Can the Appalachian Trail Survive ‘A Walk in the Woods?’
outsideonline.com
outsideonline.com
Some would say the answer is to provide more services such as better camping accommodations and harder trail surfaces to handle the extra people. I do not support this. I suggest that making trails easier attracts more people, only exacerbating the problem. It's a game that cannot be won.
So rather than try to accommodate all these people, perhaps parts of the trail should be made less accommodating. Rock climbers do this all the time. See debates over sport (heavily bolted) v. traditional climbing methods. Adding safety features to a route attracts more traffic. Making/keeping a route difficult or even dangerous keeps beginners away, which reduces traffic. If we assume that there will always be more people in the future than there are now, that if nothing changes population pressure will always increase, then actively trying to keep people away may be the only sustainable plan.
This makes perfect sense if the goal of being a hiker is to show that you're more macho, or otherwise more morally worthy, than non-hikers.
It makes no sense at all if your viewpoint is that nature is beautiful and people should be encouraged to experience that.
If machismo works to reduce the footfall on a trail, so be it. That's much better than a gated trailhead manned by a guard taking tickets. And its far better than paved sidewalks and concrete staircases replacing trails.
This isn't true. You can channel people into the behaviors you want by making them easier; it's not an all-or-nothing "no matter what our environment is like, 3% of visitors will leave litter" situation. There are many things you could do to reduce environmental damage while accommodating more visitors:
- You could put handrails around the trails. People aren't supposed to leave them anyway.
- You could station trash cans along the trails. This makes it much easier to throw your trash in an appropriate place.
- You could establish fire pits in which it was officially OK to have fires.
- You could patrol the trails. This doesn't work well when hikers are rare, but it scales beautifully as they get more common. Or, you could have a stationary security presence in problem areas.
- You could blaze new trails.
Everything I've listed except trail patrols is something I've personally seen in some areas. (Full disclosure, I'm actually just assuming that new trails get blazed from time to time. I have, however, personally experienced trails being radically reworked between visits.)
> [machismo is] far better than paved sidewalks and concrete staircases replacing trails
Why?
Garbage cans in the middle of nowhere still need to be emptied or else they become full and no longer serve the need. A lot of these places are remote. It might take several hours to empty one trash can. Our parks barely have enough resources to maintain as they are. We shouldn't need to pay someone to hike in and remove your trash. I don't think it is too much to ask that if you hiked in with 5 full snickers bars that you hike out with their wrappers. Your pack always gets lighter as you go so there really is no excuse for not coming out with all your trash.
Trail etiquette keeps people on trail, their own personal ethics keep people on trail, and handrails also keep people on trail. Don't kid yourself.
- Handrails would be fairly useless as no one would be around to enforce the rules. Eventually they'd rust and fall into disrepair (visit just about any state park in Appalachia for examples).
- Trash cans need to be emptied. Logistically, how would that work? Also, they would fall into disrepair.
- There are large portions of the AT where a fire pit would be somewhat impractical due to limited space.
- Patrol 2000 miles?
- A new trail wouldn't be the AT anymore. There are already plenty of other trails in appalachia.
Equipment maintenance is logistically much like patrolling. It requires presence (though at a much lower level).
Handrails will still work without enforcement. They'll be less effective, but they'll still decrease the level of people going off-trail.
So how are you going pay for the patrol force? Not to mention get them to and from their assigned section, feed them, handle their waste, keep them safe--and manage their impact on the resource, since they are there on top of all the existing hikers.
That isn't wilderness. That's disneyworld. If you put a ladder up the nose (el Capitan) it isn't the nose anymore. It isn't wild. It isn't beautiful or majestic. It's just another theme park deserving of the hordes of fat impolite and irresponsible tourists it will attract.
Just as an example, the trash has to get out of the trash cans somehow. Usually that means service roads.
Prom Date spray painted on Black Rocks -http://jonathanturley.org/2015/05/08/destinys-child-police-s...
Casey Nocket - http://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2014/11/08/ams-woma...
It could just as easily be a function of population growth, easier access (e.g. more info available about how to get outdoors), better marketing by the NPS to attract more visitors, etc. More people visited the parks last year than ever before.
Sure it's anecdotal ... but you did ask.
