I live in CO and we have been to our fair share of national parks and other outdoor spots in the past few years and one of the things I now blame for overcrowding is: social media.
Much in the same way that you can have 100 content creators producing similar content but only 3 out of that group go viral. I've seen instances where certain spots will go viral on social media and garner way too much attention while very similar places largely go unnoticed.
A great example of this is about a year ago we were in Moab and visited both Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. Arches is arguably the prettier park but it's also much more "viral" than Canyonlands. When we went into Arches it was so crowded and we needed a "timed entry" ticket.
Contrast this with Canyonlands where we felt like the only ones there, no timed entry and we saw maybe a handful of other folks at the park. This mind you is one day after Arches and these parks are maybe 45min apart.
Now we have an "anti-social rule". Basically if we want to go somewhere we first check if that place is "viral" and avoid it if there's loads of buzz on social media about it.
> “Calls for such research became louder in the 2000s. As visitation to national parks and forests increased, and climate change and human development put more pressure on public lands, the need for evidence-based approaches to human impacts became stark […] In 2009, the director of the National Park Service hired its first official science adviser.”
Sounds like necessary work— creative and effective management. I dont envy the choices.
I live now in NY we have the privilege of wilderness dispersed camping. In some of those areas you will find designated campsites.
I planned and took a camping trip to PA and they don’t have wilderness camping. Everything is designated AND they require reservation.
Some of the areas I go to in NY have these old outhouses. Kinda sketchy. There are some areas where the use pressure is high, and they don’t even have the sketchy outhouses. There you may find areas 100 feet from designated campsite a surrounded by a sea of toilet paper tufts.
In PA, when you reserve your spot, the reservation system directs you to odd or even numbered sites to reduce pressure and let the ecosystem recover. And the outhouse I found on my trip was literally a brick s#!thouse.
I think I can say peeps in PA have upped their game.
While I like the opportunity to do wilderness camping, of what I’ve seen in NY, unmanaged sites suck.
Much in the same way that you can have 100 content creators producing similar content but only 3 out of that group go viral. I've seen instances where certain spots will go viral on social media and garner way too much attention while very similar places largely go unnoticed.
A great example of this is about a year ago we were in Moab and visited both Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. Arches is arguably the prettier park but it's also much more "viral" than Canyonlands. When we went into Arches it was so crowded and we needed a "timed entry" ticket.
Contrast this with Canyonlands where we felt like the only ones there, no timed entry and we saw maybe a handful of other folks at the park. This mind you is one day after Arches and these parks are maybe 45min apart.
Now we have an "anti-social rule". Basically if we want to go somewhere we first check if that place is "viral" and avoid it if there's loads of buzz on social media about it.
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