national parks – erica goes traveling

Tongariro National Park

the first national park established in New Zealand, Tongariro is also one of the oldest national parks in the world. the first parcel of land was set aside in 1887 under the protection of the paramount Maori chief in the area (Te Heuheu Tukino IV, also known as Horonuku) in order to protect sacred Maori land from being sold to European settlers. his family descended from the earliest settlers of Aotearoa (New Zealand), and identified with Ngatoroirangi, the man who navigated the vessel that brought the first people to the island and (according to myth) brought fire to Tongariro. once the land was under his protection, Horonuku gifted the land back to the state for preservation as a national park. while the initial parcel was considered too small to establish a proper national park (with the example of Yellowstone as comparison), subsequent government actions set aside larger and larger parcels of land for that purpose. in 1894, Parliament passed the Tongariro National Park Act, which comprised some 252 square kilometers (not all of which they had yet acquired). several updates to the Act over the 20th century brought the park to its current size encompassing nearly 800 square kilometers.

the three main peaks located in the park – Tongariro, Ngauruhoe, and Ruapehu – are tapu to the local Maori and development would have destroyed the mana of the sites. the Maori still have territorial rights over the mountains and when the Te Maari crater on Tongariro erupted in 2012, they declared a protective restriction (rahui) over the area to protect both the mana of the site and to ensure the safety of trampers moving through the area. because of its importance to Maori culture and its natural characteristics, the national park was designated a dual (cultural-natural) World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1993, after previously receiving status for natural heritage in 1990.

although technically established in 1894, it took some decades before transportation caught up enough to bring significant numbers of people to visit the park. the first permanent park ranger began working in 1931, two years after the completion of Chateau Tongariro at the ski resort of Whakapapa. a road to Whakapapa was completed in the 1920s, making the journey much easier than the previous overland trek by horseback or foot. according to our lodge hosts, the park is far more popular for skiing during the winter than for tramping or biking in the summer.

until 2007 the track from Mangatepopo to Ketetahi was known as the “Tongariro Crossing.” however, the difficulty of the terrain and changeability of the weather found many trampers unprepared and the name was changed to include “Alpine” to better convey the reality of the track. we felt well-prepared setting out on the hike – both physically and in relation to gear – and I was still surprised by how much the climate changed on our hike – the limited visibility, bitter the wind and biting the precipitation through the South Crater, up the saddle beside the Red Crater, and past Blue Lake. not all trampers were as well prepared for the trek as we and the view from the trailhead might not prepare you for what was in store. moreover, in addition to the weather-related dangers were legitimate (though distant) volcanic risks. all three peaks in the park have been active in the last century with Te Maari in 2012 the most recent. when we stopped for lunch at the Ketetahi Hut, you could see active vents on the side of the mountain and the damage done by debris during the 2012 eruption. fortunately, that eruption occurred near midnight in August so the hut was not in use, but it remains closed to through-hikers due to its location in the active volcanic zone. in spite of the danger (volcanic and otherwise) some 80,000 people undertake the hike each year, with numbers growing.

Sequoia National Park & General Sherman

to decompress after a flurry of wedding activity, we embarked on a two-day, 930-mile road trip to take in Sequoia National Park, the General Sherman tree, Monterrey, Highway 1, and a whole lot of California’s
Central Valley.

first stop on our tour: General Sherman at the heart of Sequoia National Park; just a touch farther west than strictly warranted on our route to Monterrey, but certainly worth the trip. when I asked the hubs whether he wanted to see General Sherman, I only had a vague sense of what it was – a great big tree. turns out it’s the largest living tree by volume – not tallest (a Coastal redwood) nor widest (a cypress or baobab) nor oldest (a bristlecone pine) – but still incredibly impressive.

naturalist James Wolverton named the tree after the Civil War general in 1879, more than a decade before the area became a national park. at that time, white settlers seeking to establish a utopian society had begun felling sequoias for trade; thousands of sequoias were taken down before it their tendency to splinter became clear and the logging operation ceased (when the area became a park in 1890).

the military oversaw the park until the early 1900s, when it was turned over to civilian supervision. during the early years of the park, the military spent much of its time cutting access trails and roadways. when the park transferred from the military to civilian control, greater attention was paid to making the park more accessible to the general public. Walter Fry, who originally came to the Sierra Nevadas as a logger (but quickly changed courses when he counted the growth rings on the first sequoia he helped fell and discovered they’d brought down a tree more than 3,200 years old), became the first civilian superintendent. he oversaw the gradual expansion of county roads and the development of a wagon road by the Mount Whitney Power Company.

