June 26, 2004

Figures won't lie, but liars will sometimes figure. (Charles Grosvenor)

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Now I am not saying that my good friends at the BLM are liars but I suspect they may be challenged by math and logic.  How else could they come up with a figure of approximately 50,000 visitor use days during the fall and winter months of 2003/2004, a number recently reported in the San Francisco Chronicle article on Clear Creek? 

Perhaps it is as simple as they forgot to divide by 2.  You see, a traffic counter is located just before Oak Flat campgrounds.  You drive over it entering and leaving the staging areas. If you don't divide by 2, then your vehicle count will be double the actual usage.  If we assume that they did divide by 2, then what else would contribute to such an outrageous number? 

Of course, some may be questioning why I am calling this number outrageous.  Lets break it down and you will see what I mean.  The BLM plugged the number 48,392 visitor use days (VUDs) into their FY2005 grant request to the green sticker fund.  Here is what they actually stated in the grant: 

Project Accomplishment Reports indicate that use has been steadily increasing.  Estimates are calculated using formulas based on actual data from traffic counters as well as permitted events, weekend on-site monitoring, use from private property, visits from adjacent land managers and data from California state parks and Department of Fish and Game:

2004:    48,392 (Oct 03 through April 04

2003:    45,438/yr

2002:    42,905/yr

2001:    40,002/yr

2000:    33,373/yr

This information was presented to the public at the BLM's grants open house on Wednesday, April 14.  From October 1 to April 14th there were 196 days and 28 weekends.  If you divide 48,392 by 196 days you come up with 247 VUDs per day, everyday.  Does that sound high to you?  As a visitor to Clear Creek for the past 30 years it sure sounds high to me.  But, it gets worse.

First an assumption:  I theorize that 80% of visitor usage occurs on weekends when normal people have off from work. (Actually I think the number may be closer to 90% but for the sake of argument...)  If you have ever been down to Clear Creek on a weekday, it is dead.  Sure there are a few people who ride and drive down during the week to avoid the heavier usage on weekends, but not many.  If you accept this assumption, then this would mean that you would expect to find 691 visitors every weekend day in Clear Creek.

691 people is a lot of people in Clear Creek canyon.  It would be like having a big enduro staged out of Clear Creek every weekend day.  Probably worse.  Where would you  park the 345 or more vehicles (assuming 2 people per vehicle) that these people use to get to Clear Creek?  The way people spread out, I don't think they would all fit in the Staging Areas.  But, it gets worse yet.

It rained and snowed during this time period.  In fact, there were ten weekends when there was measurable precipitation on one or both weekend days.  There was also one weekend when the BLM shut Clear Creek down on Friday and Saturday, reopening it around 10AM on Sunday.  For all practical purposes, though, it was empty all weekend.  The Creek can be pretty miserable when it is cold, raining and snowing.  It is my experience that most riders avoid these conditions.  Sure there are a few die-hards but not many.  But there is still more.

One of the weekends during this period was Easter weekend.  I worked the entrance on Saturday and counted 36 people entering Clear Creek between 7:45 and 10:30 AM on Saturday morning.  Matt Beck worked the entrance on Easter Sunday and reported that no one drove through the entrance between 8 and 10 AM that morning.

So, how many people actually recreated in Clear Creek during this time period?  Here is my estimate:

Notes: I included in the busy weekend days the Thursday and Friday of Thanksgiving weekend and the Monday of Presidents weekend.  I did not make an allowance for the 30 weekdays when there was measurable rainfall but I did lower the visitor usage for the weekend days when there was measurable rainfall.  I counted, in addition to the normal visitors, 3,500 visitors related to the enduros.  I included three days for the Timekeepers back to back events and two days for the Quicksilver.  I included 2 days at 400 visitors for the Molina Ghost Run and 200 VUD for special events like the Racers Under The Son trail ride and get together.

The estimate of 250 VUDs per busy weekend day I believe is a pretty reasonable number.  I ran this by Matt Beck who has helped a lot this year greeting people and he concurred.  He and I are part of a group of OHVers have been greeting visitors almost every weekend during this reporting period except the month of October.  I was probably at the entrance to Clear Creek half of those weekends and the only weekend I can recall seeing anywhere close to that volume of people was the weekend after New Years.  It had rained quite a bit in November and December and there was a pent up demand plus new Christmas presents to be played with. 

One way of telling how many visitors we greeted was counting how many handouts were left at the end of a weekend.  Usually I would print about 150 handouts.  There were very few weekends (not weekend days) when I would run out.  I believe that an average weekend with the OHVers, rock hounds, hunters, hang gliders and plant lovers would be about 350-400 people during the winter.

I hope this little exercise will explain why I labeled the BLM number "outrageous".  The sad thing is that it only took a couple minutes of thought to calculate these numbers and perhaps a half hour of research to get the rainfall numbers into a spreadsheet.  This just goes to show how out of touch the BLM's Hollister office is with the area they are suppose to manage.  What is more scary is that no one in their management apparently questioned these numbers as they have been officially submitted to the State in their grant request.

This, of course, begs the question "Why is their number so high?  Could it be that they show a high number in the hopes of getting a lot of green sticker funding?  Could it be that they show a high number in the hopes of getting a lot of federal funding so they can keep their jobs?  Could it be that they don't have a clue as to what is happening in Clear Creek?  Could it just be that there are no math majors on the staff?

Whatever the real answer, this erroneous number is helping to feed the controversy at Clear Creek and there are some people in the Hollister Field Office who want to see that happen!

Update on the figures