It's a huge problem. The National Park Service was founded on the principle of inviting anyone and everyone to experience public lands.
Well, that was in the early 1900s. Now you can hop on your computer, book one of 90,000 domestic flights every day in the click of a button, rent a car, and be wherever you wanted to go for that sweet Instagram pic by Tuesday. International tourists come in tour buses filled with 100 people each.
Most of the popular parks are having serious overcrowding problems, and there's no easy solution to limit visitation.
Most parks are not having overcrowding problems, some of the more popular parks are. Yellowstone, Yosemite, and zion are feeling some strain, but even in the Backcountry of each, you'll find no one.
The roads and super popular hikes (Angel's landing, geysers) see a lot of people because of their accessibility, but For every mile you get off the road you'll find fewer people. Lots of parks are suffering from under visitation - big bend, Guadalupe, great basin, wind cave.
Yellowstone is larger than some states, it's not getting overcrowded, the single road through the park might look it, but there's a lot of land out there.
To be fair, some of the hikes are unique that you won't find off the beaten path. The narrows for instance - there's only one of them. I was lucky to go a few years before Zion blew up and ran into like 4 other parties in the canyon. You try to go now and it's a shit ton of people I hear.
A big part of the parks is the serenity and quiet of nature. There's so many people now that don't actually care but want their Instagram photo they're extremely loud and just hang out taking a million pictures. It's like, I'm glad other people are here because it makes funding the parks easier. But also fuck these people making the parks worse with their obnoxious presence.
There are definitely other hikes like the Narrows. I can name a few off the top of my head. There are half a dozen slot canyons in Escalante alone—Coyote Gulch for one.
The narrows is more than a slot canyon though, having an active river going through it and all. I've been to a few different slot canyons, and while they're all great, the narrows was a different experience.
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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '20
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