after the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, the idea of a park-to-park highway system prompted further road improvements in and between Sequoia and General Grant National Parks (now Kings Canyon National Park). the new road – the Generals Highway and built in sections of switchbacks and wedged between giant sequoias in some places – was dedicated in June of 1935 with some 669 cars carrying 2,488 passengers traversing the road from either end, meeting in the middle. during this time, CCC workers also cut a 400-step staircase into the granite dome of Moro Rock, which offers staggering views from the rock of the park and of the Great Western divide (though pollution often obscures views west over the San Joaquin valley).

the improvements suited the burgeoning numbers of tourists and now more than one million visitors take advantage of the park each year.

Kolb Studios

the morning after our arrival at the Grand Canyon, we’d hoped to hike part way down the Bright Angel Trail into the canyon. unfortunately, the snow that had fallen in previous days had packed down on the shaded trail and both signs and rangers warned that crampons or some other method of “traction control” were strongly recommended.

disinclined to fork out the inflated price for Yaktrax, we opted to hike along the South Rim instead, from the Kolb Studio at the Grand Canyon Village back to the Visitor’s Center. I’m glad we made the effort to trek around the construction blocking access to the Bright Angel Trailhead, at the top of which perches the Kolb Studios.

Studio from the Bright Angel Trailhead

for those of you familiar with the Wisconsin Dells, the Kolb Brothers (Emery and Ellsworth) were to the Grand Canyon as H.H. Bennett was to the Dells, taking remarkable, breathtaking daring shots of the natural wonder of the Canyon and Colorado River. the brothers arrived at the Canyon in 1901 and 1902, one working as a bellhop in the lodge and the other hoping for work in an asbestos mine. fortunately for Emery, the mine had closed by his arrival and he stumbled upon a photography shop for sale in Williams; having previously dabbled in photography, he took the risk of the sale and began snapping shots of visitors winding their way down the Bright Angel Trail on mule trains.

initially, they operated out of a tent studio on the rim of the canyon. with the success of their business, however, allowed them to carve a shelf out of the canyon rim and construct a permanent building, which stands today as the core of the studio and museum. the studio grew through several additions including, most importantly, an auditorium in which the brothers screened the film that made them famous. though Ellsworth moved west to Los Angeles in 1924, Emery continued to run the studio and screen the film until his death in 1976, making it the longest, continually-running motion picture in the history.

the Kolb Brother’s canvas boat with cork life vest

after enjoying wide success from unique photos from the base of the Canyon and along the River, in 1911 the brothers undertook to navigate the Green and Colorado Rivers, through the Grand Canyon, eventually ending in Needles, California. the expedition took two months and they took the resulting moving picture show, the “Grand Canyon Film Show,” on tour across the country, playing to packed houses from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York City. upon returning from the screening tour, Ellsworth bought another boat and rode the spring flood from Needles to the Gulf of California, and recounted the entire adventure in the still-in-print Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico.

as I said, Emery stayed and worked in the studio until his death, continuing to photograph the Canyon and Rim as it became increasingly popular with tourists, changing and growing around him. proceeds from the studio and his photography helped support the entire family.

for more images of the studio, as well as the current exhibit in the studio on the Kolb Brothers, check out the National Park’s photostream.

Dartmoor

Dartmoor was one of the most stunning places I visited while studying in London. after weeks of day-to-day metropolitan bustle, the absolute isolation of the moor was both wonderful and somewhat off-putting. it was one of our last stops before returning to London after several days of traipsing around the relatively quite countryside. southwest England in mid-to-late October isn’t high tourist season.

it took some effort to find our B&B in the dark — through the tiny village of Belstone and up a farm track — but it was worth it. my dad & I watched some Green Wing in the common room before we went up to bed and my mom had a precious encounter with one of the young children of the house who was eating “crisps” (my mom referred to them as “chips,” to which the 3-or-4-year-old replied “they’re not chips! they’re crisps!“). I always imagine Godric’s Hollow to look exactly like Belstone as it did when we stopped in at the pub to ask for directions.

the town is best known for its proximity to the Nine Maidens stone circle, which I’m sure I have a picture of somewhere though, honestly, it didn’t make as much of an impression on me as the other sites we saw walking around the moor or in comparison to the sites at Avebury and Stonehenge. in addition to the Nine Maidens, the area we walked was open grazing land for local sheep and had a variety of stone structures and walls, one of which I have marked as the “Irish Wall,” though now I couldn’t tell you why — whether it was built by Irish invaders to defend their holdings, by indigenous Britons to keep the Irish at bay, or for some other purpose.

