California lakeside oasis is overrun by outsiders
What they weren't prepared for was what tourists brought with them, including violent fights, drugs, illegal camping, parking, letting dogs roam around free, graffiti-covered bathrooms, among other disturbances. 'Personally, I rarely go to the lake on weekends anymore because we know what a mess it is,' said Martha Geiszler, who owns a cabin near the lake and manages the Friends of Pinecrest Facebook Group, told the San Francisco Chronicle. 'There's very little visitor information given and very little law enforcement presence, so every rule is broken,' she added.
Geiszler (pictured) isn't the only one who's noticed the uptick in chaos, as Tuolumne County Supervisor Anaiah Kirk told the outlet: 'There have been some apocalyptic weekends.' Locals and park workers have also had to deal with an influx of traffic, trash, cars parked in fire lanes, and even drownings. In October 2023, a 59-year-old man drowned while swimming in Pinecrest Lake. When officers with the Tuolumne County Sheriff's Office got to the lake, they questioned witnesses and reviewed video footage from the man's boat.
It was later determined that the man, Brian Campbell, jumped into the water without a lifejacket on, his friend told police. The friend managed to drag him back to shore after jumping in after him. Medics then performed life-saving measures on Campbell, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. With chaos at an all time high at the lake, the county has set up new measures to try and decrease the troubling behavior.
Kirk (pictured) said if those fail to help stop it, he is prepared to implement stricter rules that would make it harder not just for victors, but for locals, to enjoy the area. 'I'm ready to go full-bore and do a lot more things,' Kirk said. 'But we're slowing down and going to implement a few things at a time.' First and foremost, Kirk said the county will crack down on the slew of illegal parking around the lake. Just last summer, a number of emergencies were slowed down due to illegally parked cars lined up along Pinecrest Lake Road, Tuolumne County Sheriff David Vasquez told the outlet.
Hundreds of citations were written last year, with most of them related to parking violations, Vasquez added. In March, just before the summer months hit, the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors approved new parking violation fees for the lake to try to get the problem under control. A $35 ticket has since been hiked up to $100 for the first offense, and $200 for the second. The county has also gone on to install dozens of 'No Parking' signs along Pinecrest Lake Road to deter people from leaving their vehicles on the roadsides.
'People were looking at a $35 citation as an acceptable tradeoff. We need to create a psychological deterrent,' Vasquez said. Kirk, along with other supervisors, is keen about increasing the first offense penalty to $250 if parking issues persist. While staff has tried to crack down on the parking dilemma, furious locals have called for more beach patrols and rule enforcement at the lake. So far this summer, Geiszler said she has seen a lack of staffing at the lake - something she attributes to the recent cuts to federal land workers.
Pinecrest Lake is under the supervision of the U.S. Forest Service, an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. President Donald Trump has slashed U.S. Forest Service operations and funding for National Forest management by about $800 million. Shawn Winstead, the district ranger for the Forest Service's Sugar Pine District, said two staffers are assigned to patrol Pinecrest and clean the bathrooms there. Locals, including Geiszler, said that there are not at all enough employees to take care of the area. She recalled the approximately six bathrooms looking 'absolutely disgusting' during Memorial Day Weekend.
'You can't just have one or two people patrolling the beach every weekend with all those people,' she added. According to Vasquez, staffing in his office has increased over the past year and he is making sure his deputies are prioritizing calls from Pinecrest this summer to try and crack down on the mayhem. 'I stand behind everyone's constitutional rights to access that land, but we were receiving astronomical amounts of complaints about overcrowding and illegal parking,' he said. While many locals have brought up implementing restrictions across the park and lake at local town hall meetings, Winstead said the county has not decided on that just yet.
'Right now, we're not looking at restricting access in any way. We're trying to keep everything open for everybody,' he explained. 'But if there were some kind of restriction in that area, we'd have a carrying capacity and that would affect everybody — cabin owners, visitors, everybody.' Kirk said they have also considered bringing in metered parking spaces into the beach area, installing a gated tollbooth at the entrance that would not allow cars in when capacity is reached, and offering a parking shuttle to the beach. 'There are a lot of potentials. We'll have an evaluation after this summer,' Kirk said.
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