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Comment by justrealist | Hacker News Reader

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Please don't cross into personal attack, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's not zero, but it does feel the GP is afraid of a slippery slope.

I live in a country where that slippery slope has been completed a few hundred years ago already; we have no old forest in the Netherlands, any forest we do have has been replanted and is usually publicly accessible and managed, ideally as a protected national park like de Hoge Veluwe (https://www.hogeveluwe.nl/en) which nowadays has wolves again (that migrated in from the direction of Germany)

It is absolutely OBVIOUS why there is no old forests in Netherlands. I don't think there is any danger of the same happening to the US.

US is 237 times larger than Netherlands. Netherlands also is 17.5M people. If US had the same population density, there would have to be over 4B people in the US.

And that is not including the area that Netherlands had to recover from the sea.

Let them spend a weekend in the woods then. There’s no reason to spoil a very rare commodity so that someone with no experience or appreciation can make use of it. There are many, many “close enough” experiences, and very few that haven’t been tainted by improper use. We should preserve these priceless spots, not sacrifice them to the lowest common denominator.

It’s not a rare commodity. People complain because it’s the best/iconic spots that become accessible, but there’s a near endless supply of almost as good locations in the national park system that nobody visits.

Who's selfish? Can we not reserve some wilderness for those truly able to make it into the back ranges self supported? Why does everything have to be available to everyone?

Gatekeeping is good. It keeps people out who simply don't give a damn about these spaces.

Hate to say it, but agreed. This easily turns into a "tragedy of the commons" situation, where a place that used to be special to some is now special to no one.

The general public has proven time and time again that they are incapable of respecting natural areas and following rules and accepted etiquette. We should not be spending money increasing access so the worst of the worst can ruin even more of the country's special places.

The problem with gatekeeping like this is that it also becomes an obstacle to preservation, once the initial gatekeeping has failed. Consider the scenario where climbers descend by rappelling from trees, or using an informal climbers' trail. If sufficient quantities of people use that place, the trees will die and the trails will become significant erosion channels (where the Glacier Trail ascends out of Bomber Basin in Wyoming's Fitzpatrick wilderness is basically a groove in a steep hillside because the traffic it receives far exceeds the maintenance).

Its certainly the case that installing bolted rappel anchors can encourage more people to climb a route, but the presence/absence of bolted belay/rappel anchors is far less of a deterrent than the presence/absence of protection bolts (which is why few people are disputing the the long-standing ban on power drills in wilderness areas). Put another way, if you claim the only reason you've never attempt Rocky Mountain National Park's Casual Route is because you're not good at building anchors, then I would argue you'll have a dangerously hard time with the rest of the route too.

The right balance between access and preservation is a difficult one to strike, but I would argue that land managers should err on the side of enabling more access because it allows them to proactively direct traffic into areas that are more durable to greater traffic, and stave-off potentially preventable accidents like this one:

https://washingtonclimbers.org/index.php/2014/09/01/12534/

and this one: https://gripped.com/201304/rock-climber-dies-on-rappel-from-... (I've rappelled from the anchor that killed Heung, and the fact that it must be somewhere where tat can be wrapped/tied is, I think, a major factor in why it was so exposed to rockfall. Its also a cautionary tale about backing up and testing tat anchors before fully committing to them, a lesson that people don't seem to learn even in the absence of "fixed" anchors. Consider this accident as well: https://americanalpineclub.org/news/2023/6/7/the-prescriptio...)

There's a balance to be struck. If wilderness areas end up like Yellowstone, then the experience is destroyed and the whole point of it remaining wild dies. Some things are more important than some human's desire to turn the planet into their amusement park.

The most amazing thing about Yellowstone (or any of the famous National Parks) is that, as busy as it is, if you get 1/2 a mile from the road, it is still very wild.

There is a certain tension in that the nature of the experience of wilderness areas is necessarily exclusionary. For example wheeled and mechanical transportation is excluded with limited exemptions for the disabled, the current limitation is that wheelchair users MUST use chairs that are 'Suitable for indoor pedestrian use'. Indoor use chairs are notoriously shit on natural surfaces, but should we allow ATVs? Probably not. Should we allow handcycles so disabled people can go through mud? I think so, but purists think otherwise.

"Very wild" only if you don't mind a bunch of views of roads and the noise of vehicles. You need to put a good day's trek behind you before things start getting separated from civilization, and even then you're on a trail designed for you by other humans.

The best wilderness I've ever experienced is the Mojave Wilderness. A place the size of Rhode Island, with 4 roads, a handful of trails, and a visitor's center. Otherwise, it's basically untouched desert. Absolutely gorgeous.

IMO, there's one fundamental difference between a park and wilderness: a park is a curated experience, and as such is a product of, and a part of, human civilization. That intrinsically means you are at the whims of others, perhaps benevolently so in the case of National Parks, but manipulated nonetheless. Wilderness means freedom from that omnipresent force of human intention, because the wilderness has no intention for you: it is ambivalent to your presence. The desert won't help you survive, but it's also not going to try and kill you or rob you, either. That's freedom you can't find on a trail overlooking a tangle of roads.

This sort of illustrates my point! You must not be very familiar with Yellowstone past the road system.

Except in the busiest parts of the park, you don’t have to stay on trail, and there are hundreds of square miles of roadless areas of the park. It is 3x the size of rhode island. There is no “tangle” of roads as there are only 5 roads that enter it. Like I said: once you are 1/2 a mile from the few roads in the park, you have it to yourself, and it is not a forgiving environment.

Yellowstone offers the full spectrum of experiences from stroller friendly boardwalks to multi day wilderness through hiking routes that never cross another trail, let alone come close to roads.

are you saying yellowstone is destroyed in your mind?

Wilderness and parks are two very different things. Yellowstone is a fantastic park, which by all means is worth the trip to go see. But it's not wilderness. It is a designed and curated experience, by and for humans.

Right, and not only that, but Yellowstone has a long history of being fucked with by humans and the ecology basically falling apart, because humans just wanted it the way they wanted it. And because it's so accessible, people continue to dump their trash, play loud music, fuck with the animals, etc. It's not nature anymore, it's Disneyworld with animal exhibits.

There's room enough for both man-made parks and wilderness areas, but to keep wilderness wild we need to stop making them human-accessible. I mean the whole point of wilderness is that it's not accessible, helpful, friendly, easy. The wild is harsh, dangerous, remote, unkempt, challenging, but also beautiful, tranquil, awe-inspiring, soul-filling.

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