With the New Year upon us, and winter raging out here in the Eastern Sierra, we are excited to do another season of Winter Recreation User Data surveys!
In partnership with, and thanks to the generous support of Winter Wildlands Alliance, we will be in Rock Creek Canyon (weekends) and at Obsidian Dome (two weekdays per week), taking snow depth, tallying user numbers and type (walking, skiing, snowmobiling, etc…), and acting as an informational resource for users from January 8 to March 31.
This data will help our Policy Team as they get ready to begin working on Over Snow Vehicle (OSV) planning on the Inyo National Forest later this year. With data sets from 2016, 2017, 2021, and soon 2022, we will be able to show just how folks recreate on the Forest in the winter time, to ensure that all users have as exciting and rewarding an experience as possible.
New for this year is the use of the Colorado Mountain Club’s (CMC) Recreational Impact Monitoring System (RIMS) App. This intuitive, comprehensive, and engaging iPhone- and Android-based application allows us to log data directly to a dashboard that the Forest Service has access to, so they can see recreation stats in near-real time. And doubly exciting for this new app is the ability for anyone to log data into the system! With everyone’s help, we will be able to provide as comprehensive a picture as possible of the actual use that is going on anywhere in the Inyo National Forest.
So, if you get out and about for some frosty, snowy, winter recreation, head to this page to download the app, learn about it, and watch an instructional video on how to use it. Then you’ll be all set to help us see just how much use our Forest gets in the winter!