For a good perspective on this see Ken Burns' documentary series about the creation of the national parks. It will open your eyes to the constant battle the parks face from commercial enterprises, and explains why the parks are such a unique system that should be protected at all costs.
Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?
51–60 of 134 posts
Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?
#52I typically refrain from commenting on how heavy a page is because we're here for the content, not web design critiques. That said, page load for the "As a single page" version of the article generates 349 requests (prior to the ad beacon/analytics calls that are made periodically after loading the page). Those 349 requests pull down >11,000KB in >52 seconds. That's excessive to the tune of an order of magnitude (and really for the page load time, probably 2 orders of magnitude).
Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?
#53A 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 sai…
I see the point you're making. I've been to the Grand Canyon, and it's difficult to get to. Even off the main road, it's 30 slow miles over unpaved dusty, bumpy road to get to the Western rim. If night falls, you're in tough shape because the road is unlit. If you are low on gas, or need a break, there's no place to stop. Even in 2015, the canyon is hard to get to.
But to turn it into a mini-Las Vegas would be a crime.
You can't turn nature into a tourist trap. There's no way the two can co-exist, and nature would lose. It's difficult to get to, yes. But that's the charm of it.
Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You clearly didn't catch the crux of his point - millions of people fly in passenger jets every day at Everest's elevation. All you'd need to do is pressurize the gondola, and there'd be no need for acclimatization.
Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?
#55Earlier 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
>> Right now, 1.4% of the people who try to summit it die. That's ludicrous and totally indefensible. The only problem I have with it is that bodies are rarely taken back and therefore contribute to the pollution of the mountain. Other than that....as long as everyone climbing knows that there is a 1.4% chance of dying, it's fine. I imagine there are extreme sports which have a similar if not higher death ratio,and I…
The only problem I have with it is that bodies are rarely taken back and therefore contribute to the pollution of the mountain.
A dead human body is "pollution"? I guess you can counting the clothing and equipment as pollution or trash, but I would call a dead human body quite "natural".
Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?
#56A 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…
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
I don't get the argument here. Climbing Everest is dangerous, yes. Launching a rocket is dangerous. Going to the bottom of the ocean is dangerous. Putting your head inside a alligator's mouth is dangerous. Walking a tightrope across two tall buildings is dangerous. Space travel is dangerous. Sometimes, dangerous things should just be left alone by most people, not made impotent so any average person can do them. Danger is part of life.
Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?
#57Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?
#58Earlier 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
There are two problems with that. One is that for previous and future traditional ascenders it would "cheapen" the experience. In essence it makes scaling it mundane, so you would have elitists oppose this. The second is that unless you institute a limited lottery system Everest would become littered like mt Fujiyama. So basically nature becomes spoiled by commercial interests. So given those choices, what's the answ…
Everest is already covered in junk and dead bodies. Most of this is hidden by snow, but it's a lot closer to a walking up a snowy trash heap than people want to admit.* A little over 4 thousand people have reached the summet which is about the same number of billionares in the world. So, it feels fairly prestegious even if it's mostly a question of how much your willing to spend to get there.
*Mostly becase people use a small set of trails on their assent, and really don't have the enery to bring their trash down with them. The majority of the mountain is untouched, but the trails get a lot of traffic.
Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Right now, 1.4% of the people who try to summit it die. That's ludicrous and totally indefensible. The only problem I have with it is that bodies are rarely taken back and therefore contribute to the pollution of the mountain. Other than that....as long as everyone climbing knows that there is a 1.4% chance of dying, it's fine. I imagine there are extreme sports which have a similar if not higher death ratio,and I…
The only problem I have with it is that bodies are rarely taken back and therefore contribute to the pollution of the mountain. A dead human body is "pollution"? I guess you can counting the clothing and equipment as pollution or trash, but I would call a dead human body quite "natural".
Well, in an environment where the human body will never decay it's pretty much pollution. Please don't take it wrongly - I don't mean to disrespect those that died there,but it's true that their bodies stay there for years. And how many dead bodies can Mount Everest keep until it looks like a scene from some depiction of hell? 100? 1000? 10000?
Re: Who Can Save the Grand Canyon?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sai…
I see the point you're making. I've been to the Grand Canyon, and it's difficult to get to. Even off the main road, it's 30 slow miles over unpaved dusty, bumpy road to get to the Western rim. If night falls, you're in tough shape because the road is unlit. If you are low on gas, or need a break, there's no place to stop. Even in 2015, the canyon is hard to get to. But to turn it into a mini-Las Vegas would be a crim…
The 'western rim' is not inside the National Park [1]. The 'legit' Grand Canyon, the one covered by the National Park is very accessible (the rim)!