Publications

I've written about this before, see blog essay, but I want to reemphasize it again, which is simply if you are searching for old publications, documents, reports, brochures, pamphlets, books, maps, etc., as I do for Mt. Rainier NP, and you use some of the on-line used booksellers, namely abebook, alibris, or similar ones, one word of advice.

Don't buy "Print on Demand" editions.

You see these a lot of these when scrolling through the list of material for any subject or topic, and the number of sellers of these types of books are now throughout the world. And many of their copies are expensive, too expensive for a print on demand publication.

The reason I advice don't buy them is that they're a variety of publications. Some are just a collection of Wikipedia articles you can get for free from Wikipedia or a third party app of Wikipedia pages. Some are US government documents or reports you can find on-line for free.

Some are old books past the copyright protection where you can find original print editions for the same price or less. And some are scholoarly or academic publications you can find in libaries through the World Library Catalog and go there to read or copy them or use interlibrary service to get them to your local library.

One thing I've done with my research for materials, listed here is always get the original edition or make  a copy from an original edition (eg. journals). I don't buy print on demand publications, but I often research the source material and then find that if it's an actual publication, and if so, find that.

Anyway, it's just advice after seeing a US government reports on monitoring programs for glacier, climate, elk populations, each for $30-40 and use a few clicks of Google to find and download the PDF public domain copies from the National Park Service. Gee, government for your taxes.

In conclusion with these, save your money and buy a real book, old or new. You're better off and better served.

Paradise Road Closure Ends

The NPS is reporting this week (March 19-20th) is the last week of the closure of the road from Longmire to Paradise from Monday evening to Thursday morning. Starting next week, the road will be open, weather and road conditions pending and still controlled at the gate just east of Longmire.

While March into April is coming of spring in the lower elevations, it is still winter in the mid and upper elevations where the snowfall will continue with storms and the snowpack will continue to increase. The normal peak is the first week of May.

You can get the latest road and condition information from the NP's Twitter Page.

March Reports

The news, information and reports for March are now available for the Mt. Rainier NP photo guide. In short early March this year is a continuation of February, but it's not known if this will continue into mid-late March, at least in the lower elevations where spring will start as the snow melts.

The snowpack normally continues to increase through March and April into early May where it peaks and the snowmelt begins in the middle elevations and later in May in the upper elevations. A lot depends on the snowfall through this period and the spring weather, especially warming days.

The NP will continue in winter operations through March and April where the changes to spring into summer operations begins in mid-late May, usually the week before the Memorial Day holiday weekend, if not sooner if the snowmelts is sooner or quicker in some locations in the NP.

There will be more news on this later in March but really April. Otherwise, it's more of winter for now in the NP. No date has been annouced for the closure of the snowplay area at Paradise, but it's normally later into April or May when the snowpack recedes to a depth to support activities without hurting the underlying meadows.