14 ms·

Tourists Heeding Utah’s ‘Mighty 5’ Campaign Overpower Moab

42 points by mudil 7y ago

mirimir 7y ago
> The tourism onslaught has caused problems all around. On adjoining state desert land, Michael Grindstaff recently drove an all-wheel-drive vehicle past juniper and pinyon trees that were littered with scraps of toilet paper, windblown remnants of unpermitted campers having done their business. Hey, a use for a national DNA database. /s
Apocryphon 7y ago
A preview of the Area 51 flash mob, perhaps.
diebir 7y ago
There's little evidence that this is due to a campaign. RMNP in Colorado had a similar jump in number of visits, as well as Yellowstone and the Grand. The problem is simply too many people, too little wilderness. Unless we stop growing and put some wild lands off limits (as wilderness), in a few short years there will be nothing left.
- creato 7y ago
  > The problem is simply too many people, too little wilderness. Unless we stop growing and put some wild lands off limits (as wilderness), in a few short years there will be nothing left. National Parks are overcrowded, but they are a tiny, tiny part of all the public lands. Your complaint is that there are too few places with nice paved roads and visitor centers and such for people to go, not that there is too little wilderness. "in a few short years there will be nothing left" is so comically wrong it's ridiculous. You're looking at literally the top 5-10 most popular outdoor areas to go, of course they're crowded. Even within national parks, as soon as you go more than 1-2 miles away from a road, you'll see very, very few people.
  - ptah 7y ago
    yes! they should fix up infrastructure and steer people to lesser visited sites
    - newnewpdro 7y ago
      This is essentially an argument for more national parks. I've lived someplace embroiled in controversy over pursuing national park status. Most the residents are vehemently against it because it would trash the place and overwhelm it with tourist traffic and all the problems that brings. The supporters consist a small contingent of profiteering area land owners that don't even spend any significant time living there. They couldn't care less about what impact becoming a national park would have on the environment or the area residents' quality of life. They just saw dollars. National parks are a double-edged sword. They bring often much-needed tourism dollars to typicaly economically distressed remote regions. But they do not improve the environment. They stimulate travel (often by air), pollute the park area, and damage the natural habitats. If the goal is to preserve and protect, the last thing you do is classify a place as a national park and make it easily accessed and comfortable with infrastructure. You leave the place lacking roads, running water, campgrounds, and toilets, and certainly don't advertise it as a nationally-recognized place of beauty. National parks are more about stimulating the economy than preserving nature, at least as implemented today.
      - TulliusCicero 7y ago
        You're ignoring the cultural impact. People growing to love national parks may influence them to vote for pro-environment politicians and initiatives.
        hunter-gatherer 7y ago
        Do you have evidence that this has ever been the case? My personal experience, having grown up in Utah and still having family there, it always seemed to me that the best way to "protect" the environment or a wilderness area is to simply not build a road to it. Edit: spelling/grammer/I'm on mobile now.
- prawn 7y ago
  As an outsider, I think the US already has a brilliant system of designating land as tiers of national park, monument, national forest, BLM land, state park, etc. Especially in the west, there are huge amounts of land preserved for those interested in using it - hiking, camping, hunting, recreational vehicles (bikes, ATVs, etc). And all ages - families, college kids, travelling couples, grey nomads, etc. Loads of these places are not at all crowded. The problem is purely that people concentrate in very small areas of that broader wilderness. Photo-driven tourism exacerbates this. People are inspired to travel by a photo they've seen, so spectacular things get buried in people. If you want a wilder experience, it exists in almost every park, either outside of peak season, peak hour, or sometimes just a short distance off the main thoroughfares. The majority of people don't go beyond the easiest viewpoints.
  - Angostura 7y ago
    I'm from the UK and about 10 years ago, took a side trip to one of the redwood forests outside SF. It was packed near the carpark, but wonderfully quiet about 20 minutes walk away.
    - Gibbon1 7y ago
