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Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?

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Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?

#41

Post by codyb »

npongratz wrote: post #18
codyb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A gondola ride to Everest would be awful. A quick ascent to that height would virtually guarantee some pretty awful side effects for most passengers. I certainly wouldn't want to be on it.

Millions of people ascend to the height of Everest's summit every day, extremely quickly. I imagine that such a purpose-built gondola would, like modern jets, have a pressurized cabin.

Millions of people haven't even summited Everest (much less everyday, can you imagine? It's like Dane Cook's skit about thousands of firefighters). The numbers around 4,000 according to a quick google search. And it's a multi day trip with plenty of acclimatization stops. Not only that but 100s of those 4000 have perished.

It's not some trivial walk around the park just because it's not considered one of the hardest summits in the world.

As for whether or not the gondola would be a good thing, I guess that'd depend on a lot of feasibility studies and cost analysis (cost to the environment, to the local populations way of life, monetary costs).

Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?

#42

Post by raldi »

pmjordan wrote: post #31
raldi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A gondola ride to the bottom of the Grand Canyon would be like a gondola ride to the top of Everest. Yeah! Oh wait, you mean bad. Counterpoint: I once rode a sled down a shiny metal track to get down from the Great Wall of China, instead of walking back down the equivalent of 20 flights of steps. It was great! http://kiplingandclark.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/mutian... If they'd also had a gondola to ride up in…

Yes, the Great wall of China, that strange natural phenomenon, formed by tectonic forces over millions of years.

Why is that relevant? Would the Grand Canyon be less grand if it was only a couple millennia old?

Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?

#43

Post by Fede_V »

nsxwolf wrote: post #35
Fede_V wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because those people have no business being there. Those mountains are for genuine climbers that can earn their ascent there, not idiots with too much money and no respect for a mountain, who have sherpas basically push them to the top. I hate this ridiculously entitled attitude. If you aren't a great climber in fantastic physical shape, just don't go to Everest. I have the same kind of contempt for people who…

That's mountain climbing elitism. The "great climbers" made it look cool, then others with more money than skill figured out their own way to do it, and had a great time to boot. I'm sure that drives elitists nuts, kind of like how I'm sure software hackers building with Arduino makes EE majors nuts.

A better analogy would be if an software hacker paid for several starving EE students to come build an amazing Arduino project for their child's science fair, then bragged to everyone about how smart their child is.

Alternatively, imagine Larry Ellison paying for a shitload of comp-sci PhD students to comb through The Art of Programming to look for mistakes, only to submit them under his name so he could get his own cheque from Knuth?

Earnest hobbyism and trying to learn new things is awesome and should be strongly encouraged in everyone. Buying your way to the top and cheapening everyone else's experience is crass and a good way be shunned in almost any social setting.

Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?

#44

Post by raldi »

Fede_V wrote: post #26
sp332 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A gondola ride to the top of Everest would be awesome. Right now, 1.4% of the people who try to summit it die. That's ludicrous and totally indefensible. Anyway it's not as wild as it used to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Everest#Everest_economy

That's because those people have no business being there. Those mountains are for genuine climbers that can earn their ascent there, not idiots with too much money and no respect for a mountain, who have sherpas basically push them to the top. I hate this ridiculously entitled attitude. If you aren't a great climber in fantastic physical shape, just don't go to Everest. I have the same kind of contempt for people who…

One might similarly say people in wheelchairs have no business seeing the view from a tall building, or that only able-bodied seamen deserve to travel around the world.

Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?

#45

Post by ebbv »

peteorpeter wrote: post #39

The price of solitude is effort. Don't want to share nature with others? Walk a mile and you will filter 99% of humanity. Three miles uphill will filter 99.9%. My trip to the Grand Canyon was tailored for solitude. We drove hours to get to a trailhead on the North Rim, hiked a a steep trail down, camped (by a hard-to-believe falls/spring), and hiked up and out by moonlight to avoid the heat. I don't mean to sound har…

The proposed development doesn't expose people to nature any more than a shrub in the middle of a shopping mall does. It is simply trying to convert one of the greatest natural wonders in the world into a cash grab for greedy, short sighted developers.

Preservation of natural beauty like the Grand Canyon is one of the most important functions of government. Allowing this would be a disaster.

Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?

#46

Post by saganus »

raldi wrote: post #42
pmjordan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the Great wall of China, that strange natural phenomenon, formed by tectonic forces over millions of years.

Why is that relevant? Would the Grand Canyon be less grand if it was only a couple millennia old?

I think he means the fact that the GW is man-made instead of a natural phenomenon.

Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?

#47

Post by danielweber »

japhyr wrote: post #4

A gondola ride to the bottom of the Grand Canyon would be like a gondola ride to the top of Everest. These projects are deeply frustrating because all the developers have to do is get them built once - they can essentially fail as many times as they need to in order to get their project built. If you oppose this kind of project, you have to succeed in your efforts over and over again. If you fail once, the wild natur…

In high school, every Monday my geology teacher Mr. Weinle would show slides from a national park he visited. One of them -- I don't remember which -- had an asphalt sidewalk running through it. He said "I was mad as hell when I saw this. This is nature! You should protect it!"

Then he switched slides to the next picture he took: it showed a man with leg braces walking through the park. He held up his fingers and said "at this point I felt about this tall."

These parks don't just exist in a vacuum. They exist so that people can enjoy them.

I'm not necessarily endorsing this modification to the Grand Canyon. There is value in preserving it for the future as is, and there is also value in making it accessible. It's a trade-off. Some parks -- and I don't just mean the flat ones, since the amazing geology generally happens where there is significant vertical distance involved -- should be accessible even to those with special needs. Maybe enough are already. Maybe not.

Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?

#48

Post by twright »

rayiner wrote: post #36

Irrigating the southwest in the first place was a Big Government mistake. That's the real disaster here. The Grand Canyon is pretty, but it's just a big ravine. Damming up the Colorado so people in Tuscon can have grass lawns is the real crime.

Hayduke lives!

Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?

#49

Post by sosuke »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #28
sosuke wrote: post #7

I couldn't get a real sense of just where this development wanted to be, what it looked like: http://grandcanyonescalade.com/comparison-chart-grand-canyon... That monstrosity should absolutely not be built.

The Canyon is huge; about 250 miles long. There's room for some tourist friendly stuff there, especially if it gets people interested in geology and conservation. I feel like anytime there's a proposal to do anything of value there's always some, largely, neckbeardish outrage. This all just sounds like overly political correct, and often corrupt, tribal politics. A cable-car ride would be a wonderful experience. If I…

The gondola is certainly nifty, but the resort could be built a couple miles away from the rim without impacting the tourist friendly improvement. Build a couple miles away, have a dedicated road to the gondola facility at the rim. There are compromises to be had, but like you said it sounds like there isn't a lot of give and take, just outrage and corruption.
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