Upper Stehekin Valley Road to
Cottonwood Camp.
Comments to Gregg Herrington ~ Editorial Writer for the Columbian
by Tom Nawalinski

I , a Californian, have visited Stehekin yearly since 1968 and found
that road to be very key to enjoyment of the beautiful natural gems in
that area, and I have observed the road to be not at all damaging to
the environment. Rather than being a " let's invade the wilderness at
any cost for human enjoyment", person, I have been a member that has
been ardently supporting more than a dozen environmental groups for as
long as 52 years. But now, some of these groups that are rightly
concerned with other conservation efforts in the northwest are using
the specious argument that the required swap of wilderness land
needed for relocating this road , one that has been used for more than
100 years before its loss to floods, would be a threat to the entire
Wilderness Act. However much larger swaps than that needed to relocate
this 13 miles of single lane gravel road have been made in the past
without weakening the Act. People who haven't visited the road must
must realize that this is a short, one-lane, important and historic
gravel road before they oppose its relocation/rebuilding. It has been
invaluable to both long distance and day hikers and to search and
rescue and fire fighting.

Please continue to write article in support of relocating the road
with no net loss to wilderness.

Gratefully,
Tom Nawalinski
Santa Cruz, California