      That's the joke. Walk half a mile from the parking lot and it's only you bears and Germans.
- saryant 7y ago
  If you go virtually anywhere except the national parks in Utah you have the place to yourself. I’ve been in slot canyons with nobody but my brother and I around. Or just go in winter. It’s not hot, prices plummet, you don’t have to be up at stupid-o’clock for sunrise and there’s nobody around.
  - prawn 7y ago
    We got to Snow Canyon SP this summer and it was beautiful, and there were loads of camp sites spare. That was their off-peak time. Just had to get up a bit earlier to hike areas while they were still shaded, and you got a great experience without anyone around. Feels like no matter how many places you see in Utah, there are still more epic spots for the next trip. I think the ranger in The Maze mentioned that July had seriously low visitorship. Something like 7 people/day hiking in because of the heat and exposure?
prawn 7y ago
I'm a reasonably well travelled Australian (30+ countries, 40ish US states) and think that Southern Utah has one of the best concentrations of natural attractions on the planet. I've visited a number of times and would love to visit at least yearly if I could. I can appreciate that locals detest being swamped, but should everyone have a chance to visit such unique features for themselves? National parks in the US have incredible brand recognition and cachet and I imagine that this campaign is only part of the story. The big name parks across most of the country are swamped - Yellowstone, Yosemite, Rocky Mountain, etc. I don't know that there's a brilliant solution short of virtual tourism. Raising prices deters anyone but the rich. Adding carparks just reduces the magic of the wild. Increasing awareness of the second-tier features or developing more is an option. Naturally, the crowded experience will push people to visit outside primetime or peak season. Absolutely do not be deterred though. As the article suggests, avoid peak times for the best experience. Get up early. Stay late. You can sleep in at home. In Moab specifically, loads of people start later than they'd hoped or concentrate in particular places for sunset or return to the town for dinner. If you want a meal in town, make it lunch when the light is most stark and the park is packed. See Delicate Arch at sunrise instead of sunset, as one example. On this year's trip, we started Devils Garden at 6-7pm and came back in the dark with headlamps - had an amazing sunset and only saw a handful of people out there (I wouldn't recommend this to first-time visitors as the primitive trail can be adventurous to follow). Outside of the big five, there are outstanding places nearby that are popular but not completely overrun. Byway 12 is superb, Buckskin Gulch is fantastic, the slot canyons near Escalante, Coyote Gulch, Goblin Valley, Horseshoe Canyon, Cedar Breaks, Snow Canyon State Park, Kodachrome Basin, etc. Even in the big parks, there are top-shelf experiences that most people don't see - hiking into Canyonlands' The Maze is one of the best things I've ever done, hiking Trans-Zion is full of premium scenery without huge crowds, Fiery Furnace in Arches sans-guide is good fun, at Bryce you can get some great early/late viewing without hordes just by skipping the two main viewpoints. If you need help with an itinerary, ask away or my email is in my profile.
- arethuza 7y ago
  Why not have a lottery and give non-transferable tickets to US nationals and have a fixed number of tickets for non-US nationals that are charged for? [NB I'm not from the US but have been to a few US national parks].
rblion 7y ago
Lived in Utah for a year and saw most everything I wanted to see in that time. I will go back one day but in the off-season and will alternate between vandwelling in a van conversion and pay a premium for nice accommodations when I need it. A year ago my friend and I drove from SLC to the Tetons to Yellowstone to Glacier, then over to the PNW and down the coast to the Bay Area. This was honestly two of the best months in my life, I grew so much as a human being and expanded my horizons quite a bit just realizing how little I needed to be happy.
grubb 7y ago
I grew up in Utah and was able to visit Moab many times over the years. It is a great little town and the sites and things you can reach from it are awesome. One of my favorite hikes at Arches NP is the Fiery Furnace, which is permit-controlled. I wonder if requiring permits for more of the sites would help address these issues? Of course, I'm also a big supporter of efforts to increase the size of national parks and monuments in the state as well (despite this administration's recent efforts). Preserving and regulating more wilderness would go a long way to hopefully mitigating this overcrowding issue.
