Re: Government Shutdown has Ended, Washington Authorizes Reopening Yosemite NP

Yosemite National Park reopens to park visitors tonight, October 16, 2013. Visitors can access public areas and roads immediately while facilities and other public services are brought back on-line. Yosemite National Park has been closed since October 1, 2013 due to the government shutdown.

"We are excited to reopen and welcome visitors back to Yosemite," stated park superintendent Don Neubacher. "Autumn is a particularly special season to enjoy Yosemite's colorful grandeur."

Major highways and roads leading into and through Yosemite National Park, including the Glacier Point and Mariposa Grove roads, are open to vehicles. Park visitor centers will reopen and Ranger-led programs will resume on October 17. Visitors are urged to consult the Yosemite Guide for a list of programs.

Valley campgrounds in Yosemite will reopen on October 17. Those with reservations will be able to check in by noon. First come, first serve sites at Camp Four, Wawona and Hodgdon are also available. Delaware North Parks & Resorts at Yosemite, Inc., the park's primary concessioner, is reopening facilities and will begin to welcome guests immediately.

The Ansel Adams Gallery, located in Yosemite Village, will also reopen.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2013 12:12PM by eeek.

It's only for a short while. We'll have to go through all this again in December.

A cynic after my own heart -- I was just saying the same thing!

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The body betrays and the weather conspires, hopefully, not on the same day.

Dear Yosemite Community,

Welcome back! We are grateful that the government shutdown is over and we can resume the important work that each of us do every day for Yosemite. Reopening the park is vital to the community, region and nation. As professionals who are dedicated to public service through the mission of the National Park Service, I ask each of you to personally reach out to our visitors, partners, and friends and welcome them back. Let them know that their engagement and support for our national parks was, and remains, greatly appreciated.

Our friends, visitors, gateway communities, partners, concessioners, and others greatly missed their access to the park. The closure meant economic uncertainty for those whose livelihoods rely on Yosemite. Special memories were lost when weddings and long awaited trips had to be cancelled. So with this in mind, I ask each of you to please work carefully and thoughtfully to help the park to return to full operation, so that we can serve the American public and our international guests again.

In the coming days, we will provide more direction and information about timekeeping, payroll, and personnel actions and other important administrative questions. And before I sign off, I also want to thank those who worked during the shutdown. Your service was greatly appreciated and truly essential. We owe you our deepest gratitude for caretaking the park during this time of uncertainty.

With admiration and respect,

Don Neubacher, on behalf of the Executive Leadership Team

Nice to have the webcams back.

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yosemitejim

Nice to have the webcams back.

Just to be clear, I blame the Republicans in the House of Representatives 100% for the government shutdown. They're solely at fault.


But denying the public access to the Yosemite webcams (and to any of the static information pages on the NPS website) was just the Park Service being spiteful towards the general public in regards to the shutdown.

I doubt that whole Park Service I.T. infrastructure was powered down during government shutdown. They just closed off access to the public to make the public – unnecessarily – feel more pain during the shutdown. Very spiteful on NPS' part.

.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2013 07:06PM by plawrence.

To start, I agree with your assessment of 100% of the blame on House Republicans.

NPS wasn't alone in blocking websites, USFS and BLM did as well, and there was no reason for any of them to do so - the sites were clearly up since they were presenting useless "we're shut down" pages, and the static information was obviously useful for anyone planning post-shutdown trips (apart from enjoyment of stuff like webcams).

There's also the outhouses crap I mentioned in the Grouse Lakes thread. Somebody with the Tahoe NF drove all the way up to a remote area just to lock an outhouse and strew pink tape across a campground entrance - the same was true at Leavitt Meadows. I've seen the Leavitt Meadows campground outhouse open and stocked with a winter's supply of TP when it was "closed for the season", so I know that's not the normal practice, at least with Toiyabe.

On the other hand, I checked last weekend, and Stanislaus NF had left blank Wilderness Permit forms in their drop box - not enough, but still.

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plawrence
Just to be clear, I blame the Republicans in the House of Representatives 100% for the government shutdown. They're solely at fault.

Yes, they are, but that will all be forgotten by the next election cycle.

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But denying the public access to the Yosemite webcams (and to any of the static information pages on the NPS website) was just the Park Service being spiteful towards the general public in regards to the shutdown.

I doubt that whole Park Service I.T. infrastructure was powered down during government shutdown. They just closed off access to the public to make the public – unnecessarily – feel more pain during the shutdown. Very spiteful on NPS' part..

And that is a spiteful view on your part. IT was shut down. There was no one around to run the websites, the servers, and all that other stuff. The Park Service did not make any decision out of spite. They are not like that. It's really sad that you would believe they are.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2013 07:50PM by Dave.

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Dave

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plawrence
Just to be clear, I blame the Republicans in the House of Representatives 100% for the government shutdown. They're solely at fault.

Yes, they are, but that will all be forgotten by the next election cycle.

That depends on how effective the Democrats are in recruiting candidates now (they're ahead in 'generic ballot' by more than 2010 midwestern and southern gerrymandering requires, but they need to run actual people), and in reminding people about this going forward. In CA alone I've read of three endangered Republican House members, one of whom was endangered before this nonsense, the other two (McKeon and Denham) weren't endangered before but are now.

