Road cut ice - legality
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I think the other risk taken is whether the property is on private v. public land. Our experience is that the private property owners (unless in agreement with TAF) tend to be more uppity (rightly or wrongly) due to fears of liability. |
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Warbonnet wrote: But the lesson was learned: if a trooper wants to find a reason to bust you, he/she will (usually; some are very cool men/women). No, you didn't learn the lesson. Certainly, there is an astonishing amount of law, statutes and regulations that a policeman may try to invoke. But, if they wrote you a citation that the judge found unenforceable for some reason, then you weren't actually breaking any law. Hello! Btw, they are very cool because this is part of their training. It makes it easier for people to accept their offers and cooperate. Warbonnet wrote:I think most States have a great deal of latitude when it comes to the definition of "State Property" or "State Rights of Way". I think climbers are on the losing end of circumstances if the issue is forced.States don't have any latitude here. The property lines are defined. Stand up for yourself. The police are not here to protect you. The only rights you have are the rights you know you have and are willing to protect. |
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Didn't need to park on the shoulder either; the ice is only about a half mile from an exit. |
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Greg D wrote: No, you didn't learn the lesson. Certainly, there is an astonishing amount of law, statutes and regulations that a policeman may try to invoke. But, if they wrote you a citation that the judge found unenforceable for some reason, then you weren't actually breaking any law. Hello! Btw, they are very cool because this is part of their training. It makes it easier for people to accept their offers and cooperate. States don't have any latitude here. The property lines are defined. Stand up for yourself. The police are not here to protect you. The only rights you have are the rights you know you have and are willing to protect.Greg, you must not have read the post. The turn out area did NOT have any boundary that was obvious.....it was just a turn out area used by cars forever to turn around and go back up the canyon. There were zero trespassing signs or 'no parking' signs. The judge didn't even rule or comment on "unenforceable", v. "enforceable" laws, rather, he thought the patrolman's action were "frivolous". He was clearly irritated with the officer because he went out of his way to hassle us (almost the judge's language). That several cars pulled into the dirt parking lot, well away from the highway, to watch presented zero hazards to anyone involved. Of course States...and individual cops... have latitude....presumably he could have retrieved his GPS and found some sort of marker, however, climbers do these routes all the time....very common (he was new to the canyon area & admitted so to the judge who in turn suggested he spend more time getting to know the area). (We actually felt badly for the policeman....he was getting reamed by a judge who didn't want precious time taken up by what he saw as a non-matter). Re: "us standing up for our rights", neither he nor us had a clue where some mythical boundary was. This is partially what the Access Fund is about. Don't kid yourself....cops are not "trained" to be cool. Any reader of this post can cite a litany of running into cops (or vice versa) who are NOT cool when in fact they could have made the choice to do so. Had the parking lot been overflowing w/cars, spilling onto the highway w/cars along the guard raid, that's one thing. In the general interest of the public, he could have asked people to leave, end of story. The judge himself said he uses that turnout all the time to reverse direction. There's more dialogue written in these posts than could have been exchanged to resolve whatever problem the policeman thought was going on. He just wasn't cool but the judge, the chief arbiter of it all WAS cool. We were in the courtroom about 3 minutes. |
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Gokul, I take it you're talking about stuff along 151 and other roads near Platteville? |
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Doug Hemken wrote:Gokul, I take it you're talking about stuff along 151 and other roads near Platteville? I love the irony when folks who aren't from around here weigh in ever so authoritatively on local law and local law enforcement! The ratio of noise to signal just has to make you smile!I'm talking about Wyoming canyons. Cool...and bad cops are everywhere. Just like us. |
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The opinions expressed in this string, including mine, are reflective of how it's all screwed up. As a general rule, the East is privately owned, the West (BLM) often comes in to play. In Texas, property owners own outright the water beneath their property line; in most Western states, the states own the water. |
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Doug Hemken wrote:Gokul, I take it you're talking about stuff along 151 and other roads near Platteville? Yes Doug, all the ice here is off state hwy 151, about 6 miles west of Platteville (Grant County). The ice is on public land, and well laid back from the highway. I couldn't find anything from Dylan's search link (thanks!) that said it would be illegal. I also got on some ice on a road cut near Lone Rock. A state trooper pulled up on the shoulder near me when I was back down. He said someone called in to report me and he stopped by to check, but didn't see any problem in what I was doing, so he just asked me to "be careful" and drove away. |
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Gokul.. |
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Great story, Burt! |
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Had a state trooper pull up as a friend and I were approaching the ice in the picture (on a road-cut in SW Wisco, one of 8 on that particular road-cut, with more on neighboring road cuts). He talked to us politely, made several calls, looked up a bunch of stuff, and concluded that he couldn't stop us from climbing because we weren't breaking the law, but made it clear that he really wished we had decided to find some other way to have fun than by causing a stir by a 4-lane highway. |
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Sweet victory Gokul! |
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Thanks Tom. This whole deal about being a distraction to passing traffic seems to be a delicate issue. I personally can't see how it would pose a any kind of problem, but I can understand that some people at the highway department might have a differing opinion. Burt Lindquist wrote:Gokul.. Ha! That's quite interesting that Johnny Law only told you to "Be Careful" on the road cut at Lone Rock that drops down nearly onto the road edge. When belaying you are standing on the road. Cars are moving fairly slow though along that stretch of road because of the same close proximity of the rock to the road but there is a long curve in the road there so drivers won't see a belayer on the road until rounding the curve.Burt, I've been trying to recall how much room there was at the base, by the shoulder, and I can't seem to remember. I had my pack sitting around and I didn't feel like it was in any danger from passing traffic (or vice versa). And the cop pulled up on the shoulder right next to me, so I'm inclined to think there was at least a car's width of room there. Also, I didn't have a partner that day, so I was self-belaying - that must have helped reduce the footprint! I know there were at least 2 (possibly 3) flows that were in along that road cut. Could we be talking about different ones? |