http://www.sbsun.com/search/ci_4763866A classic clash over canyon
Andrew Silva, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 12/03/2006 12:00:00 AM PST
SURPRISE CANYON - David Bricker first rode up this narrow, lush canyon bordered by desert wilderness just outside Death Valley on a small Honda-90 dirt bike in 1969.
A passable gravel road through the verdant canyon up a mountainside in Inyo County was first established in the 1870s as access to the silver-mining town of Panamint City, situated nearly 4,000 feet above the valley floor.
Today the canyon is at the center of a classic preservation-versus-use conflict, like many that have erupted across the Mojave Desert for the past two decades.
Closed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to off-highway vehicles in 2001 as part of a legal settlement with environmentalists, the canyon is the subject of a new suit by recreational off-roaders and people who have bought property in the ghost town and now want road access to their land.
The emotional conflict is spelled out inside a phone-book sized, red-metal box at the floor of the canyon in a spot overlooking the gurgling creek a few feet below. Hikers can sign in and leave comments.
"It's beautiful. Keep the vehicles out," one hiker wrote.
"No vehicles. No way," another entry reads.
"Open the canyon to everyone. Vehicles too," wrote another.
For those seeking to drive up the canyon, the matter centers on the government keeping its 150-year-old promise that private property owners are entitled to have access to their own land.
Environmentalists argue the canyon is a unique resource that deserves to be protected.
"There are thousands of miles of routes and hundreds of thousands of acres for off-road vehicle use," said Howard Gross of the National Parks Conservation Association. "Only a handful of people want access to Surprise Canyon. It might be fun to draw a mustache on Mount Rushmore, but most people would find that behavior inappropriate and insulting."
It's one of the wettest, lushest canyons in the Panamint Range, the mountains that mark the western boundary of one of the driest places on Earth.
From the days when a small motorcycle or a pickup truck could make it to the remote town, the area has changed. And over the past 130 years, it's undergone remarkable transformations with several boom-and-bust cycles - each boom interrupted by one of the roaring gully washers that wiped out mining operations.
Back in the canyon the day before Thanksgiving, the 50-year-old Bricker this time sported a backpack instead of a motorcycle helmet as he, his 18-year-old son and a friend scrambled through heavy brush and down tricky waterfalls as they neared the end of a multi-day camping trip to the historic ghost town.
The string of several cascading waterfalls, tucked between sculpted white granite walls, were once buried under tons of gravel. The falls were uncovered in 1984 by a huge storm that also flushed out the road and ended the most recent mining effort.
Half-buried rusting hulks of trucks and mining equipment dot the rugged canyon floor, entombed testaments to the power of a desert cloudburst.
Instead of a road, there's now a challenging hiking trail requiring tough stretches of bushwhacking, some brief rock-climbing moves, and splashing through inch-deep water in the middle of the creek.
"I have mixed feelings," said Bricker, who grew up in Southern California before moving to New York 20 years ago but never losing his fascination with Death Valley and the surrounding desert.
As he adjusted his pack straps, standing in a spot that was relatively wide at about 50 feet, he explained: "I'm ecology-minded at heart, but this habitat isn't much different from other habitats in the Panamints."
After the great flood of 1984, the only vehicles that could get up the canyon were the hardiest Jeeps and other four-wheel-drive vehicles equipped with winches.
And while there are many other canyons in the Panamints open to off-road recreation, by the 1990s, Surprise Canyon had become legendary among extreme off-roaders.
Winches mounted on the rigs hoisted the vehicles up the steep, rocky waterfalls.
Large rocks were maneuvered into the creek to fill in impassable gaps.
The challenging nature of the route isn't the reason for the lawsuit, plaintiffs contend.
"It's not the off-roading; it's the destination," said Bryan Lollich, a 32-year-old Colorado Springs, Colo., resident who bought land in Panamint City after the closure in 2001. "Everyone that's driven up that road has fallen in love with Panamint City."
