The end of dispersed camping?
hatchmag.com
hatchmag.com
When I was younger and lived in the appalachians, there were countless of waterfalls, overlooks, and camping spots isolated and away from everyone. But as time went by, these places became less isolated and full of litter, even the more remote spots.
As much as I dislike Instagram and its effect on natural areas, I think another large factor is the population count. The US has 46 million more people than 20 years ago, and that's more people looking to get out and have fun in nature.
One hope is for state and federal conservation agencies to buy more private land and enter into more conservation land trusts. We need more public space for people to enjoy, hopefully with fewer ATVs and campsite garbage.
As far as deferring to authority is concerned, there is some benefit. Hunters were the worst offenders for leaving garbage behind, but now with the state owning much of the land, hunting is no longer allowed. Now there aren't hunters leaving behind piles of trash and illegally built blinds but there are more people out enjoying nature.
Deferring to someone else isn't the solution, but it also isn't a tragedy.
David Sedaris did this so much they named a garbage truck after him.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2014/jul/31/davi...
He watched as the park services started building roads through national parks, and more parking lots, and how that changed absolutely everything. It also has a lot of old stories about the area. It's an amazing book.
This sort of thing is why I'm totally opposed to giving the park service more stuff. Park Service should stick to managing Public monuments and the half dozen national parks that serve as sacrifice areas that draw tourists way from everything else.
Better is to not advertise and if there are too many people require permits. It may be beneficial to remove infrastructure. For instance blocking of roads that allow access. Because most things that aren't heavily advertised and are more than a mile from a road see very little traffic.
While I agree that we need more land to be protected, I disagree that we need it for people to enjoy. Part of the problem IMHO is that camping has become too easy, too comfortable. We need to set aside land and keep it wild. That means not installing car camping luxuries, not paving every trail so as to accommodate as many people as may be physically possible.
If you really want to get away from civilization then you should consider remote backpacking trips. Wilderness backpackers, in general, are strict followers of Leave No Trace and unless it is a super popular trail there won't be too many.
https://journeyofkhan.us/photo/rock-totem/
It kept us on the path and we thankfully made it back out to the car.
Or maybe it would impact it less by keeping tourists out. If it's about compromise, maybe we shouldn't call it Leave No Trace? That phrasing doesn't imply compromise, but it seems like every individual has their own ruleset when it comes to LNT, even though the wording is pretty absolute.
I'm just pointing out that it's a fairly slippery slope for some on stacking stones at all.
Eg.
> Do not build rock cairns or other trail markers
https://www.nps.gov/seki/planyourvisit/minimum-impact-restri...
I briefly considered painting "demotivational rocks" and leaving those around as a counter-prank but ruled it out after realizing I'd have to actually collect and paint the rocks, though it was an amusing thought for a few minutes!
IMO the longer term solution is to educate people. One idea (not a cure all, but it might help): offer free classes on nature conservation, good camping practices, etc. Each person who hasn't taken the class in the past N years pays a much higher access fee to the campground.
Even though the barrier to entry is high, and isn't in the same ball-park as these car-campers there are far too many people trying to spend some time under the trees, and the park is being damaged.
Contrast this period with the 1980's. Disposable income is (apparently) lower now then it was back then. Back in my childhood several of my neighbours would have campers, or boats, or snowmobiles; and many opportunities to use them throughout the year. Now when I look around I only see 1 on my entire block, and with entire segments of the economy closing for good, factories being emptied; I see the golden era of the union, and 'extra' money as a thing of the past.
So how are all these people able to afford crowding our parks? The article talks about this decline almost as if it's a recent thing, but I have seen this same pattern going back over 10 years.
The only way I can find a reasonable amount of peace and quiet is to goto Crown Land, and multi-day canoe trips into the wild.
It is younger people. Whereas young families might once have gone to places like disney world, provincial parks are now the cheap family vacation. Reliable GPS, weather forecasting and cellphones have also made previously "remote" areas very accessible. There are no secret places anymore.
But there were other benefits to camping as well. Small kids don't belong in hotels and restaurants -- it's a nightmare for everybody. And the process of getting them in and out of those accommodations eats up half the day.