- MikeKusold 7y ago
  I think that permits should only be used sparingly at National Parks. For a lot of people, their only exposure to the outdoors comes from "that one family out west trip". If we want people to pressure politicians to protect public lands, the more people that feel a connection to those public lands the better. I view National Parks as a sacrificial public land. Let them be overly crowded in order to keep all the amazing BLM, state parks, national forests/prairies, etc... special.
- skohan 7y ago
  Fiery furnace is great! I used to drive to Moab every year for Spring Break to do outdoor sports with some friends from University, and it's a total paradise for people who want to do anything outdoors. It's selfish and elitist to say, but I almost feel like it's better if places like Moab aren't publicized at all, and people just find out about it through word-of-mouth like I did. It takes some education to properly "leave no trace" in the back country, and I feel like that sort of works itself out when people discover the parks largely by being invited by someone who's already in the fold. If the parks are going to be a more popular destination for the general public, then I think it is probably better to have a permit system both to regulate absolute numbers, and to require people to pass some kind of test or course about how to be a good citizen inside the park.
  - prawn 7y ago
    "It takes some education to properly "leave no trace" in the back country" This kinda baffles me because it really should take a bare minimum of consideration. The basic rules are not overly difficult, right? Don't trample stuff. Dig a hole if shitting in the backcountry. Don't feed animals. Minimise your impact. Don't walk around playing music at everyone. Parks have signs everywhere. Clear brochures with obvious info. What makes it so hard for people to understand and make that tiny amount of effort?
unzadunza 7y ago
“No more cars in national parks. Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs--anything--but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out. We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places. An increasingly pagan and hedonistic people (thank God!), we are learning finally that the forests and mountains and desert canyons are holier than our churches. Therefore let us behave accordingly.” ― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
- benj111 7y ago
  "wild pigs" I get the point that's trying to be made here, but pigs are just about one of the most destructive animals there are. I'm pretty certain that people in cars are less destructive than people riding wild pigs. Although a large proportion of people attempting to ride wild pigs are likely to end up dead, so maybe the author did have a good point afterall.
- bluntfang 7y ago
  i like the sentiment, but national parks should strive to be as accessible as possible. If you want to be away from society, there is so much more backcountry land where you can get what you need instead of complaining.
- DavidAdams 7y ago
  They banned cars in Zion National Park about ten years ago, and it was a good idea. Arches could definitely do the same, but the problem with the Moab area isn't so much overcrowding of the parks as it is overcrowding of the town, because one small town serves as the launch pad for so many surrounding areas. In this case, the solution is to try to develop other areas and spread the tourists out to other towns, many of which are desperate for economic development and tourist dollars.
DavidAdams 7y ago
Interestingly enough, there's a parallel to the San Francisco housing shortage. There are actually many, many more amazing places to see in Southern Utah and the rest of the Southwest. Only a small number of these places are in national parks. Like SF housing, an increase in supply would ease overcrowding, but instead of restrictions on new building because of NIMBYs and misguided governmental action restricting the supply, it's actually ideological myopia that's at the root of it. Utah's largely conservative Republican congressional delegation and state government pushed to roll back two new national monuments, and vehemently oppose the development of federal lands for tourism and recreation uses, while on the other hand are rabid about subsidizing extractive industries that aren't nearly as important to the local economy. In both cases, the problem is made worse by ideology. San Francisco housing is expensive partially because local lawmakers are blind to free market solutions, and Utah tourism is harmed because local lawmakers are blind to the idea that public lands being preserved in parks may be the best way to bring economic development to the state.