Dartmoor has been farmed and inhabited since prehistoric times (and its possible that the characters in Bernard Cornwall’s Arthurian series traverse the moor …). the Domesday Book has record of a castle at Okehampton in 1086 and the first record of tin extraction comes from 70 years later. abandoned tin mines and farmsteads remain scattered across the moorland. today the land is a National Park though over half of it remains under private control (much of it consisting of the Forest of Dartmoor of which is owned by the Duke of Cornwall — aka Prince Charles).

recently, controversy has sprung up around mining and military training. several companies wish to mine the area for china clay but organizations seeking to preserve the environmental integrity of the moor have successfully lobbied the government to prevent projects from going forward. military use of the moor dates back to the Napoleonic War and continues to modern times; the Ministry of Defense uses as much as 11% of the northern expanse of the National Park for live-fire maneuvers. it served as partial setting in a recent episode of (Moffat’s) Sherlock. a military installation at Okehampton also served as an airbase during the Second World War.

Dartmoor is great for trekking and adventuring — that’s partly what brought us to the southwest of England (the Nine Maidens stone circle probably played a bigger role). that trek was also my first introduction to letterbox hunting, which later helped develop geocaching. letterboxing sprung up in the 19th century and coincided with the increased popularity of hill walking on the moor. our B&B hosts explained the pursuit to us before we headed out on our morning trek: people hide watertight containers all over the moor that hold unique rubber stamps and a visitor’s log book. each time you find a letterbox (whether on purpose or by accident), you use the letterbox stamp in your own record book and leave the mark of your personal stamp in the visitor’s log book. geocaching is essentially the same but uses GPS coordinates rather than older map-finding clues like compass bearings and grid references. we didn’t find any letterboxes, though we didn’t look very hard. some can prove incredibly challenging to find — which is half the fun for ardent fans of the activity.

Fort Jefferson

approaching Fort Jefferson on the Yahkee Freedom II

situated on Garden Key, Fort Jefferson is the largest masonry structure in the Western hemisphere and served as a military prison and outpost during the 19th century. located 70 miles west of Key West, it sits at the tail end of the archipelago and, really, ought not to support human life. the collection of islands originally got their name from the sea turtles that nested there; in short order map-makers added the “dry” designation to warn sailors of the lack of potable water. upon scouting the keys for possible military installations, Commodore David Porter reported that the Dry Tortugas consisted of sand islands barely above the surface of the ocean with scarcely enough land to permit construction of a fort, much less support one without sinking below the waves.

the moat from the atop the walls of the Fort

Porter’s observations not withstanding, the government determined the islands useful to house, at the very least, a lighthouse. three years after Porter’s initial observations, a successor stressed the strategic importance of the islands in the Gulf shipping channel, prompting movement on a permanent, fortified outpost to defend U.S. interests.

harbor light atop the Fort wall

work on the structure began in 1846 and never finished, though construction (by slaves and prisoners) continued for 30 years. the original lighthouse stood within the fort walls but, after it suffering damage during a hurricane, was relocated to Loggerhead Key some 2.5 miles distant. the design originally called for a three-tiered, six sided brick structure; the sides met at corner bastions, which allowed some of the 410 guns to fire along the walls at ships crazy enough to come within range of the cannons. most of the armory and artillery improvements went unused. my favorite one, which I’m almost sad never got used, was a building designed to heat up cannon balls so that, when fired at enemy ships, the shot would start the wood on fire, burning and sinking the ship simultaneously. as construction progressed, however, concerns arose that further weight would cause the structure to sink (further) and result in further damage to the cisterns and undermine stability of the fort.

cells were left open to the elements, to prevent added weight

at its peak, some 2,000 people lived at Fort Jefferson, including military personnel and (occasionally) their families, prisoners, and (prior to the Civil War) slaves. it served as a harbor for war ships defending Gulf ports, such as Pensacola, New Orleans, and Mobile, general deterrent for anyone considering an attack against U.S. merchant ships, and evocative symbol of America’s intentions towards any potential aggressors (we’re lookin’ at you, Mexico!).

