Eel Lake South at Tugman State Park closed

[coaster]

This was just listed yesterday, March 20th, on the park website, although the damage has been there since at least Saturday, March 16th.

A little less than a mile in from the trail head, a large tree has fallen from the side of the trail. Its roots have taken out most of the trail and created a large unstable gash on a very steep slope that make it fairly risky to climb down and up to cross the gash.

Before this area of trail, and for several weeks prior to this damage, there have been large trees down across the trail that are difficult to go over or around.

I reported those trees to a helpful camp host on March 5th, when I first saw them, but the hosts there have not always been so helpful or interested. There also isn't the same assurance the information is getting to the right place as there would be with giving the information to an Oregon parks employee.

This post is to report the damage and also an ongoing issue with how to report these kinds of problems with trails in the Oregon state parks that do not have an on-site office. I sent an email to Trailkeepers of Oregon on Sunday, March 17th but have not heard back. I had also posted the question of who to report these issues to on a forum here in August of 2022 but it sort of faded away without an answer when extensive trail maintenance was mysteriously done by someone weeks later.

For National Forest trails on the south/central coast, there's a good contact in the Siuslaw headquarters office in Reedsport, but I have yet to find any equivalent for Oregon state parks. The "live" person number for Oregon state parks has an (intentionally?) incredibly irritating computer voice that repeats the same sentence over and over without a break while the caller is on hold, with instructions about calling the reservation number. Like most adults, I have a low tolerance for mindless repetition and have never lasted more than two or three iterations before hanging up.

[retired jerry]

looking at stateparks.oregon.gov, contact us:
Reservation information
1-800-452-5687
General park information
1-800-551-6949
[email protected]
Communications Division Manager
Jason Resch
(503) 986-0592
Associate Director
Chris Havel
(503) 986-0722

Maybe one of those would work. You must have already been frustrated by the reservation number but maybe the other three?

[gallione11]

May try their contact form on their website: https://stateparks.oregon.gov/index.cfm?do=v.contact

I've used it before for questions and usually hear something back within a day or so.

[coaster]

Thanks. It was the 800 general park information line that had the infinitely repeating message about calling the reservation line as the only response to the "Press 0 to speak to the operator" option. I didn't call the reservation line, I don't think that would have been relevant.

However, I did find an old contact for someone at a state park, left a message and the supervisor for Tugman has called me back. He gave me a number to call for problems with trails in that park and in the nearby Umpqua Lighthouse State Park, so that's resolved the larger issue of how to report these.

I was out there again yesterday. Someone else had managed to report the damaged trail and downed trees in the last two to three days. The largest of the downed trees has a section cut through and a sign has been posted at the trail head saying the trail is closed about a mile in. That's at the slide caused by the uprooted tree. The supervisor said repairing the slide will take some time, given the extent of the damage.

Having a number to call for any future trail issues has resolved the larger problem for me. Thank you for looking up the other information.

(on a side note, as I was walking out yesterday, a mountain biker came up behind me. He said he'd gone all the was out to the end. So not only had he crossed that deep cut twice on an unstable steep slope, he'd done it with a mountain bike! Those people have a truly different mindset.)

[retired jerry]

thanks for following up on that

[bobcat]

Thanks, coaster, for keeping us current on the situation for that trail. I've put a note in the Field Guide. When/if the situation is fixed, let us know.

State Parks operates in "clusters," usually with one trails ranger for a group of parks. Looks like you found out who that is, which should speed up the notification process in the future.