8 ms·

The end of dispersed camping?

68 points by thehoff 6y ago

UI_at_80x24 6y ago
I share alot of the same feelings as expressed in the article. Parks, camping, and 'wild areas' are victims of their own success. Where I live the largest Provincial Park is an 8 hour drive away for me, but only 4'ish hours from Toronto. The article talks about car-camping and towed trailers but even areas that require a 2 hour canoe trip and multiple portages to get to and it is still decimated by tourists. Even though the barrier to entry is high, and isn't in the same ball-park as these car-campers there are far too many people trying to spend some time under the trees, and the park is being damaged. Contrast this period with the 1980's. Disposable income is (apparently) lower now then it was back then. Back in my childhood several of my neighbours would have campers, or boats, or snowmobiles; and many opportunities to use them throughout the year. Now when I look around I only see 1 on my entire block, and with entire segments of the economy closing for good, factories being emptied; I see the golden era of the union, and 'extra' money as a thing of the past. So how are all these people able to afford crowding our parks? The article talks about this decline almost as if it's a recent thing, but I have seen this same pattern going back over 10 years. The only way I can find a reasonable amount of peace and quiet is to goto Crown Land, and multi-day canoe trips into the wild.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >> So how are all these people able to afford crowding our parks? It is younger people. Whereas young families might once have gone to places like disney world, provincial parks are now the cheap family vacation. Reliable GPS, weather forecasting and cellphones have also made previously "remote" areas very accessible. There are no secret places anymore.
  - Isamu 6y ago
    We did family camping when I was a kid because it was the cheapest vacation. It was never a luxury good.
    - analog31 6y ago
      Likewise here. Camping was certainly the cheap way to go, especially if the alternative included the cost of restaurant food on top of lodging. Now that I'm grown up with kids, we still camp, though we've also done a number of vacations where we rent an apartment for a week, with a kitchen. But there were other benefits to camping as well. Small kids don't belong in hotels and restaurants -- it's a nightmare for everybody. And the process of getting them in and out of those accommodations eats up half the day. And if you're camping, that itself becomes the entertainment, so the sightseeing side of it doesn't have to be as spectacular. Last summer we made our way across the northern shore of Lake Superior -- possibly one of my favorite places in the world. There are no bucket-list tourist destinations unless you count the Wawa Goose, yet it was just a blast and quite relaxing.
      - beamatronic 6y ago
        >> Small kids don't belong in hotels and restaurants Uh, what???
        ticmasta 6y ago
        I think what they mean is that (from my experience on both sides) small kids are noisy, messy and very active. This makes parenting in a shared environment (if you care about your neighbors) hard. When you go camping the kids have space, can get dirty, get tired and go to bed early. I'll take a crying baby camping over banging and yelling through a hotel room wall any day.
        analog31 6y ago
        Yes, precisely. Now of course not all kids are the same, but hoping for several hours of quiet behavior after being cooped up a car -- possibly strapped into a child seat -- all day was unrealistic in our case. There are other problems as well: Finding a restaurant with healthy food that everybody will enjoy, without breaking the bank. And hotel rooms are filthy. Granted, it could be a matter of personal preference as well. I enjoy the outdoors, and my own cooking, more than the inside of a restaurant or hotel.
  - mercer 6y ago
    While I agree with the other commenter that camping was always a cheap option, I think you're right on the money about GPS/weather/phones and young people. I think the problem is a result of a combination of tech as well as cheap camping gear making all of it easier, and the popularity of it with young people more than perhaps in the past.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Overall, disposable income is up significantly since the 1980s. Like about double. (Which isn’t to say we couldn’t do better with unions and increased minimum wage.) https://mobile.twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1303370250755272705 https://mobile.twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/130337025075527...
- joelwilliamson 6y ago
  Just an FYI, Algonquin is the third largest Provincial Park in Ontario. The largest is Polar Bear (3x larger than Algonquin), but it is only reachable by air and you need special permission to visit. Wabakimi is also a bit larger than Algonquin and has road and rail access.
  - UI_at_80x24 6y ago
    Very true, and my apologies. I mentally added 'Southern' without typing it. I live a stones throw away from Detroit, MI so all of the good parts of Ontario are a long ways away from me.
