Examples of policy adjustments include: adoption of a "Do Not Touch" regulation; prohibition of smoking, eating and drinking inside the cave; prohibition of tripods, which are unwieldy and hazardous to speleothems; adoption of a "turn-offthe-lights-behind-you" policy to minimize the growth of moss on cave surfaces and to keep members of the tour together; limitation of tour size to 40 people (early 1970's) and to 30 people (late 1970's) so that the tour guide may keep his group under surveillance. Construction of facilities and the adoption of regulations contribute to the preservation of the resource but they also transform it. Too much development can result in too much transformation. Every space has a carrying capacity; how to determine carrying capacity is a matter of judgment and, in many cases, of trial and error. The largest number of people to tour Lehman Caves in a single year was 47,000 in 1972. In 1985 attendance was about 37,000. With a limit of 30 people per tour, the cave has an absolute carrying capacity of 750 people per day. The monument is open year round, so if every tour were full every day of the year, the annual absolute carrying capacity would be 273,750 people. Keeping in mind however, that about 90% of the annual visitors arrive between April and October, a seven-month period, this figure must be reduced to a realistic carrying capacity each year of approximately 175,000. Some additional changes might be made at Lehman Caves to increase its carrying capacity. More tunnels could be excavated, but this would be drastic, expensive and probably not feasible. The number of hours each day when tours were conducted could be extended. The fact is, however, that Lehman Caves has probably reached the practical limit of its potential for development. If Dr. Waite expects Great Basin National Park to be visited by 500,000 people each year, he should be aware that about 300,000 of them will not get a chance to see Lehman Caves, which he calls the "anchor" of the park. 8 The Baker Creek Cave System and other wild caves: Dr. Waite's thesis describes additional caves, located on the national monument and nearby in the national forest, some of which, he writes, "(represent) the most extensive cave system yet discovered in the Great Basin". One of them, Model Cave, "would provide an excellent laboratory for the study of cave development". Of four shelter caves, he writes: "(all are) significant for their display of pictographs and assortment of speleothems...". He continues: "The caves in the Baker Creek System are all interesting and each one varies in terms of its size and variety of features. At the present time, these 9 caverns still remain in an undeveloped state". Of Snake Creek Cave, Waite writes: "This cave is more extensive and more beautifully decorated than was previously believed, and contains a wide variety of speleothems, including mammalries, dog tooth spar, pure calcite stalactites and twelve-inch aragonite clusters. About 1200 feet of passageways have been surveyed, with a considerable amount left to be mapped. In this cave, as in the others, there is undoubtedly much more area to be discovered, and the removal of rock fill would give access to new passageways."10 Waite, Robert Starr, The Proposed Great Basin National Park: Statements like these suggest that these undeveloped (wild) caves represent an untapped resource, which, if developed, would be of interest to tourists. This is definitely not the case. I am intimately familiar with all of these caves, partly because I was cmployed by the Forest Service to explore them and catalogue their features and hazards. They do not begin to compare with Lehman Caves in configuration or quality. With the exception of the shelter caves, all of them require great skill and extensive experience to negotiate. They are all dangerous and require the explorer to crawl long distances through rough cobble rock, mud and streams. Some of them are filled with water in spring and summer or following periods of heavy precipitation in the mountains. Loose rock in vertical chimneys is a serious hazard in many of them. Most of them require the use of ropes and other sophisticated rockclimbing equipment as well as lights, hard hats, coveralls and food. In addition, they are mazes. Even experienced cavers must excercise great caution to avoid getting lost inside them. In 1973 the Forest Service halted construction of its Graycliffs Campground after all of its roads and spurs had been built because Baker Creek Cave System, situated nearby, was found to be an unacceptable hazard to curious campers. Model Cave, the "excellent laboratory", is a crawlway several thousand feet long with a floor of mud, and prone to flooding. In its entire length there are only two "rooms" large enough to allow a person to stand upright. Its inner recesses cannot normally be reached in a day's time. Breathing is difficult; the air is often stale. And Model Cave contains nothing which cannot be studied to botter advantage and with less effort in almost any other limestone cave in the world. About half of the pictographs of the shelter caves are genuine; the other half were made by the Hollywood poople who made a motion picture in Snake Valley in 1922. The "real" ones were made by Fremont Indians about 700 or 800 years ago, but these are so weathered and faded as to be barely visible. Meanwhile, there are thousands of Fremont pictographs not fur away in Southern Utah and Northern Arizona which are perfectly easy to see and of much greater variety. The speleothems in these shelter caves, contrary to Dr. Waite's statement, are few in number, unspectacular and were virtually destroyed by collectors in 1922 and 1934. They do not merit mentioning. Everything Dr. Waite writes about Snake Creek Cave is somehow untrue. Snake Creek Cave has been thoroughly explored and thoroughly mapped. Except for one room, it consists of hundreds of feet of tight crawlways. Rock fill which could be removed to find new passageways has long since been removed. The entire cave was extensively vandalized before 1900 and almost all of the remaining formations (they were unusually fine) were stripped out prior to 1950. Part of this damage was done by past proprietors of the souvenir shop at Lehman Caves, where the broken formations were sold as "Cave Onyx, not from other wild caves in the vicinity as well. In summary, Dr, Waite is entirely justified in his admiration of Lehman Caves. But would Lehman Caves be better off as part of a national park? Would the public be better served? I do not think so. The Baker Creek Cave System and the other wild caves, on the other hand, have no potential whatever for development. 2) Wheeler Peak 11 This mountain, the highest in the South Snake Range at 13,063 feet, is a very beautiful place. Dr. Waite calls it "the keystone" of the park. It has scenic vistas, dramatic natural landforms and a variety of visual textures in its cover of vegetation. It is quiet. Its air and water are clean. Visible evidence of the activities of human beings is minimal. Wild animals live there. In promoting Wheeler Peuk for national park classification, Dr. Waite has made some misleading statements and created some scenarios which need to be examined because they exaggerate the geological and biological importance of the mountain. 11 Waite, Robert S., Proposed Great Basin National Park--The 65-854 - 87 - 9 For example: Referring to Wheeler Peak, the thesis reads: "Here at least 14,000 feet of Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian and Pennsylvanian strata are exposed, with only minor stratigraphic breaks occuring in the depositional sequence."12 On a later page: "It is 13 also interesting to note that the rock sequence in this range is comparable to the Paleozoic sequence in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, with the lower and upper formations attaining their maximum development in each of the two areas, respectively." These statement are technically correct. But condensations of these statements in the magazine articles imply an additional meaning. "Here 14,000' of strata are exposed comparable in age to the rocks in the Grand Canyon. The culminating point in this massive mountain uplift is Wheeler Peak, the most conspicuous landmark in eastern Nevada. "14 On an adjacent page is a photograph of the 2000-foot rock face of the Wheeler Peak Cirque. And in Dr. Waite's slide lecture: .14,000 feet of exposed strata, rocks found in the same sequence and of the same age as those in the Grand Canyon". The slide on the screen is a fine photograph of the Grand Canyon. Dr. Waite does not have a photograph of the 14,000 feet of exposed strata on Wheeler Peak, which is, after all, only 13,063 feet high and rises above the valley floors only about 8,000 feet. The tallest cliff face is about 2,000 feet from bottom to top. Where is this 14,000 feet of exposed stratu? No where in the South Snake Range is there a view of exposed rock to compare with the hundreds of places in the Grand Canyon where one can see 6,000 feet of it. " ... 12 Waite, Robert Starr, The Proposed Great Basin National Park: 14 Waite, Robert S., "Is it Time...", op. cit., p. 18. |