The TMSPA Weblog

The Directors of TMSPA are pleased to announce the site for the 2013 Table Mountain Star Party:

Eden Valley Guest Ranch

Eden Valley is located approximately 9 miles east of Oroville, Washington.

Full information of the announcement is posted on the TMSPA Website. There have been significant changes made to the pages on the website and we recommend that you read them thoroughly.

TMSP 2013 will take place on August 7, 8, 9 & 10

-The TMSPA Staff

To our friends and family of Table Mountain Star Party,

while the burn areas of Table Mountain remain closed to the public, TMSPA was granted access to the site with our Forest Service Ranger to survey the impact of the burn from the Table Mountain Complex Fire. What we found was that the fire was rather capricious. The area of the main telescope field was almost completely untouched, including the trees at the north side of the field, while other areas had moderate or major burn damage as you can see in the pictures below.

(Images: top – looking north from the intersection at the Registration Tent; bottom – trees on the west side of the road across from the corral.
Click on image for full-size view, opens in your web browser)

After in-depth discussions with our Forest Service representative, the consensus we have reached is that we will not know whether the site will even be available for use under a Special Use Permit until well into next year. Furthermore, after examining the site, the TMSPA Directors have determined that it would not be in the best interests of our attendees, the mission of the Association, and especially the recovery of Table Mountain, to hold our event there in 2013. The Directors are clear and in unanimous agreement that the Table Mountain Star Party is not defined by the location. It is the attendees – our friends and “mountain families” – and our goal to provide a top-notch star party experience to them that is our purpose.

Therefore, the Directors have determined to relocate TMSP 2013 to an alternate location. We had seen this outcome as a possibility and have acted accordingly. The search for an alternate location is already underway, and we are investigating and evaluating many different locations. We have also become aware of rumors suggesting that a site has already been selected, and we flatly refute any suggestion that such a decision has been made. We ask that you do not inflame the situation by propogating such rumors or adding to the speculation that already exists. The Directors have set a deadline in January for when the possible alternate sites will be discussed and selected by vote of the TMSPA Board of Directors.

We are facing an unknown period of uncertainty regarding the use of Table Mountain and how moving to an alternate site in 2013 will impact all of us. We believe that we have to treat the current situation on a year-to-year basis. We will continue working with the goal of returning to our site on Table Mountain as soon as we practicably can do so.

We are preparing a short online survey that will be sent out to our attendees from the past three events, as well as a survey open to the public, as a means of learning from our attendee base what aspects of attending a Star Party are of importance to them. We will use the data from the surveys to aid us in the alternate site evaluation process.

At such time that any information or announcements need to be made, they will be issued through our website, the TMSPA Weblog and our Facebook page.

We would like to thank you for your patience and continued support.

Respectfully,
The TMSPA Board of Directors

The Management Team responsible for the Table Mountain Complex Fire has their own website which complements information from the Inciweb site. Go to the Pacific Northwest National Incident Management Team 2 website.

As of Wednesday, Sept. 26th the fire area is 37,677 acres in size, the contained area is 15% with an estimated containment date of Oct. 5th. Over 1000 personnel are assigned to the fire and firefighting efforts have incurred a cost of $7.2 million.

-The TMSPA Staff

The TMSPA Directors are continuing to monitor the Table Mountain Complex fire. At this time we still do not have any specific information as to the burn impact to the Star Party site. We have had reports that the site is being used as a helicopter drop point to supply fire crews in the area, which anecdotally suggests that the site is no longer actively burning.

There are now many informational sites for the fire on the Internet, including the Table Mountain Complex Inciweb site, the Kittitas County Fire Map site, as well as Twitter and Facebook accounts for the fire (links to those are on the Inciweb site).

We are avoiding speculating as to the impact of the fire on the Star Party site and will wait until we have inspected the site or received official information about the burn impact before making any decisions about how this will affect the 2013 event.

Aerial photo of the smoke plume from the Table Mountain Complex taken by the Wenatchee Rappel Crew

We will continue to post any updates we have here on the Weblog as information comes in.

-The TMSPA Staff