Hi Buckman,
I pretty much agree. But over the years, I sat in a lot of meetings with Park representatives back when I was on the GCPBA Board. The first and foremost perspective they have is launches, not so much user-days. They emphasize that the CRMP is a launch-based system, and that the CRMP is pretty much a closed document (aside from minor adjustments they make through what they call "adaptive management"). To the Park, lapsed ideal user-day totals are not as critical as trying to approach 100% use of all launches.
So in that context, the "let's try to get to 1,800 participants each year in the winter" argument we would make isn't as weighty. Yes, it's important to folks like us to optimize access. But in the CRMP launch context, the Park already is getting 95+% of all the scheduled launches out, and objectively that's not bad. It seems less important to them that the user-days are not similarly optimized.
As to pizzas, take that pizza and cut it in half and put each half at a separate table that requires separate linen goods, wait staff, bussing, etc. (Yeah, I know that's sort of feeble, but it's the best I can do.) In this case, the Park might argue that if you have two 8-person groups each competing for firewood, that's twice the environmental impact of one 16-person group. It's also twice the load on the beaches, since the campsite use would be doubled. This all gets evaluated in the general category, "the winter is a time when the Canyon can get a little rest."
It's not the total allowed winter launches that is immutable, it's the total number for the entire year -- 504, IIRC. They consider that number (embodied in the CRMP) just about untouchable. So absent a new CRMP, the only way they could see to add launches in the winter is to chop them in some other season.
Now I don't see it quite that way. I would argue that (notwithstanding the fact it's a launch based system) the winter component of the 504 launches was developed from some user-day use projection in the vicinity of 16 persons per trip times some arbitrary trip length. Since we now know that actual use is far less, my view is that your idea has merit, since it still is unlikely that actual participant levels will ever get to 1,800. And in my mind, that would justify an adjustment of the winter launch allocation.
Of course that, and $0.37, will get you a cup of coffee at Greasy Johnny's Cafe.
This has been a sort of long way of saying that in every contact I've had with the Park where this came up, they considered the current launch cap to be something we as private boaters have to live with. But that still leaves some other things to advocate for, like longer trips in winter, dropping the one trip a year rule November - February, etc.
One final thought. The permit party approach (perfectly legal and likely never to be stopped) surely puts stand-alone lottery entrants at a significant disadvantage. I would venture that it also skews the real-world probability of getting a permit in ways that charts and graphs will never accurately represent.
FWIW.
Rich Phillips
