Dear Editor:
I am sorry that Barbara Lilley and others continue to support abolition of the BMTC. In spite of arguments to the contrary, I think it provides a necessary and valuable service, The wilderness needs a large number of educated users, and BMTC helps to provide this education.
However, while it may encourage people who are interested in hiking and climbing to continue developing this interest, I dispute the claim that it attracts "hordes of people into the wilderness." In recent weeks, I have conducted an informal poll of current and former BMTC students, and I have yet to find a single one who was brought into the wilderness by BMTC. They have all said that they looked for education after becoming interested in the wilderness.
Now to clear up a point in my earlier letter. I do not feel that overcrowding and overuse should be deliberately imposed on the wilderness. We do need large numbers of wilderness supporters, though, all working for more wilderness. The solution is to disperse these people through the available wilderness areas, as the permit system does. The overuse we should point to in our arguments is that of past years. In current years, the demand for permits when entry quotas have been filled will be an effective argument.
Another point, support of entry quotas is not necessarily equivalent to discouraging backcountry use. It is, I feel, more accurately interpreted as encouraging dispersed use.
While it is possible to learn mountaineering skills through participation in HPS, SPS, DPS, and RCS activities, skills are picked up in a haphazard fashion. Such portions of the BMTC curriculum as selection of clothing, food, and equipment would never be covered. Additionally, BMTC provides mountaineering experience, qualifying the student for Sierra Club trips. A participant wanting to learn a new technique on a trip would generally be discouraged. Leaders want experienced climbers. If there were no BMTC, newcomers would be caught in a vicious circle, needing experience, but not getting it because they didn't have it.
The Sierra Club should encourage newcomers to the wilderness. We need to avoid an elitist image, which would be fostered by elimination of a program which helps others to join us in the wild places we love. The abolition of BMTC would be ill advised.
