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Comment by lukas099 | Hacker News Reader

Taken too far this can cause problems. Many have experienced the over-walked nature park where one can't even tell what the official trail is anymore. I have volunteered in public parks, and one of the difficulties is encouraging the use of the official paths, and discouraging use of the 'social paths' (as we called them), while maintaining the natural look of the trail.

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If the social paths are more popular than the official paths, then why not make the social paths official and let the official paths return to nature?

Sometimes the official paths are made to attempt to minimize erosion and damage that other paths could cause.

As rascul said there are environmental concerns. There can also be access/ADA issues, like path width or slope/rise:run. Or it may simply be budgetary.

Low stakes with string or wire strung among'em should be enough in most cases to deter off-path tromping eh ? Plant something inside their perimeter so it all looks preplanned.

That's a pretty easy 80/20 style solution, sure.

That 20% there is the little fact that all the fences and signs in the world don't keep a certain subset of headstrong people from e.g. leaving the path and falling into geysers in Yellowstone, or getting too close to wildlife.

It's generally desired to put up as few artificial features as possible to maintain the natural look of the park. Sometimes it is necessary, of course.

The other problem is that many trails are just maintained by a couple of volunteers. Many in the US are done by local mountain biking clubs, for example. It can be hard enough to maintain what is already there when you're relying on the goodwill of a couple volunteers to do heavy labor at 6am on a Sunday.

It's not that they're more popular. It's that the entire forest becomes one big social path devoid of ground cover flora. One purpose of paths is to keep human disturbance to a small, well-defined area.

If they were obviously more popular, that's what we would do. But usually it is all just a big mess of erosion and there isn't any obviously most-popular path.

You are describing a case where the desire paths are undesirable, as they may allow litter or vegetation growth, or hasten erosion of soil.

However, when you mention "even tell what the official trail is" is a desire path still desirable in this case? I mean, if no one knows there is an official trail what purpose does the desire path serve? Or is your concern about having interesting vegetation or whatever spoiled by the desire path?

I wonder if there is an optimum amount of desire paths -- where it is still possible to follow the official trail, but interesting diversions are also allowed.

The desire path was never desirable. You should always stick to the official trail when you are hiking in parks that have them.

If the official trail is too wet to walk on, it's too wet to hike that day.

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