RRC Archives

I would venture to say that we/climbers need the oil company to keep the roads in the Southern Region in shape, especially that long hill that goes down past the Lode. Spragwa, your right... it is amazing that the oil companies haven't complained about all the damage inflicted on these roads by all other users, not just climbers.

Anyone been up to Drive-By recently? You used to be able to get right up to it in your car no problem...hence the name Drive-By, duh, but now unless you have a heavy duty 4x4 and some good ground clearance forget it. You gotta park and walk, not that the walk is bad or anything. Imagine if the main road down to the Lode got like the road to Drive-By? It would be a hell of a walk from the top of that hill to The Arena

Just a guess but I would venture to say that having that hill graveled and regraded ain't cheap.

Would the Southern Region be worth much if that hill became impassable, or was super expensive to have regraded 2 times a year. Just some food for thought.

I am not saying that oil companies are anywhere near done with the roads back there but just like Solar/Darkside, they will be done some day and when they are they obviously don't care much about what they leave behind

rhunt. That big hill near the motherlode is the main road that I was saying is state maintained. That through road is the only one though.

I didn't realize that the main road down into the Southern Region was state maintained.... this is a good thing for the long term viability of that area.

Spragwa, I understand it is a state 'maintained' road, that cool, and I have seem it go from very bad to better and so on, so I guess it does get maintained...cool

This whole dirt road thing has been my biggest concern with the Murray pruchase. There have been times in the past, when the motherlode was all the rage, that the big hill was impassable. I hate to see myself or anyone who has invested money into the new land not be able to get their car back there...not all of us have SUV's. If that happens, I can just imagine people complaining to the RRGCC to fix the roads. Will it be the responsiblity of the RRGCC to fix the roads.

Hmm. I still think that Shannon and John are the best ones to address that. Tell you what. I'll e-mail Shannon and let her know that this question came up. I've given what little info I have on the subject. Sorry everyone but I don't really know much about what has been addressed on many issues. Still I KNOW that this has come up and has been discussed.

Spragwa, Thanks that would be cool. I'm sure this issue has already been discussed, just wondering what the RRGCC has come up with.

Done and Done. I e-mailed her. John might get back on the site sometime and address this issue too.

Except for the main road Spragwa was talking about and some FS roads, most of the access roads to the crags are maintained by Charmane Oil Co. who is leasing all of the oil rights from the actual owners of the oil rights. Rather than try to name all of the oil right owners (about a dozen), for convenience sake, I'll just refer to Charmane as the "owner".

In short, Charmane will likely continue to do what it has in the past. They'll maintain wells (yes, they are active) and will have to maintain roads to have access to the wells (both capped and active). Their rights extend only to the oil rights and extraction of the oil. That essentially means they can go where they need to in order to extract oil. The roads were put in by Charmane and they have no obligation to the surface right owner (now Mattie Murray, soon to be RRGCC) to maintain them. The surface owner can go anywhere on the property of course, but can't interfere with the oil operations. Thus, blocking the oil wells is bad. Using the roads, no problem. Tearing up the roads, maybe a problem. I think the oil trucks are much heavier and heartier than our little SUV's and our presence so far hasn't made much difference to them. But good relations with Charmane will be critical. We already have had several discussions with them and they're pretty nice folks and easy to work with. Obviously, when we have a crag like Drive-by that has a well at the based, the access road to the base will be maintained only as long as the oil is active. Since it now isn't active, they haven't bothered to maintain it.

Now for the long term issue...The RRGCC will have to manage the area in some way and to some extent. [By "management", I mean it in its broadest sense, not in a narrow "micro'-managemment" sense, or management like the FS or St. Park does, or management that just means there will be restrictions, etc.]. Of course, if it ain't broke, we don't need to fix it. But, you can imagine, for example, if parking at a crag becomes crowded to the point that it's blocking access to the wells, then we'll need to do something to direct climbers in the right spots. I'm sure logical solutions will be evident (eg. we can always park lower down and hike in, or make a bigger parking area, etc.). I think we all need to realize that the way things happen to be right now, may not necessarily be the ideal condition for climbers. Perhaps we don't really want cars parked at the base of the crags. Or perhaps we can minimize heavy traffic by having parking farther away. Those are standard management tools that public and private land managers and others typically use.

Management of the property has been considered by the Task Force and in general, I don't think it was an issue that has to have much action for now, but it will require planning for possible action in the future. Of course, that's a lower priority than actually buying the land for now. But we are thinking about exactly what kind of experience climbers really want/need from the Southern Region. Drive up climbing gym? Moderate approach/moderate wildness? Harder approach/ more wildness? Or perhaps a mix. We have discussed that much of the developed areas are so accessible to vehicles, so that perhaps it's impossible to improve the natural setting. But it may be possible to control some access to some areas like Solar/Dark Side, for instance. If it had a good parking area near the pond and a moderate length approach along a well maintained trail, would that help the overall feel of the place? These are thoughts off the top of my head, and no decisions have been made by the RRGCC. I just thought I'd relate a bit of the consideration going into the area as an example of how the RRGCC is dealing with the purchase.

Your input as member/climbers is very important. If you'd like to have a greater effect than just posting a rant on a BBS, then sign up to be on a special RRGCC task force that will address your concerns and areas of expertise. Discourage climbers from ranting as if the RRGCC has already decided to manage it a certain way. Our goal is to manage it in a way that is consistent with the philosophy of the RRGCC and is what climbers want and need.

the dam at Solar collector was rebuilt by the oil company.after they rebuilt it they drove across.plugged all the injection wells.egressed,then cut the dam,draining the pond.

I spoke to the foreman and he wasn't happy about having to manipulate all of his equipment around a couple of climbers cars that were parked by the road.

Also, there is a way to improve a dirt road the more you drive across it.
Drive on the high spots and the fins of mud that are sticking up.What that does is squishes the mud back into the ruts.You wanna kinda fold it in on itself.Does that make sense???
Don't drive through the ruts.that just makes them deeper.