Yosemite Chief Scales New Challenge By Mark Grossi The Fresno Bee - November 9, 1999 YOSEMITE - When the new Yosemite National Park boss arrived last month, he greeted the ranger at the South Entrance and then got lost on the way to his office. "That's probably not the right thing to say," Superintendent David Mihalic said Monday. "But it's the truth." It is also understandable. Mihalic's office is 30 miles away from the South Entrance, and the last five miles are in the looping roads of Yosemite Valley, which has been disorienting people for years. But driving the 7-mile-long, 1-mile-wide glacial valley is child's play compared to navigating the twisting political road to Yosemite Valley's restoration, a feat no superintendent has mastered in the past 19 years. Mihalic said he has not been given marching orders to move the valley work ahead, but he conceded that Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is clearly interested in that mission. "I have no magic bullets," Mihalic said. "We have great talent in the people who work at this park. I don't know enough yet to talk about specifics, but I am looking forward to this." Babbitt announced last month that Mihalic, 53, would move from the Glacier National Park superintendency in Montana to replace Yosemite Superintendent Stanley Albright. Albright, 68, was working on the $176 million job of rebuilding and reshaping Yosemite Valley after the devastating Merced River flood of 1997. The flood had given park officials the money to move ahead restoration plans that had been waiting for years. When the effort stalled in political and legal problems, Babbitt turned to Mihalic, a 27-year National Park Service veteran. Mihalic has been the boss in four national parks, including acting superintendent at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Great Smoky's gets more than twice as many visitors as Yosemite, destination for 4 million annually. Summertime traffic and crowding are big issues in Yosemite Valley. Very high on Mihalic's resume is the completion of a final General Management Plan at Glacier, a process that took four years. "It blew up in the middle," Mihalic said. "But we kept after it. The plans are very difficult to do, but it is very important to hear from the public." Yosemite officials heard from the public all through the 1970s before the 1980 General Management Plan was approved. For the past 19 years, officials have faced squabbles, budget problems and lawsuits. Mihalic is already making the rounds with Yosemite's different interests. Last month, he spoke with the brass at the Sierra Club, which sued the park this year and forced a study of the Merced River. The river plan must be completed before valley restoration work can take place. Highly visible He will be present Wednesday when Yosemite signs an agreement to cooperate with gateway communities in the Yosemite Area Regional Transportation System, which is trying to put together a system to bus visitors into the park from outlying communities. And, as he drove into the park from Montana, he spoke briefly with a gas station owner in the eastern Sierra about tourism and the needs of the communities on that side of the mountain. Mihalic said he will be very visible and accessible to the public. "We manage ideas in the national parks, not land," he said, glancing out his office window toward Half Dome. "This place is the embodiment of the ideals of our country. Whether it's a lawsuit or a protest, you have to hear the ideas from the people." But Mihalic does not believe Yosemite's General Management Plan needs an overhaul. He said it works as a blueprint document. "It's not an absolute recipe, but it is a solid foundation," Mihalic said. "At some point, you need to stop planning and do something about the problems."