During the period of Labor Day through Oct. 15 (when the permit period ended), I hiked from six Central Cascades Wilderness Permit Trailheads for Day hiking. As a good citizen, I purchased the proper permits on Recreation.gov.

I hiked between 10 and 15 miles on the trails each time.

My experience was that there continued to be no-shows. For instance, when I hiked the Obsidian Trail the site indicated I got the last permit. However, I saw only five people on the trail and one I spoke to indicated he did not have a permit.

I agree with the author of the recent Bulletin article Michael Kohn that the trails are less crowded. During my six hikes I saw between zero and 11 people for each hike. Is that the goal of the Forest Service? Personally I can’t think of a better healthy activity than for people to get out and experience Central Oregon’s beautiful wilderness areas. I would not want to hinder this participation by any means. This permit system seems to be doing just that. Only once did I see as many as 11 people using these “overused” or “heavy use” areas. The average was five or six. What a shame.

There may be heavier usage during the summer month prior to Labor Day. Therefore why not stop the permit system on Labor Day?

I am not sure what criteria is used to designate an area as “heavy use.” But I did not see any evidence of that. I did see some deep wear on the trails but then that was mostly due to the Forestry policy of attempting to limit your wilderness experience to between 12 and 24 inches of trail width. The Forest Service places rocks and trees and limbs on the sides of the trail to force you to that 12 to 24 inches of terra firma. Even when there was a beautiful photo op of a river or waterfall — they would attempt to block you so you could not see it.

This 12-24 policy from my observation accomplishes the following: It centralizes the trail wear instead of spreading the wear pattern out. This forces water run off to a smaller area forcing increase erosion. When I hike, I attempt to walk on the shoulder of the trail to help spread out the water wear instead of centralizing it. However, this is not always possible due to the material placed along the trail by the Forest Service. And I end up in 5 or 6 inches of dust.

I would call on the Forest Service to encourage a more spread-out wear pattern by allowing a wider trail path. Currently what happens is that due to their restrictive 12-24 policy — the trail is deemed over-used and it is blocked off and a new trail is started to let the old trail heal. Instead of using money and resources to do this, all they would have to do is to allow a wider trail to begin with. If they have money and resources to put into the trail system, they could then put a trail in for the exclusive use by horses etc. The use of horses is a huge stress on the trails. Isolating the trail to just hikers would go a long way towards preventing “over-use” and wear.

I would encourage the Forest Service to do everything they can to not hinder the use of our trails in seeing the beauty that Central Oregon has to offer. I would suggest that they end the permit system on Labor Day. If they feel they need a permit system at all — make it available at the trailhead instead of requiring that people pay online to walk on public lands.

Not being a backpacker, I can’t speak for that usage of our forests. There may need to be designated areas for their tents. I would not want to see the day hikers punished for what the overnighters do.

My anecdotal experience is that the permit system is impacting the usage of our forests. Many of those I’ve spoken to want to be able to wake up in the morning and decide to take a hike in our wilderness areas. And they are even afraid to go to the areas where no permits are required because they are confused as to which areas require permits and which don’t.

Let’s do everything we can to encourage the use of our beautiful Central Oregon wilderness areas.

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