it remained under Union control throughout the Civil War, which resulted in some tensions with Key West, which, naturally, fell under Confederate control. Union ships used Fort Jefferson as a port in the blockade of Southern ports and it became a military prison, primarily for Union deserters, but also for special civilian prisoners, including Dr. Samuel Mudd. following his assistance during a yellow fever outbreak in 1867, President Andrew Jackson pardoned and released Mudd and, in 1874, the Fort ceased to function as a military prison.

balls placed at the far end heated up as they came down the chute

while Fort Jefferson was more or less abandoned by the Army in 1874, it did prove useful in other ways over the next half-century. the Navy used it as a coal refueling station for warships (we got to snorkel around the refueling dock pylons — lots of very cool fish); it served as a quarantine station for a time; the USS Maine sailed for Havana from Fort Jefferson, and other warships followed during the Spanish-American war; a wireless station operated from it around the turn of the 20th century; it briefly served as a seaplane base during the First World War.

the Fort contains 2,000 archways like these

beginning in the 1930s, activity in the Dry Tortugas gave over to biological research and historic preservation — the Carnegie Institute operated a marine biological institute on Loggerhead Key beginning in 1930 and, following a visit in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt designated Fort Jefferson a National Historic Landmark. Fort Jefferson was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, and the Dry Tortugas became a National Park 1992.

recent boat used by Cuban refugees — Fort Jefferson counts as American soil for refuge purposes

Badlands National Park

one upside to visiting National Parks like the one in the Badlands a second time as an adult is that my memories have faded enough to allow for a wholly new experience. I have vague recollections of our last trip to the monuments and parks of western South Dakota, but nothing concrete. I remember washing dishes at our campsite, being surrounded by bison on a drive through Custer State Park, going to a cave (but nothing about the cave), lights on the surface of Rushmore (but not the carving itself, really), the heat and dryness of the Badlands.

now that I’m older, however, and have a much more comprehensive understanding of the geological (or other) forces involved in the creation of these sties, I am much more in awe. the height of the buttes and spires is obscured as you approach from the north as they’re carved out of the plains moving southward. they’re impressive and, as the name suggests, impressively inhospitable-looking. true, a fair amount of prairie grass covers the top of the butte and on the plains below — enough that someone was conducting a controlled burn of the lower prairielands as we drove through the Park.

people have inhabited the area for more than 11,000 years, the earliest of which were mammoth hunters. the Lakota moved in during the 18th century and came to dominate the region in part because of the command of horses they learned from Spaniards (it’s much easier to hunt bison on horseback …). French trappers quickly encroached on the Lakota, and they were shortly followed by soldiers (see: Custer), miners (see: Deadwood), cattle farmers and homesteaders (see: Dust Bowl).

following Wounded Knee, the Lakota were confined primarily to reservations, including the Pine Ridge Reservation which shares oversight of the Stronghold Unit of Badlands National Park. during the Second World War, the U.S. Government took possession of more than 300,000 acres of the Reservation to use the land as a gunnery range. accuracy wasn’t always great and several buildings in the town of Interior (just south of the North Unit of the park) were damaged. nearby farmers often had to take cover to save themselves from falling or misdirected ordinance. among the many informational PDFs available on the Park website is one on the history of the gunnery range that includes information on identifying and avoiding unexploded ordinance (UXO).

the site was authorized to become a National Monument in 1929 but didn’t become one until a decade later. it was redisignated a National Park in 1978 and in 1999 took over supervision of the nearby Minuteman Missile National Historical Site.

enjoying the National Parks

growing up, our vacations almost always had an historical or natural focus to them — lots of national parks/monuments/forests. my sister and I even got “National Park Passports” at one point to collect stamps from all the places we visited. I still have it, but don’t carry it around and don’t usually pick up stamps on slips of paper when I visit places these days. as with a lot of my “standard” childhood experiences, I tend to think people my age went on similar road trips with their parents — unwillingly made to learn things on vacation. (Becca’s family took those kinds of trips, so I’m not totally off base.) it always surprises me a little when it arises in conversation that people haven’t been to iconic National Parks, like Mount Rushmore, or the Grand Canyon since, in my mind, they’re powerful visual representations of the U.S.

of course, lots of National Parks (including Mount Rushmore) are quite far from anywhere and, while there are lots of other National Parks in close proximity to Rushmore, those areas of the country have to be your destination. part of what makes them so great is their inaccessibility — it preserves the natural elements that made them worth preserving in the first place.