42 points by mudil 7y ago

> The tourism onslaught has caused problems all around. On adjoining state desert land, Michael Grindstaff recently drove an all-wheel-drive vehicle past juniper and pinyon trees that were littered with scraps of toilet paper, windblown remnants of unpermitted campers having done their business. Hey, a use for a national DNA database. /s

Apocryphon 7y ago

A preview of the Area 51 flash mob, perhaps.

diebir 7y ago

There's little evidence that this is due to a campaign. RMNP in Colorado had a similar jump in number of visits, as well as Yellowstone and the Grand. The problem is simply too many people, too little wilderness. Unless we stop growing and put some wild lands off limits (as wilderness), in a few short years there will be nothing left.

creato 7y ago
> The problem is simply too many people, too little wilderness. Unless we stop growing and put some wild lands off limits (as wilderness), in a few short years there will be nothing left. National Parks are overcrowded, but they are a tiny, tiny part of all the public lands. Your complaint is that there are too few places with nice paved roads and visitor centers and such for people to go, not that there is too little wilderness. "in a few short years there will be nothing left" is so comically wrong it's ridiculous. You're looking at literally the top 5-10 most popular outdoor areas to go, of course they're crowded. Even within national parks, as soon as you go more than 1-2 miles away from a road, you'll see very, very few people.
- ptah 7y ago
  yes! they should fix up infrastructure and steer people to lesser visited sites
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    This is essentially an argument for more national parks. I've lived someplace embroiled in controversy over pursuing national park status. Most the residents are vehemently against it because it would trash the place and overwhelm it with tourist traffic and all the problems that brings. The supporters consist a small contingent of profiteering area land owners that don't even spend any significant time living there. They couldn't care less about what impact becoming a national park would have on the environment or the area residents' quality of life. They just saw dollars. National parks are a double-edged sword. They bring often much-needed tourism dollars to typicaly economically distressed remote regions. But they do not improve the environment. They stimulate travel (often by air), pollute the park area, and damage the natural habitats. If the goal is to preserve and protect, the last thing you do is classify a place as a national park and make it easily accessed and comfortable with infrastructure. You leave the place lacking roads, running water, campgrounds, and toilets, and certainly don't advertise it as a nationally-recognized place of beauty. National parks are more about stimulating the economy than preserving nature, at least as implemented today.
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      You're ignoring the cultural impact. People growing to love national parks may influence them to vote for pro-environment politicians and initiatives.
      - hunter-gatherer 7y ago
        Do you have evidence that this has ever been the case? My personal experience, having grown up in Utah and still having family there, it always seemed to me that the best way to "protect" the environment or a wilderness area is to simply not build a road to it. Edit: spelling/grammer/I'm on mobile now.
prawn 7y ago
As an outsider, I think the US already has a brilliant system of designating land as tiers of national park, monument, national forest, BLM land, state park, etc. Especially in the west, there are huge amounts of land preserved for those interested in using it - hiking, camping, hunting, recreational vehicles (bikes, ATVs, etc). And all ages - families, college kids, travelling couples, grey nomads, etc. Loads of these places are not at all crowded. The problem is purely that people concentrate in very small areas of that broader wilderness. Photo-driven tourism exacerbates this. People are inspired to travel by a photo they've seen, so spectacular things get buried in people. If you want a wilder experience, it exists in almost every park, either outside of peak season, peak hour, or sometimes just a short distance off the main thoroughfares. The majority of people don't go beyond the easiest viewpoints.
- Angostura 7y ago
  I'm from the UK and about 10 years ago, took a side trip to one of the redwood forests outside SF. It was packed near the carpark, but wonderfully quiet about 20 minutes walk away.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    That's the joke. Walk half a mile from the parking lot and it's only you bears and Germans.
saryant 7y ago
If you go virtually anywhere except the national parks in Utah you have the place to yourself. I’ve been in slot canyons with nobody but my brother and I around. Or just go in winter. It’s not hot, prices plummet, you don’t have to be up at stupid-o’clock for sunrise and there’s nobody around.
- prawn 7y ago
  We got to Snow Canyon SP this summer and it was beautiful, and there were loads of camp sites spare. That was their off-peak time. Just had to get up a bit earlier to hike areas while they were still shaded, and you got a great experience without anyone around. Feels like no matter how many places you see in Utah, there are still more epic spots for the next trip. I think the ranger in The Maze mentioned that July had seriously low visitorship. Something like 7 people/day hiking in because of the heat and exposure?

prawn 7y ago

I'm a reasonably well travelled Australian (30+ countries, 40ish US states) and think that Southern Utah has one of the best concentrations of natural attractions on the planet. I've visited a number of times and would love to visit at least yearly if I could. I can appreciate that locals detest being swamped, but should everyone have a chance to visit such unique features for themselves? National parks in the US have incredible brand recognition and cachet and I imagine that this campaign is only part of the story. The big name parks across most of the country are swamped - Yellowstone, Yosemite, Rocky Mountain, etc. I don't know that there's a brilliant solution short of virtual tourism. Raising prices deters anyone but the rich. Adding carparks just reduces the magic of the wild. Increasing awareness of the second-tier features or developing more is an option. Naturally, the crowded experience will push people to visit outside primetime or peak season. Absolutely do not be deterred though. As the article suggests, avoid peak times for the best experience. Get up early. Stay late. You can sleep in at home. In Moab specifically, loads of people start later than they'd hoped or concentrate in particular places for sunset or return to the town for dinner. If you want a meal in town, make it lunch when the light is most stark and the park is packed. See Delicate Arch at sunrise instead of sunset, as one example. On this year's trip, we started Devils Garden at 6-7pm and came back in the dark with headlamps - had an amazing sunset and only saw a handful of people out there (I wouldn't recommend this to first-time visitors as the primitive trail can be adventurous to follow). Outside of the big five, there are outstanding places nearby that are popular but not completely overrun. Byway 12 is superb, Buckskin Gulch is fantastic, the slot canyons near Escalante, Coyote Gulch, Goblin Valley, Horseshoe Canyon, Cedar Breaks, Snow Canyon State Park, Kodachrome Basin, etc. Even in the big parks, there are top-shelf experiences that most people don't see - hiking into Canyonlands' The Maze is one of the best things I've ever done, hiking Trans-Zion is full of premium scenery without huge crowds, Fiery Furnace in Arches sans-guide is good fun, at Bryce you can get some great early/late viewing without hordes just by skipping the two main viewpoints. If you need help with an itinerary, ask away or my email is in my profile.

arethuza 7y ago
Why not have a lottery and give non-transferable tickets to US nationals and have a fixed number of tickets for non-US nationals that are charged for? [NB I'm not from the US but have been to a few US national parks].