(That's probably a good thing; I'd have preferred it if they'd had to place some signs as a restorative justice gesture).
I would expect most of the mining company executives organizing whole mountaintop removal are well over 25, since most executives are over that age. Goes a little beyond graffiti.
One possible solution is to have clearly delineated public art spaces. Tout Quarry is an example from the UK.
http://learningstone.org/?page_id=23933
> Tout Quarry Sculpture Park began in 1983 with artists residencies, where well known and emerging artists created both temporary and permanent work in response to the labyrinths and gullies of quarry workings within the 40 acre site – giving back to the Quarry where in the past so much had been taken away for buildings in London and around the world. This first Landscape and Environmental Sculpture project was significant in shaping PSQT’s creative and educational work and helped to save the historical quarry environment from further mineral extraction through a yearly artists residency programme that has brought a new experience and dimension to the quarry, with an unprecedented involvement of the community and visitors within the landscape
https://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinborland/5539302816/
Growing up near there, abusing the wilderness like this was always viewed as something people used to do, but we've now learned from our mistakes and take care of the wilderness so it sticks around for those after us.
Maybe younger people are just becoming further removed from the abuse of the past, so they are forgetting the hard-learned lessons.
You would think that that would translate into fewer of these types issues in our parks.
I disagree. The problem pointed out in the article is that a lot of people aren't there to exercise and soul search, and they're ruining it for people who would like to do so in the future by trashing the place.
It's absolutely not a good thing if many of the people are going into the wilderness and destroying it with trash, vandalism, and dog shit.
You know the woods are filled with animals that shit in the woods all the time, right? People should be burying it or at least moving it off trail but feces is a purely natural occurrence.
The trash and vandalism I absolutely agree with you.
So, I agree with the woods part, bring all the dogs you want onto the trail when you're in the woods, but when the rangers in Baxter State Park complain about people bringing dogs up the mountain, they are absolutely in the right.
And several others; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-distance_trails_in_the_Un...
I'd say the PCT is its closest competitor as the PCT is considerable well marked, but its an easier trail grade to hike(and on the other side of the country)
If you want remoteness and untouched wilderness, I went days without seeing another person (and some hikers can go weeks depending on the year) on the CDT at all though some extraordinarily beautiful locations. Of course its not as defined as the PCT or AT(compass navigation is requires as the trail doesn't always exist)
The thing about the AT is it is the most accessible of any of the major trails, I've heard that about half the US population is within a 1day drive of some point of the trail.
The Benton MacKaye Trail, for example, runs parallel to the southern part of the AT for about 300 miles, and also starts on Springer Mountain. There are lots of people that live close enough to hike on it. But the fact that it involves much more wilderness and doesn't go through a town every other day makes it a poor option for inexperienced hikers.
That makes me suspect that the only way to spread out the damage, so to speak, is to raise barriers to entry. Emphatically: not so drastically that people won't hike. I certainly want more people interested in enjoying and protecting the outdoors. But at least enough that people are comfortable in a variety of settings that aren't as "urbanized" as the AT is.
I don't think that I can get behind a complaint that people are hiking in the wilderness _too much_. This is a good problem to have.
More importantly, treating this like it's an issue of "people hiking... too much" ignores an awful lot. The hiking isn't the problem, it's discourtesy, entitlement, and destructiveness that are worrisome.
Personally I think the answer is better policing and giving out large tickets for litterers and destroyers. I don't see people smoking some weed why they hike being a real problem.
My experience in Italy is that they manage a high number of users pretty well without getting so uptight about things.
Just one bizarre example: you can bring a rifle into a wilderness area and kill an animal with it, but riding a mountain bike or even using a baby stroller is forbidden.
People in the US seem to get into all these NIMBY sorts of huffs, despite the vast amounts of space available.
Look at this, for instance:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MTB/comments/3jfrf5/someone_asked_a...
I'm on a flight right now, and am not readily finding concrete figures to support this, but I am a member of the Association of National Park Rangers (though not a ranger myself) and have a little bit of familiarity with related issues.
Is this seriously what we want? This is a good thing to think long and hard about.