the first effort to preserve natural landmarks for the benefit of the nation came in 1832, when Andrew Jackson set aside land to protect hot springs in Arkansas. the federal government wasn’t given any legal authority over the land, though, and control wasn’t sorted out until 1877. Yosemite was the first true national park; established in 1872 from land within federal territories, at the time there were no local governmental authorities that could take responsibility for the preservation of the valley, which consequently fell to the federal government. it succeeded in part because the Northern Pacific Railroad saw the financial benefits of creating a major tourist destination on their rail line and their support helped legislation pass Congress.

initially, each national park was managed independently but because of the discrepancies in quality of management, Stephen Mather petition the government to develop a singular authority. in 1916, Woodrow Wilson signed legislation that created what is now the National Parks Service. in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt reorganized the Executive Branch to consolidate responsibility for the growing number of federally protected parks/monuments/memorials/cemeteries/etc. under the jurisdiction of one office. prior to this reorganization, for example, the War Department oversaw National Military Sites (e.g. Gettysburg, Revolutionary War battle sites) and one line of National Monuments (which included Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego), while the Department of Agriculture oversaw another line National Monuments (which included Gila Cliff Dwellings in New Mexico and the Grand Canyon, among others). following the reorganization in 1933, there were 137 sites under the administration of the National Parks Service. today, there are 392 sites, most of which are National Historic Parks/Sites (123) but the National Parks see nearly twice as many visitors. while the largest ones are out west (not surprisingly), there are sites in every state and territory — which means no one has an excuse for not visiting at least one. find the one closest to you or, even better, plan a road trip!

hiking Acadia

on my trip to Maine in July, we took Sunday to drive up to Acadia National Park, located about halfway up the coast on an island. Acadia is the most northeastern National Park in the U.S. (I’m counting Saint Croix Island as the “International Heritage Site” it is) and balances the most southwestern site of Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego, which we visited in May.

view north from Cadillac Mountain

Acadia was the first National Park designated east of the Mississippi River. the island which it covers, Mount Desert, saw its first European settlers in the mid-1700s but wasn’t popularized until a century later, when artists and photographers spread images of the island among patrons and friends. towards the end of the 19th century it became a popular, remote destination with the uber-rich of the East Coast (e.g. Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Astor) whose demands for more luxurious accommodations resulted in improved lodging on the island. their attentions contributed to the extent and quality of landscape preservation the Park demonstrates today.

in 1919, President Wilson declared the area Lafayette National Park which was, as I mentioned above, the first east of the Mississippi. a decade later the name changed to Acadia. over the decades, Acadia has benefited from several infrastructure programs, both public and private. beginning in 1913, the younger John D. Rockefeller began a project (that lasted until 1940) to construct carriage roads throughout the park, allowing for car-free access to more remote areas of the park. rather than flatten hillsides, walls were built to preserve the natural landscape and avoid felling trees all while providing remarkable views. crews quarried native island stone for the roads and planted native plants along the roadsides, blending them into the landscape. two gate houses, one at Jordan Pond and one near Northeast Harbor, serve as entrances to the system (we caught a glimpse of the one at Jordan Pond driving on the ring road — very impressive).

looking up the Precipice Trail

the Civilian Conservation Corps was also active at Acadia and the two camps established on the island ran throughout the duration of the CCC project. the workers completed hundreds of projects, constructing the two campgrounds, monitoring forest health (e.g. fighting fires, fuel reduction, disease management), and constructing and expanding an extensive network of trails, including the two we hiked.

following our brief (and foggy) hike down the Gorge Path from the top of Cadillac Mountain, we did a loop on the Park’s ring road and along the way picked up a pair of hikers who were up from Connecticut for a long stay at the park. the Park has a great bus system but the couple managed to miss the last one that would go past their campsite from the trail they hiked in the afternoon. they were quite nice and joked that they knew we weren’t from the east coast because we’d stopped to pick them up. turned out to be a good deal for all involved; they’d been coming to Acadia for years and offered advice on what to see, what to avoid, and which hikes were most interesting.

their heartiest recommendation? hiking the relatively short but vertical Precipice Trail. it’s only 1.8 miles round trip, but it’s about 1,000 feet straight up. undaunted, we set off with moderately unsuitable footwear to investigate the trail. my guidebook recommended something like 2.5 or 3 hours minimum for a round trip, which seemed a bit generous if it was less than a mile up and back. the terrain was certainly more challenging than the Gorge Path but not so bad as I thought while standing at the base of the hill. unfortunately, we started off rather late (well after 5 p.m.) and when we asked a descending couple how much farther up we had to climb (more than half) we sighed and resigned ourselves to going back down without reaching the top of the hill. unlike with Croagh Patrick, the guidebook’s projected hike length wasn’t completely off base. I suppose the view from the top would have been pretty limited in any case. on a sunny day next time.