rblion 7y ago

Lived in Utah for a year and saw most everything I wanted to see in that time. I will go back one day but in the off-season and will alternate between vandwelling in a van conversion and pay a premium for nice accommodations when I need it. A year ago my friend and I drove from SLC to the Tetons to Yellowstone to Glacier, then over to the PNW and down the coast to the Bay Area. This was honestly two of the best months in my life, I grew so much as a human being and expanded my horizons quite a bit just realizing how little I needed to be happy.

grubb 7y ago

I grew up in Utah and was able to visit Moab many times over the years. It is a great little town and the sites and things you can reach from it are awesome. One of my favorite hikes at Arches NP is the Fiery Furnace, which is permit-controlled. I wonder if requiring permits for more of the sites would help address these issues? Of course, I'm also a big supporter of efforts to increase the size of national parks and monuments in the state as well (despite this administration's recent efforts). Preserving and regulating more wilderness would go a long way to hopefully mitigating this overcrowding issue.

MikeKusold 7y ago
I think that permits should only be used sparingly at National Parks. For a lot of people, their only exposure to the outdoors comes from "that one family out west trip". If we want people to pressure politicians to protect public lands, the more people that feel a connection to those public lands the better. I view National Parks as a sacrificial public land. Let them be overly crowded in order to keep all the amazing BLM, state parks, national forests/prairies, etc... special.
skohan 7y ago
Fiery furnace is great! I used to drive to Moab every year for Spring Break to do outdoor sports with some friends from University, and it's a total paradise for people who want to do anything outdoors. It's selfish and elitist to say, but I almost feel like it's better if places like Moab aren't publicized at all, and people just find out about it through word-of-mouth like I did. It takes some education to properly "leave no trace" in the back country, and I feel like that sort of works itself out when people discover the parks largely by being invited by someone who's already in the fold. If the parks are going to be a more popular destination for the general public, then I think it is probably better to have a permit system both to regulate absolute numbers, and to require people to pass some kind of test or course about how to be a good citizen inside the park.
- prawn 7y ago
  "It takes some education to properly "leave no trace" in the back country" This kinda baffles me because it really should take a bare minimum of consideration. The basic rules are not overly difficult, right? Don't trample stuff. Dig a hole if shitting in the backcountry. Don't feed animals. Minimise your impact. Don't walk around playing music at everyone. Parks have signs everywhere. Clear brochures with obvious info. What makes it so hard for people to understand and make that tiny amount of effort?

unzadunza 7y ago

“No more cars in national parks. Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs--anything--but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out. We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places. An increasingly pagan and hedonistic people (thank God!), we are learning finally that the forests and mountains and desert canyons are holier than our churches. Therefore let us behave accordingly.” ― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

benj111 7y ago
"wild pigs" I get the point that's trying to be made here, but pigs are just about one of the most destructive animals there are. I'm pretty certain that people in cars are less destructive than people riding wild pigs. Although a large proportion of people attempting to ride wild pigs are likely to end up dead, so maybe the author did have a good point afterall.
bluntfang 7y ago
i like the sentiment, but national parks should strive to be as accessible as possible. If you want to be away from society, there is so much more backcountry land where you can get what you need instead of complaining.
DavidAdams 7y ago
They banned cars in Zion National Park about ten years ago, and it was a good idea. Arches could definitely do the same, but the problem with the Moab area isn't so much overcrowding of the parks as it is overcrowding of the town, because one small town serves as the launch pad for so many surrounding areas. In this case, the solution is to try to develop other areas and spread the tourists out to other towns, many of which are desperate for economic development and tourist dollars.

DavidAdams 7y ago

Interestingly enough, there's a parallel to the San Francisco housing shortage. There are actually many, many more amazing places to see in Southern Utah and the rest of the Southwest. Only a small number of these places are in national parks. Like SF housing, an increase in supply would ease overcrowding, but instead of restrictions on new building because of NIMBYs and misguided governmental action restricting the supply, it's actually ideological myopia that's at the root of it. Utah's largely conservative Republican congressional delegation and state government pushed to roll back two new national monuments, and vehemently oppose the development of federal lands for tourism and recreation uses, while on the other hand are rabid about subsidizing extractive industries that aren't nearly as important to the local economy. In both cases, the problem is made worse by ideology. San Francisco housing is expensive partially because local lawmakers are blind to free market solutions, and Utah tourism is harmed because local lawmakers are blind to the idea that public lands being preserved in parks may be the best way to bring economic development to the state.