Spirit Lake

[littleriver]

I've been bugging the Forest Service for over 7 years now trying to convince them to reopen Spirit Lake to
sport fishing......

and, obviously, my whining has fallen on deaf ears...



but the Forest Service announced last week that they will be closing the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Facility next year and I think this decision offers a real opportunity to convince these morons to change their ways.....


For those who have never been to Coldwater Ridge Visitor center it is a large and extremely expensive facility... more like a giant castle than a visitor center.. must of cost 10's of millions to build..... and there's a large dormitory for the staff located north of there that's not visible or accessible to the public.... Shutting down a facility such as this into which so much public money has been invested is a huge embarrassment to the bureaucrats who run the St. Helen's monument...........

so now is a good time to contact them and your federal level congressional reps to suggest that maybe if they would open up spirit lake to sport fishing they might start to bring in enough traffic, and hence revenue, to keep the visitor center open.....


For those who haven't followed this issue, WDFW sent in a few of it's people to test the Spirit Lake fishery a few years back and the lake is loaded with huge rainbows... they were catching them up to 8 pounds.......

Nobody knows how they got there but they are probably very lonely without anyone to fish for them.........

[bigastrout]

Do you have links to WDFW documents on this lake?

[littleriver]

No... the test fishery was done back in the 2001 time frame....


that's 6 years ago and WDFW has never really had much interest in
pursuing the issue.... probably figure that it's just going to take too much
effort to influence "use changes" at something that's been declared a "monument"...


but if enough sporties would take up the cause they might change their minds...


Forest Service is a bit on the defensive now because they've finally had to admit that
their precious "monument" really isn't a big draw and that's why they are having to close Coldwater Ridge...

[bustin]

I used to livce in that area and have made countless trips to the observatory there as it is my mothers favorite place of anywhere to go. This would be a shame if they shut this down. What are the reasons? Funding or seismic activity over the last couple of years?

[littleriver]

The reason is simple. There is virtually no traffic.

No traffic means no revenue.

can't pay the bills... gotta shut down....


takes longer with public funded projects than the private ones, but
eventually the bean counters figure it out.........