Re: Wind River Hot Springs
Posted: July 6th, 2018, 5:18 am
.
I'm going to look at this from a legal perspective, not an inconvenience perspective.
The No Trespassing sign makes the right/wrong behavior rather cut-and-dry. No means no. Not sure why the LEO would only focus on one person when more than one had ignored the posted sign...regardless of how many times you had violated the law previously or how safe you judged the bridge to be. Perhaps he was waiting for the other hot tub bather and the fisherman to come back across the bridge.
Keeping the public out of public land had been a topic on this forum may times in the past year: Eagle Creek fire, Willamette NF fires, Solar Eclipse, etc. Charging people to enter public lands, even when the courts have said no, has also been discussed. Public safety and public destruction are often cited as the reasons. Another is profit, especially as our public land becomes privatized. For example, Fish Creek, Wahtum Lake and Eightmile Creek are NW Forest Pass sites (illegal under Adams vs USFG) which seem to require both the illegal public pass as well as an unethical private fee. Willamette NF is looking into the nuclear option of charging $8 whenever you get the itch to go hiking. The public land debate will unfortunately go on for generations with $$$ being the driver.
The debate over public land extends to the public sidewalk as well. It is illegal to inhibit access to public sidewalks but downtown restaurants do it all of the time. Just try sitting at one of these chairs without ordering food and the shopkeeper will have you arrested for trespassing. Ironic, isn't it? I had tried to do this just to rest a cramp and was surprised by the attitude of the waiter over this matter. In Florence OR, the tables and chairs force walkers to take to the street in one block of Old Town.
So, when a No Trespassing sign is posted, one should heed the warning regardless of personal judgement of fun and safety. We should probably focus our attention to the limits on public lands deemed safe enough to require admission that are limited to only the members of the public that can afford it.