Muir Woods

back in April, one of my best friends got married in Muir Woods and she asked me to officiate. the entire week in San Francisco was great and the location they selected truly unique. as with Becca and Dave’s ceremony at Devil’s Lake, it was great to be outside and fun to be tramping through nature in wedding-formal attire.

I visited Muir Woods once previously; on my first trip to California the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, my mom and I drove up from San Francisco to check out the redwoods. at one time, redwood forests covered much of the coast of northern California but during the late 19th century logging cleared much of the timber. a stand of old growth trees remained untouched north of San Francisco along Redwood Creek, due primarily to its relative inaccessibility (the main road from San Francisco to the National Monument is still a steep and windy thing). concerned for the safety of the redwood grove, in 1905 Congressman William Kent and his wife Elizabeth secured a loan from a sympathetic banker friend and purchased 611 acres of land for $45,000.

being held by private hands did not ensure the safety of the grove, however. in 1907 a water company in Sausalito unveiled plans to dam Redwood Creek and flood the valley and heart of the redwood grove. to circumvent the problem posed by local court proceedings brought by the water company, Kent donated 295 acres to the federal government and in January 1908, Theodore Roosevelt established the Muir Woods National Monument under the auspices of the 1906 Antiquities Act. Muir Woods became the 7th National Monument and the first created from lands donated by a private individual. the name for the site came at the recommendation of Kent who objected to having the site named after himself. as Muir was instrumental in establishing the national parks system, Kent later proved instrumental in establishing the National Parks Service and, in 1928, a 280 foot Douglas fir was named in his honor (after decades of environmental buffeting, the tree toppled in 2003 and remains where it fell).

despite the inaccessibility that initially kept the redwoods safe, the Monument enjoys immense popularity due in part to its proximity to San Francisco. when the Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937, attendance at the park tripled (to 180,000). it now receives more than three-quarters of a million visitors a year. our little troop accounted for at least a few of those visitors over the two days we went up to rehearse and conduct Lindsey & Andy’s wedding ceremony!

El Ávila

one thing that amazed me about Caracas was how close it is to the coast. from the top of El Ávila you can see the incredible blue-green waters of the Caribbean. (no wonder, since the peak rises in the midst of the “Cordillera de la Costa”.) the airport sits right on the water and coming in for the landing was rather unsettling. I’d never made an approach that brought me so close to the surface of the water before and in the last few moments it seemed as though the wheels were inches from dragging through the water. but we landed without incident, I disembarked in my second not-yet-visited country in as many weeks, and found my ride over the mountains and into the city.

(more on the harrowing adventure that is vehicular travel in Caracas later.)

one afternoon when my eyes had begun to cross from browsing microfilm in the Biblioteca Nacional, I set off to scale El Ávila. looking back at my pictures, I began to wonder why the mountainside remains undeveloped — after living in San Diego I know there are few places building developers won’t go if given the opportunity, especially with prime mountain or coastal land. turns out that El Ávila became part of a national park in 1958 and is now a well-used recreational area. there’s a teleférico that goes from the base of the hill up to the mountaintop and offers spectacular views of the whole city (as seen above), the first incarnation of which was inaugurated in 1952. the original not only ran from the city to the mountaintop, but also down the other side to the coast and along the length of the peak to the (now-derelict) Hotel Humboldt. the teleférico ran until the late 1970s when it was abandoned. riding up we saw the wreckage of the original structures, rusted and abandoned beside the newer line.

despite successfully getting the teleférico up and running again, the private corporation responsible for it lost their concession to the state in 2008. according to a government statement, the company ran up a debt of some 19 billion bolivares which prompted the state to take over the tourist operations. since taking over, the state has promised to expand the teleférico service once again to include some of the old routes. whether anything comes of the state’s grand plans remains to be seen, but somehow I imagine that the rusted skeletons of the original system will rest where they lie.