Even when the canyon was closed, the BLM promised to give those who owned property in the ghost town a key to the newly erected gate.
More than five years later, that hasn't happened.
"These groups want to see all that history preserved. Without the off-highway vehicle crowd, it's not going to be preserved," Lollich said by phone from his Colorado home.
When Death Valley was upgraded and expanded from a national monument to a national park in 1994, the route through Surprise Canyon was designated a "cherry stem," meaning the 60-foot-wide right-of-way was specifically omitted from the new wilderness area through which it runs.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who shepherded the California Desert Protection Act through Congress in 1994, supported the "cherry stem" at the time because there were valid mining claims in Panamint City and it was unknown if mining would resume.
But in a December 2005 letter, she and California's junior senator, Democrat Barbara Boxer, also urged officials to close the canyon to vehicles permanently.
"However, it is our understanding that no mining activity has taken place for decades and it appears that the current land owners have no interest in mining. Consequently, recreational off-roading in Surprise Canyon should not be viewed as an authorized activity under the California Desert Protection Act," the senators wrote.
Environmentalists charge that the off-roaders bought property in the abandoned town only to give them legal leverage to force the canyon open.
That's irrelevant, plaintiffs and their attorney said, because the government cannot bar access to someone's private property.
"Congress granted rights to counties and the public on these roads, and the federal government can't take them away," Wyoming attorney Karen Budd-Falen said.
Separate from the lawsuits, the BLM and the National Park Service are nearing the end of an environmental-review process to decide what to do with the canyon.
The environmental-impact statement is due out before spring and will analyze several options.
Surprise Canyon could remain closed. It could be reopened to vehicles. It could be opened to vehicles with tight restrictions on how far up they can go or how many could go at a time.
Lollich, the Panamint City property owner, said access all the way up must be allowed.
For environmentalists, the choice is stark.
"Water in the desert is so rare & . It's a blessing. It sort of feels like you're cheating," said Gross of the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit group that has applied to intervene in the off-roaders' suit.
As he strode up the steep trail bordered by lush vegetation with clear water splashing over the rocks, he spread his arms and asked: "This is going to be a highway?"
Standing among the cottonwoods and willows, one can look out over the nearly barren Panamint Valley, a striking contrast.
In the dry language of the BLM's environmental assessment that accompanied the 2001 closure, an official wrote: "The diversity of vegetative communities in Surprise Canyon contribute to providing niches for a diverse wildlife community, `perhaps one of the most diverse and significant in the California Desert Conservation Area."'
With bighorn sheep, the Panamint alligator lizard and endangered birds thriving on the perennial water and the oasis of vegetation, allowing vehicles back in the canyon would damage a rare and fragile ecosystem, environmentalists argue.
Bigger species seem more common in the canyon since the closure, they say.
"We saw a bighorn (sheep)," said Samantha Raven, 30, of San Raphael as she and a friend descended from spending a night at Panamint City, which she loved.
"(The trail) was really tough," said her companion, Chuck Collingwood, 50, also of San Raphael, who added he also likes to go four-wheeling. "But I have a little trouble with a road through a stream."
Another set of hikers that same day said they would love to be able to ride their motorcycles up the canyon, and that it should be reopened before the overgrowth made it absolutely impassable.
"Riders are respectful of the trail," said Alisha Young, 36, of Santa Rosa.
Rebuilding the road to its pre-1984 condition probably won't get serious consideration, said Richard Crowe, a land-use planner in the BLM's Ridgecrest office and the leader for the environmental-impact statement.
There are other canyons with water in the Panamints, so species do have other options, Crowe said, but the canyon's relative importance to the desert web of life is one of the questions being examined.
A 2004 study of snails and other invertebrates, some of which are unique to that part of the Mojave, warned that off-road vehicles in Surprise Canyon could harm species directly and also upset the cycle of regrowth that follows flash floods.