That surprised me though. The few times I've been to the US it was absolutely litter free. I've only been to a very small number of places, and those places probably don't have people dropping litter, but after seeing those places it feels weird to me that Americans would leave trash in the wild.
Over here (UK) there is trash everywhere. David Sedaris picks litter as a hobby. Or perhaps crusade. He picked so much (and wrote about the experience) that his local council (when he lived in England) named a bin lorry (garbage truck) after him.
I sort of agree with you though - if sheer numbers of people is the problem does it matter if they carry booze or not? If the alcohol is causing problems that probably needs some extra detail.
Head to the Rockies or out to Oregon if you want solitude hiking. When I hiked Mt. Bierdstadt in CO I was completely alone for 7 hours and never saw another person the entire day.
That being said, of course there are people like in this article, but they're only at the shelters that are close to town. Walk a bit away from the town, and you're golden.
Walking 15 miles into the woods to "party" is a huge ask. Shitty people are lazy.
The real story behind all of this is how young / homeless / disenfranchised people are turning to the trail as an outlet / support group. That is more interesting to me, and worthy of a story, rather than judgement as doom of the trail.
Its also just a really awesome trail (Montana/Wyoming/Colorado/New Mexico) with on a good year maybe 300 hikers starting(far fewer finishing or making significant progress)
Though it does take map and compass navigation as the trail is not complete and even when it is, there often isn't a trail just a line on a map.
The AT just seems anti-why I like to hike, and sounds more like a backpacking trip across Europe with your HS senior class.
I pondered this for a while the first time I saw a "stay on the trails" sign at a national park. The immediate reaction is to think that we're just animals like any other, so wherever we want to walk is "natural" and should be perfectly fine.
But then I realized the differentiating factor is that the only reason I was at this specific place is because somebody put a dot on the map and built a road most of the way there. So even when we leave behind most of the artifacts, we're still part of a populous advanced civilization that can easily destroy these places. No matter how alone you seem, the trail is more like walking through a "nature museum" than actually being part of nature.
Irresponsible drug use could cause an increased load on emergency rescues, but it's probably just a red herring focused on by overproscriptive government agencies. Most park rangers are awesome people, but they've still drank that LEO kool aid.
That's true, but it's largely to help people avoid getting lost and dying in authentic nature. Backpacking trails are much further toward the "what trail?" end of the spectrum, but they're still marked trails. Going off the trail is dangerous.
(That said, another purpose of "stay on the trails" signs is to help prevent shortcut-based erosion, an entirely different goal coming from an entirely different motivation for leaving the trail.)
Erosion and other destruction is what I was focusing on, either concentrated because of a "shortcut" or not. We're not worried about the erosion/destruction caused by animals running all over, so what makes human animals different? That's what I was trying to tease out.
This sounds a lot like "kids are partying in the woods, sometimes near the AT!", which has been true since trails were invented. There is a definite "get off my lawn!" vibe in the article.
When my brother thru-hiked it he said locals would often leave coolers full of iced beer out with a sign that said "help yourself", so it's not hard to get booze if you want it.
You can't do anything about the boat campers and the cooler campers, but the backpackers and hikers that I have been around have been less conservation minded than I would like.
Maybe with toilet paper, but that should be buried anyway, not blowing in the wind across the trail. Or is burying poop out of fashion again? I've been out of the hiking scene for some time now.
I thru-hiked in 2007, and many of the problems now were in their infancy but not out of hand yet. There has always been a couple bad apples, but this is simply a result of the numbers.
In June, I was visiting family near the trail at the same time the wave of thru-hikers comes by, and I couldn't believe how many there were. I also gave two thru-hikers a hitch, so I had a chance to talk to them about some of this. They estimated about 4x as many hikers compared to the year I thru-hiked. And I think they said there was one campsite somewhere down south with 89 tents (or hikers I can't remember) in a single night. One of them said they were hiking this year specifically because they heard the movie was coming out.
Rationing is a frustrating solution. It means, only the special few get to enjoy these spaces. Then it no longer 'belongs to all of us' i.e. isn't a public space any more. So should the Federal Govt even administer it? Why do we all pay for it, when only a special few get to go there?
I'm not anti-conservation. But these questions inevitably will arise as population (& demand) grows and the public spaces stay exactly the same size.