The New Downtown's Effect on Skyline

[cynthia23]

As locals know and others may not, Palm Springs is in the midst of a big downtown redevelopment. When it's done--just a year or two from now--there will be at least two, and possibly three, major new hotels within three blocks of the Skyline trailhead. There will also be thousands of feet of new retail shops, including some major retailers. Last but oh not least, there will be a view 'corridor', i.e. a road, going directly from Palm Canyon to the Desert Museum--very nearly literally to the foot of the Skyline trailhead.

It seems like a no-brainer that this will hugely increase the number of casual tourist hikers trying to make their way up the Desert Museum trail, and it also seems likely it will greatly increase the number of people trying to do Skyline. Given the ragged, confused, and eroded state of the trail, as well as the increasing number of rescues, to suddenly quadruple (or more?) the number of trail users will surely be a calamity. Yet I've heard no discussion within the city government of Palm Springs about dealing with this, nor do we hear anything from the BLM. We're still awaiting the EIR and a discussion of whether, or not, big and crucial chunks of the Skyline trail are going to be given away to the Agua Caliente tribe. If they are, we can expect them to act in their own interest, whatever they deem that to be. They don't care in the slightest about public interest. Just this morning in the local paper I read that the tribe has announced they're going to erect a FOUR STORY parking garage in the parking lot just north of the former hotel, which they just ripped down despite the pleas of preservationists. Four stories! The city council has been debating for months about whether to allow one of the new hotels to be three stories! Yet because of tribal sovereignity, the city of Palm Springs can't act to reign them in. (although they could, actually. If they wanted to get tough, they could tell the ACBCI they won't be supplying water and power and police services to their new, city-code-violating buildings. that, I think, would make the ACBCI be a little more neighborly.) The ACBCI are an opaque and self-interested corporation which due to the misdeeds of our ancestors does not have to follow state or federal laws. So it's anyone's guess what they might do with Skyline, but it won't be anything good, that much is clear.

If they don't get the trail, then what? It seems to me some official body or entity must take 'ownership' of the trail. Something must be done to protect Skyline and the clueless hikers who stumble around on it, but what? Even if the trail had clear official markers showing the original trail, I think it's pretty certain that
BKT/PR seeking Skyliners who just 'have to' cut a minute off their time, would quickly break new shortcuts. However, if there were official markers, I think they might at least be ashamed enough to minimize their shortcutting. Maybe.

What do people think might be the 'solution' for Skyline?

[Wildhorse]

The foreseeable problems caused by the planned growth through redevelopment are huge - from an ecological perspective, that is. I am sorry that Palm Springs is trying to become more like Palm Desert.

An interesting article in the NYT yesterday addressed the relationship between economic growth and carbon in the atmosphere. The adverse effects of economic growth are not limited to carbon, of course. Cynthia has flagged another big problem here. Destruction of species, of biodiversity, is probably the greatest problem.

Here is the link to the NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/busin ... .html?_r=0

[Norris]

It seems to me there are two principal causes of side-trails and short cuts on routes like Skyline. The first is if the normal route is not clear, causing people to create new paths simply by finding their way. That used to be the case on Skyline, though not anymore. The second is if the normal route meanders unnecessarily or loses elevation unnecessarily, causing repeat hikers to become impatient and annoyed. Both of those situations exist or used to exist with Skyline. Once one or more alternative routes have become widely used, it becomes a fools errand to try to route people back onto the original line, particularly if it is more circuitous, and especially if ones only tools are small stones and branches. There are places on the upper portions of the trail around 4000 ft where the original line meanders more and is therefore less used than the newer lines and hikers routinely ignore and step over the stones or branches intended to move them onto the original line.
In situations like these, you have to study the whole trail, using surveying techniques and aerial photographs, to identify a line which is the most logical one, taking into consideration the votes of thousands of feet rather than simply insisting on the original line, and then improve it to the point where it can be followed by a first time hiker in the dark with no hesitation whatsoever. Block off the side trails not chosen by moving sizable boulders and plants onto them. That should do it. But this would be a major project and cost a lot of money. Too bad we didn't recreate the CCC and invest in trails like Skyline when the great recession hit!

[cynthia23]

Well, I'm not religious about the 'real' trail in the sense that I think it's holy ground and not a single foot can be altered. But it is important to consider that it's an actual constructed trail (though it's not known by whom, some actually think it was the CCC!) and that real trails are engineered to avoid eventual destruction by erosion. The real trail has many 'annoying' switchbacks, but those are designed in to prevent the certain erosion that occurs when a trail goes straight up a hillside. I don't know and haven't studied the principles of trail design, but I do know there IS a science to it, and it's not something that can be done randomly, any more than a building can be constructed out of popsicle sticks. Hiker's shortcuts may seem more 'logical', but they're actually not,in the sense of being unsustainable in the long term, and we see the proof of that in the way that many of them are already crumbling and collapsing. An uphill trail that's going to last has to have switchbacks, even though they seem like a 'waste of time' to the Skyliners who are obsessing on 'improving' their times (although, of course, if you're cutting a switchback, you're not actually improving your completion time in any real sense.) So, I'm not at all sympathetic to the 'impatient hiker' thesis. And we see in national parks with heavy ranger patrols that there are certainly lots of 'irritating' trails with switchbacks, yet somehow hikers don't start cutting switchbacks--not because they don't want to, but because they'll get in trouble.

But, having said all that, that doesn't mean that Skyline couldn't have some of the more random bits cut out or rationalized. For instance, most people find the section at around 3500, where the trail swings west over to Tahquitz, an annoying detour, which is why there is a huge shortcut right there. That might be a reasonable spot for a re-rout. There's a few spots like that might be open for discussion. But I think overall, the original trail is actually pretty well designed. Maybe Skyline hikers need to accept that a heavily used trail on a steep, dry mountain can't go straight up, and must switchback back and forth quite a lot, and accept that their completion times are going to be a bit longer as a result. The most important thing is preserving the trail so that many generations of hikers can safely enjoy it.