And it sounds like the House GOP itself can't agree on whether to keep reminding voters about this going forward, or whether to pretend nothing happened.

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ttilley
That depends on how effective the Democrats are in recruiting candidates now (they're ahead in 'generic ballot' by more than 2010 midwestern and southern gerrymandering requires, but they need to run actual people), and in reminding people about this going forward. In CA alone I've read of three endangered Republican House members, one of whom was endangered before this nonsense, the other two (McKeon and Denham) weren't endangered before but are now.

And it sounds like the House GOP itself can't agree on whether to keep reminding voters about this going forward, or whether to pretend nothing happened.

With the Democrats we have now I don't think they'll do much. They have, for decades now, let the Republicans control the discussion. Until the Dems grow a spine and start speaking out, not much progress will be made.

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Dave

IT was shut down. There was no one around to run the websites, the servers, and all that other stuff. The Park Service did not make any decision out of spite. They are not like that. It's really sad that you would believe they are.

Oh please, I work in I.T. keeping up web servers like those that NPS use.

First of all, the web servers were up. If they were down and powered off, then no web page would have shown up when someone tried to enter an NPS URL. Web servers are EXTREMELY reliable. They can be kept up and running for months with no human intervention.

The servers could have been left running with no changes being made and no one on duty. Again, I was talking about the servers that serve up the static web pages.

It took manpower for them to actually make the changes to deny access to the public. If the NPS employees (or contractors) had just been lockout (and furloughed) from their jobs, the web pages would have remained up. (Or if a server did go down during the furlough, then the webpage would have become unavailable and if someone tried to browse the webpage they would most likely ended up with a HTTP_404 error appearing on their web browser.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2013 09:47PM by plawrence.

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plawrence
Oh please, I work in I.T. keeping up web servers like those that NPS use.

That may be, but you don't work on the servers for the NPS. Your comments on what the NPS had to do were out of line.

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plawrence
First of all, the web servers were up. If they were down and powered off, then no web page would have shown up when someone tried to enter an NPS URL.

Are you sure? Did you check the IP addresses? Are you sure a router wasn't doing a redirect to the "we're closed" pages?

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plawrence

But denying the public access to the Yosemite webcams (and to any of the static information pages on the NPS website) was just the Park Service being spiteful towards the general public in regards to the shutdown.

.

Someone please tell me that someone is pulling my leg, and people really are not this clueless as to what just took place during the governement shutdown. Please.

Good god, plawrence, do you really think that the park service had the time/wherewithall to pick and choose how to piss off the public? Really? Let me give you an example of a federally funded lab effected by the shutdown: a sealed ORDER was opened and read aloud that ALL unessential services were to cease operation immediately. How? What? Who? There was no rhyme or reason as to how it was carried out: It was controlled chaos. Lab animals that had been bred with the proper genetics for cancer research (and purchased for $$$) had to be euthonized because someone forgot to alot a caretaker under the "essential personell". Other groups of animals had been overlooked for excessive breeding possibilities, and they reproduced beyone storage capacity. They were destroyed. Thousands of man-hour research data was trashed because the wrong computers were shut down without saving the data. It will take years to recoup the losses.

They would have had better protocol had the lab been fire bombed.

To look at this shutdown travesty with such myopia as to blame the parks for "spite" is so frighteningly ignorant of the big picture, that I am left almost speechless (I said almost)

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The body betrays and the weather conspires, hopefully, not on the same day.

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yosemitejim
Nice to have the webcams back.

Most of them were not gone.

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eeek

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yosemitejim
Nice to have the webcams back.

Most of them were not gone.

The Yosemite cams were up because they are run by the Yosemite Conservancy. Other parks whose cams are run by their associations or conservancies were up. But, cams run by the NPS were down during the shutdown. I really missed watching Old Faithful go off and the cams from the other parks.

Putting the web page up stating that the site was down was COMPLETELY unnecessary. It had NOTHING to with not having staff to manage the server. The ONLY thing it accomplished was to deny the public access to the information there. It took MORE resources to change it. I won't comment on why it was done except to state that it was NOT done due to lack of staff because of the shutdown.

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Hitech
Putting the web page up stating that the site was down was COMPLETELY unnecessary. It had NOTHING to with not having staff to manage the server. The ONLY thing it accomplished was to deny the public access to the information there. It took MORE resources to change it. I won't comment on why it was done except to state that it was NOT done due to lack of staff because of the shutdown.

No, it was done because a psychotic minority decided to shut down the government. The Park Service was TOLD to shut down. That's what they did. That the NPS shut things down out of spite is just rediculous.

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Hitech
It took MORE resources to change it.

Not really.

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Hitech
Putting the web page up stating that the site was down was COMPLETELY unnecessary.

It doesn't take much research to see the NPS websites use a content distribution network that is owned by Level 3. During the shutdown they were not authorized to spend the money it takes to have that service. That's why they had to go down.

There are other avenues to accessing the Yosemite webcams (just in case a January shutdown follows). Here is one great site:

http://www.sierranevadacams.com

Enjoy!

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JoeDaddy
There are other avenues to accessing the Yosemite webcams (just in case a January shutdown follows). Here is one great site:

http://www.sierranevadacams.com

Enjoy!

The Yosemite cams are run by the Yosemite Conservancy and you can see them at their website www.yosemiteconservancy.org.