High Sierra Topix

ERIC wrote: ↑Wed Mar 25, 2020 9:28 pm Costco trip in my hometown today (only because I had real things we needed and were out of). Parking lot empty. Gas line, none. Zero lines to get in. Deadest I've seen that place since it opened several years ago. Shelves mostly fully stocked, including items everyone has been after for the past couple of weeks. I was actually fought for by two check out clerks and had no wait for check out. This was at 4:30pm on a Wednesday.

Sensing the shopping madness has finally crashed (or is beginning to).The place was madness as much as elsewhere days ago. People driving from 15-50 miles away (confirmed by my wife) because they heard our location was quiet and had the goods in stock.

I noticed the parking lot at my local Costco was more empty than usual. Recreational shopping is not happening, and folks are out of room to stash toilet paper.

VALLEJO, Calif. — March 26, 2020. USDA Forest Service appreciates the public’s interest in outdoor recreation, particularly in light of current events. The Pacific Southwest Region of the Forest Service, in response to the recent statewide shelter-in-place order issued by the Governor of California, is joining the cause to aggressively mitigate the spread of COVID-19 by closing developed recreation facilities on our National Forests statewide.

“Developed recreation sites” refers to designated recreational use areas designed to facilitate public use. Information on individual recreation sites and opportunities are available from local National Forests.

Closures of developed recreation facilities are being put in place until at least April 30th in an attempt to avoid groups of people and promote social distancing of staying more than six feet apart.

While designated recreation sites will be closed, the general Forest area including the extensive trail system will remain open and available to the public. Hiking and walking outdoors are widely considered beneficial to maintaining one’s health. It is the intent of USDA Forest Service to maintain trail access to the extent practicable.

Please keep health, safety and the environment in mind when visiting National Forests. Your personal responsibility is critical to ensuring public safety and preventing further restrictions. We ask that you consider whether your personal participation in outdoor recreation at this time would pose an unnecessary risk to others as we all work together to flatten the curve and slow the spread of COVID-19. We appreciate your cooperation in keeping our National Forests safe and healthy for everyone’s use.

The local newspaper around here says that the National Forest trails in my area are closed, and the city closed the parking area. However, there is no forest order on the ranger district website or on the appropriate national forest website. There is an emergency forest order closing developed facilities as of yesterday, but not trails. This means that the trails themselves remain open, because they can't close a trail without a forest order, right?

Also, the irony... I read about a Chinese study that said that patients with confirmed coronavirus were 5x more likely to require hospitalization if they were in poor cardiovascular health before becoming infected. IOW, we're trying to stop people from doing the one thing... Exercising... That actually can help avoid a serious case of coronavirus!

As much as I too would like to go out and do more hiking (Henry Coe State Park trip was scratched for me) , people's cardiovascular fitness is a result of life-long lifestyle; an unfit person today is not going to have less complications if they get the virus simply by going out and walking these last few weeks. The fit person, is not going to loose their fitness (as it relates to the virus) in this short time either. However, good try with logic!

You can still walk around your home outside. Getting outside in the short term has more for mental well-being. I am still walking 5-10 miles a day- a bit boring due to so many repeat routes, but it is better than nothing. Weather has been nice and I really love spring here in the low lands.

The more important question is how long are we going to be locked out of the wilderness? As frustrated as I am now, the important issue is if we are going to be able to do our summer backpack trips. I sure hope so. There is a possibility that the trails would be open but quotas reduced to avoid over-crowding.

Hi Franklin,

There are plenty of exercises you can do at home, even without weights, that will challenge you cardio fitness.
Doing squats, stair stair step ups, lunges, dips using your kitchen countertop, or two sturdy chairs, broomstick on two chairs to do reverse rows, drop sets of pushups with bands, all done with 30 sec or less rest between sets, will have you breathing like a race horse.

Just in case you needed another forecast of what to expect... very sobering. The dashed line is a projection. The shaded area is a confidence interval. Use the drop down menu at the top to change from the U.S. to a particular state. The bottom graph shows cumulative deaths.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections

For most places it looks like June 1st before this thing is under control.

@Wandering Daisy It only takes 7 days of inactivity to suffer significant training losses, including huge declines in cardiopulmonary efficiency... The very thing people need to survive a serious bout of coronavirus. It doesn't take long at all for a fit person to lose what they've gained.

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/fitness/t ... ness-22330

Anyway, trails aren't closed at all. Wilderness permits aren't being processed I think, but trails are open.

@maverick Thanks for the suggestions! Resistance training was never my bag, though. For one thing, too great a risk of injury. If your broomstick breaks, or if your hand slips on the counter top, or if you misjudge your foot placement on the stairs, you could end up with a nice cast (or worse) as a companion for a few weeks. Not worth it!

Anyway, the plan is to park far away and jog to the trailhead. The trail I usually use is on federal land and there is no forest order closing it. The trail is a former county road, and there is no closure notice on the county website. The parking area is city owned and there is an order closing that. So likely just the parking lot is closed, but they're telling people that the whole thing is closed to try to force submission.

Edit: the parking was closed and they had "trails closed" signs up, but there was no legal order posted. I found parking in a legal area that's actually closer than the real parking lot, and went on my normal run. By the time I left there were 10 other people doing the same thing. Very glad to see that people aren't letting this hysteria get to them!

pertaining to the per capita comment...Mono County, as of the 26th, had the highest per capita Covid-19 confirmed cases in California. 6 per 14,000. (17 hospital beds.)

Inyo County has 5 confirmed cases.

Stats are changing daily though...state and countrywide.

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