Brad Dimock
commercial guide, author, publisher

   Temporal Wilderness

   The Wilderness Act is the only protection the Grand Canyon River corridor can ever attain which legally defines and protects the wild quality of the river trip that we all see being choked to death by overcrowding, over-pampering and hoards of over-zealous bureaucrats desperate to regulate and enforce their particular pet rules.

   Unfortunately Wilderness designation poses definite threats to the status quo, most particularly to motorized river trips. Outfitters are better organized than ever and have said (off the record) that they will go straight to congress should their allocation or ability to run motors indefinitely be threatened in any way by the new management plan. And we all know what money, clout and congress add up to (see 1978 management plan, esp: Hatch Amendment.)

   On the other hand, proponents of Wilderness protection are looking at ways to take the entire river allocation and, through rescheduling trips into the off-season, adding more restrictions (trip length restrictions, no layovers, etc) try to make everyone and everything, during a majority of the year, into some approximation of a “Wilderness Experience”.

   But by adding restrictions and requiring more attention to keeping to some sort of schedule, much of what is truly wild and free about a trip is lost. And the shoulder seasons of spring and fall, which now are fairly unused and untrammeled, would be increasingly used, restricted and, in my view diminished. I maintain there is no way to run the kind of numbers of people we are running through the place in one year, and have it be anything close to wilderness.

   So it would seem we need to find a way to protect the place and the experience as best as we can without setting the powers that be off in an attempt to derail the good along with what they perceive as bad. What I think might be the best solution is not that different from what we have now in many respects:

   The river corridor in Grand Canyon needs to be granted “Potential Wilderness” status, which allows non-conforming use (motors, unacceptable levels of congestion) indefinitely. However, the winter season, or, I would suggest, Sept 15 through April 15, should be managed as utter and complete wilderness- fewer trips, fewer restrictions, fewer agencies, full acknowledgement of inherent risks by all visitors and full wilderness protection. During the remaining five months something akin to what we have now could continue- great trips for a great number of people, in a situation much farther from true Wilderness.

   We can do this.