And if you're camping, that itself becomes the entertainment, so the sightseeing side of it doesn't have to be as spectacular. Last summer we made our way across the northern shore of Lake Superior -- possibly one of my favorite places in the world. There are no bucket-list tourist destinations unless you count the Wawa Goose, yet it was just a blast and quite relaxing.
Uh, what???
Granted, it could be a matter of personal preference as well. I enjoy the outdoors, and my own cooking, more than the inside of a restaurant or hotel.
'Camping', in Canada at least, is now more and more about people driving an RV up to a park with boats and ATVs attached. If there ever was a golden age of gentleperson light-touch adventure in the outdoors it is certainly gone now.
It never really existed. People during the glory days still pooped in the woods. They cut down trees for firewood. They walked off trail. They stored their food improperly and then shot the bear that came for it. The rules against such things didn't exist then. They do now.
I think the problem is a result of a combination of tech as well as cheap camping gear making all of it easier, and the popularity of it with young people more than perhaps in the past.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/130337025075527...
In my experience it's the family who shows up at the trailhead with two trailers full of RZRs who are ignorant of LNT principles, not college students and young adults getting out to car camp with their REI gear.
I learned recently that some portion of these people are actually living in dispersed camping areas full-time, my guess being to avoid paying rent. The level of destruction I have observed, as well as the difficulty of finding sites even in remote locations in the middle of the week suddenly made a lot more sense.
I went back recently and those private areas were now public parks, the public parks had full parking lots, there were signs about dangerous cliffs everywhere, and it all felt very .. different. It was no longer exploring the frontier. I wrote about it a few years ago:
https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/exploration...
and since Covid, everyone seemingly got into the "original socially-distanced recreation", because now formerly rather low-traffic sites are packed, with all the trouble that brings.
trash is often everywhere. beer cans, broken glass, shotgun shells, and spent brass abound. Once just a month ago I came across a loaf of bread and a Hank Williams, Jr. album (as in vinyl), just sitting next to a fire ring. I think I've seen a dozen shoes left along camp sites in the past month.
I think somehow it got into the cultural mind that the woods are somehow maintained by a janitorial staff. i have no idea how it got so bad.
I've shown up to unmarked campsites where people had clearly abandoned 80% of their new walmart gear, so much I physically couldn't carry it all out to trash.
finding a good drive up camp spot in the southeast is basically impossible unless you go in the middle of the week, especially if you wanna keep it 100% legal (no private land). Our few national forests and their few roads stay busy, always have.
What would banning people from these areas achieve? Sure, you'd have an unspoilt wilderness, but...for whom?
The easily accessible areas are a tiny part of America's public land. Litter and vandalism don't significantly damage the local ecology in somewhere you already have hundreds or thousands of people passing through even with a leave-no-trace policy: they mostly make it less attractive for other visitors.
I'm not arguing that people should vandalise or litter public areas, or that the likely practical response wouldn't be to close affected areas. Just challenging the assertion that this would be a useful thing for the likes of the BLM to do. One possibility is that by closing them to RVs you keep them available to walkers on day trips or camping in tents, who may cause less damage if only because they can carry less stuff.
I guess that for animals, and rightly so, I may add.
They would get a float plane and fly deep into the Canadian wilderness and find a lake far away from any roads or trails. They would land there and then camp beside the lake for a week or two of fishing and hiking without another human anywhere within 50 miles, or without any signs than any other humans had been to that spot in years or decades.
Fortunately the world is still large and a lot of places are only accessible by foot. But a lot of those ecosystems done recover quickly.
A few weeks ago I was up in the emigrant wilderness and it looked like a majority of the visitors were using brand new gear. I hope what this really means is we’ll have a greater appreciation of backpacking and more support.
Carrying everything on your back and traveling 10-20 miles on foot to make camp seems to cut down the number of people you’ll run into by a lot.
https://youtu.be/LruaD7XhQ50?t=180 (Start from the beginning for more context)
I would just suggest the BLM apply a surcharge too all camping, they provide you two bags, one for trash and one for recyclable materials; labeled on the bag what is acceptable; and upon leaving and turning these over you get a refund on the deposit. Perhaps a bag per three days with a twenty dollar deposit.
It's like they took every bad habit they could find from the '00s Landrover enthusiast crowd and unironically cranked it to 11
Frankly I like the car-camping crowd better because they don't tend to stray far from the road.
Emigrate to Mars I guess?