …laughs…We’ll talk.  We’ll talk

(laughter)

Eleanor Williams Clark:  I’ve got to keep moving on this so I don’t run out of time.

Gardner to Golden Gate:  This is an area where we’ll likely be looking at a bypass of the Mammoth area and the campground because we need to deal with  getting people in and out of this area.  We may be looking at new alignments, we’ve been studying some.  The issue here is basically that the left side of the canyon, as you’re looking down canyon, has less stability than the right side.  More massive mudflows, especially on the lower end have occurred on the left side of the canyon than on the right side.  The right side is crumbly, no doubt about that, and everybody is aware of that as they drive by.  We need to do something about that.

This is also prime bighorn sheep habitat.  It’s escape habitat for sheep, all those little pinnacle cliffs, those unstable edges, are where the sheep hang out and flee.  That’s where they live.  Sheep are not like some of the other ungulates, I understand from the Resource people.  They don’t mobilize and recolonize easily at all.  You move their habitat and that’s kind of it for the population.  So we need to be very careful about what we do there.  Some of the things that we’ve talked about here, are a half bridge, a rock shelter, over the road, keeping the road in it’s current place.  Sheep could go over and use and the cars could go through.  We don’t know yet, though.  Lot’s more study for that one. 

And in the end, and I’m just about done, I just want to say it takes a team of people and it takes people willing to share resource information and understanding.   And it takes dialogue.  And it takes controversy.  It takes people willing to argue through things and discuss things and continually evolve.  Because it’s a creative, inventive process. 

This is not road construction in the rest of US.  This is road construction in a fragile, resource laden area serving lots of visitors.  It’s a stage for those visitors.  It’s a place for them to traverse through the Park and enjoy it and understand it. 

There needs to be magic in what we do.  We have to do it very thoughtfully, all of us working together to be able to create those engineering structures and those facilities that will serve us and will provide for the mission of the Park.  Any questions? 

Male Voice:  While  Zehra gets loaded up here, we probably have time for a couple of questions.

Eleanor Williams Clark:  It’s a lot of resource information I realize.  (laughs)  Go ahead Paul

Paul:  What’s the date for Gibbon River bridge being built?  Is there a date?

Eleanor Williams Clark:  That project is going to be an ’06 project and we’re not yet sure  it’s going to start this coming fall, actually, it’s going to be fall of ’05 or spring of ’06.  And the bridge, right now the thinking is the bridge will need to be part of the first part of that process because we’ve got to get the material for the masonry.  We’d hoped to be able to build it off line and tie the two together later but it looks like we’re going to have to deal with it sooner rather than later.  And the pier won’t go into the water that’s one of the innovative parts of the new design.  It spans edge to edge. 

Male Voice:  So when you redesign a road or just like the Tower to Canyon why does that have to be widened so much and so many piers removed?   What is the reason?

Eleanor Williams Clark:   The question is why, when we redesign a road, why does it have to be widened?  Because we have a Park wide road standard that looks at all of the traffic flow on all of the roads in the Park and the five different entrances.  And in order to continue at the level of numbers and the type of vehicles, longer vehicles, that we have, even though they’re low in percentage, they do impact the traffic flow.  There are certain standards that have to be met in order to meet safety requirements.  So we have to widen them.  We either have to decide that we’re not going to have any long vehicles ever, which is pretty hard to do when you’re servicing 13, 12 different areas in the Park and you have five entrances.  And I’m not sure you could even get away with…you can’t go too narrow around here without causing all sorts of constrictions.  You end up with too many mixes of users, you end up with bicycle traffic, traffic jams due to wildlife, and longer equipment operating on those roads.  It just becomes a huge problem

So the decision was made, actually almost 20 years ago, to go with a Park wide standard that’s 30 feet and it will be narrowed where we have exceptional resources.  Dunraven is only 24 feet due to those exceptional resources and the fact that it’s one of the least used roads in the Park.