wlkr 6y ago
The article raises some key issues regarding sustainable tourism. I recall some recent posts on here that had some great discussions in the context of high profile destinations (e.g. [0] and to a lesser extent [1]). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20675096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20675096 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19996108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19996108
strict9 6y ago
As I've grown older I've noticed this, though at a slower pace than described in the article. When I was younger and lived in the appalachians, there were countless of waterfalls, overlooks, and camping spots isolated and away from everyone. But as time went by, these places became less isolated and full of litter, even the more remote spots. As much as I dislike Instagram and its effect on natural areas, I think another large factor is the population count. The US has 46 million more people than 20 years ago, and that's more people looking to get out and have fun in nature. One hope is for state and federal conservation agencies to buy more private land and enter into more conservation land trusts. We need more public space for people to enjoy, hopefully with fewer ATVs and campsite garbage.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  There's a great book called Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey where he talks about the old national parks that were free, and where driving was banned. You had to hike/bike/horse your way in, and people came to spend long periods traveling through the parks. He watched as the park services started building roads through national parks, and more parking lots, and how that changed absolutely everything. It also has a lot of old stories about the area. It's an amazing book.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    Friend of mine mentioned one place that used to be protected BLM land. To get there you needed to drive down a 10 mile dirt road. Usually there would be 0 to 2 cars/trucks parked there. It was handed over to the park service to 'protect it' now there is a paved road, a parking lot with pit toilets and two dozen cars and trucks. This sort of thing is why I'm totally opposed to giving the park service more stuff. Park Service should stick to managing Public monuments and the half dozen national parks that serve as sacrifice areas that draw tourists way from everything else.
    - wetmore 6y ago
      This is complicated. Certain areas see too much traffic in their primitive state and need infrastructure like a bathroom. In this case causation may be going the other way.
gumby 6y ago
This seems at first unlikely yet ATVs (even where not permitted) have made attractive places close to trailheads accessible. I used to think 10 miles in was enough to get away from most people, but like the author I have found some of those places colonized by modern life. Fortunately the world is still large and a lot of places are only accessible by foot. But a lot of those ecosystems done recover quickly. A few weeks ago I was up in the emigrant wilderness and it looked like a majority of the visitors were using brand new gear. I hope what this really means is we’ll have a greater appreciation of backpacking and more support.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I try to be tolerant of people who prefer more motorized recreation than I do. But ATVs (and dirt bikes) really tend to rip things up--to say nothing of the noise. There are one set of trails in my town forest that are basically unusable if it is at all wet because there are basically lakes where ATVs have ripped up the trail. One ATV can really rip up a trail at a wet time of the year.
  - liability 6y ago
    I'd be very surprised if even one in a thousand ATV campers had a legitimate physical disability (being a lazy fatass doesn't count, and I can say that because I'm a lazy fatass. If I can walk a few miles, so can they.)
    - gumby 6y ago
      I assume people drive them 1- for fun, 2- to transport extra gear like coolers, babies, etc. I wonder really if any of them are overnighting it, rather than heading out and car camping. Carrying everything on your back and traveling 10-20 miles on foot to make camp seems to cut down the number of people you’ll run into by a lot.
    - yencabulator 6y ago
      Hi. I fulltime RV'd around the US for about 3 years, mostly dispersed camping. I never even once saw anyone using an ATV (quad, side-by-side, anything) for the purpose of overcoming a disability. What I saw was exclusively motor"sport" enthusiasm. Revving the engine, driving at unsafe speeds, etc.
dmurray 6y ago
> This is the kind of behavior that will reduce our dispersed camping opportunities...More damage will lead to more closures by land-management agencies, and rightly so. What would banning people from these areas achieve? Sure, you'd have an unspoilt wilderness, but...for whom? The easily accessible areas are a tiny part of America's public land. Litter and vandalism don't significantly damage the local ecology in somewhere you already have hundreds or thousands of people passing through even with a leave-no-trace policy: they mostly make it less attractive for other visitors. I'm not arguing that people should vandalise or litter public areas, or that the likely practical response wouldn't be to close affected areas. Just challenging the assertion that this would be a useful thing for the likes of the BLM to do. One possibility is that by closing them to RVs you keep them available to walkers on day trips or camping in tents, who may cause less damage if only because they can carry less stuff.
- paganel 6y ago
  > but...for whom? I guess that for animals, and rightly so, I may add.
  - mikelyons 6y ago
    We need to get in the cultural habit of looking at things for their own being, rather than for how they can be used by humans.
dbrueck 6y ago
I just got back from a week of backpacking in a wilderness area in Wyoming and saw about 6 people over the course of the trip, and it was great. Unfortunately for the author, he's probably going to have to sacrifice the camper if he wants any immediate relief - if you have to get their on foot (or by horse), it drastically affects who is going to go there. IMO the longer term solution is to educate people. One idea (not a cure all, but it might help): offer free classes on nature conservation, good camping practices, etc. Each person who hasn't taken the class in the past N years pays a much higher access fee to the campground.
- say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
  the people who are blighting the wilderness are ignorant, uneducated urbanites who would never take a free course even if it were available
  - dbrueck 6y ago
    That's the whole point of the fee on the other side: spend a little time to get educated, or pay a higher rate. The rate can be raised as high as needed.
    - say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
      and then this crowd will see their low $5 fee as a right to litter
  - jerry1979 6y ago
    Was just camping in the ozarks. FWIW, the isolated forest service road camping spot had bullet casings and broken glass. The more popular watering hole area was completely clean.
    - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
      I hunt and camp around the ozarks regularly. Locals regularly drink and target shoot around the area. The majority of trash is localized by the roads though. If you go through the woods, most of the trash you find looks to be at least a couple decades old.
jwiley 6y ago
Cached version of the article since it seems swamped right now http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pyUsrEAkoqsJ:https://www.hatchmag.com/blog/end-dispersed-camping/7715118&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pyUsrEA...
say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
It's not that people can't do dispersed camping but rather that low-class urbanites who never learned wilderness culture and etiquette are now venturing to places they never used to and are quickly destroying sacred places. Graffiti and litter are growing problems. Tampons and toilet paper behind every rock and tree. Boombox radios. They blight where they live and are now blighting wild areas. Downvoters: my opinion may be negative but it is accurate. This is a growing class problem.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  Your bitterness has blinded you to any options other than your own nasty belief. It also runs starkly counter to my own experiences camping in Texas. You're not just "negative," you're also wrong.
  - Zippogriff 6y ago
    Yeah, I've been in contact with the kind of people who might attract the label "redneck" or even "white trash" all my life (I'm from such stock) and when I think of people I've heard express and witnessed exhibiting a willingness to litter freely and generally make a mess of wild areas, it's them who come to mind, not city folk. I'd go so far as to say that for some significant set of them, wrecking nature and abusing commons are fundamental to the way they approach both living and recreation. Though plainly there are some city-dwellers very much willing to make a mess of their cities to a sometimes astonishing degree (anyone who's ever, like, walked around an American city has seen that) I don't think they're the ones going out to BLM lands or national parks and junking them up, mostly.
    - pnutjam 6y ago
      "Boombox radios" is your clue this guy is just ranting some rascist rant.
      - say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
        Not race related. It's multicultural. You're playing a dangerous game.
Shivetya 6y ago
This is not confined to camp sites, on sub reddit dedicated to our own city there are always pictures of trash left behind by people in our city parks. I would just suggest the BLM apply a surcharge too all camping, they provide you two bags, one for trash and one for recyclable materials; labeled on the bag what is acceptable; and upon leaving and turning these over you get a refund on the deposit. Perhaps a bag per three days with a twenty dollar deposit.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  BLM "campgrounds" are usually unstaffed, there's only a lockbox and some envelopes for you to leave the fee in.
cameronfraser 6y ago
The lack of understanding of Leave No Trace by the general public is pretty astounding. Even among people who self identify as hikers. Lately there have been a lot of instances of people painting on rocks or painting rocks and leaving them out there as well as stacking stones for aesthetic reasons instead of a navigational aid. Both of these violate Leave No Trace but I've seen a lot of people flamed for bringing it up in casual hiking groups. Neither of these have as much environmental consequence as littering for example, but it is still an eyesore and a reminder of human civilization when one is trying to get away from it. If you really want to get away from civilization then you should consider remote backpacking trips. Wilderness backpackers, in general, are strict followers of Leave No Trace and unless it is a super popular trail there won't be too many.
- mnky9800n 6y ago
  yes, i was climbing a couple days ago and some teenagers started stacking rocks right in the middle of the trail head for exiting the climbing area. i don't understand why stacking rocks is something anyone cares about.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    Back in 2014, I was hiking through Alligator Falls in Queensland, AU with a friend. We probably bit off a bit more than we could chew and started an 18km hike at 2pm. When we were making our way back, we were lucky the moon was out and bright. We were afraid we might be lost or off trail, but luckily we saw and recognized this Rock Totem: https://journeyofkhan.us/photo/rock-totem/ https://journeyofkhan.us/photo/rock-totem/ It kept us on the path and we thankfully made it back out to the car.
    - joecot 6y ago
      Well then it's a good thing you found an actual trail marker rock totem, and not something some teens decided to build that lead you into the middle of nowhere. Which is why this trend is pretty dangerous.
  - 6y ago
gkop 6y ago
A little book called The Monkey Wrench Gang suggests this trend began 50+ years ago.
- mnky9800n 6y ago
  its like the eternal september. it has always been happening. I wonder if prehistoric man was like "man, do you remember when it was just us and the mammoths but now the mammoths dont even come here anymore because grog is always splashing in the water with his family."
brudgers 6y ago
Link at archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/20200909133530/www.hatchmag.com/blog/end-dispersed-camping/7715118 https://web.archive.org/web/20200909133530/www.hatchmag.com/...
djsumdog 6y ago
I went to a small college town and there were some amazing wildlife areas that were not well traveled. Some were actual parks, but with poor signage and little parking. Others were private land with neighbors who were alright with people traveling in so long as we kept off the grass when parking. I went back recently and those private areas were now public parks, the public parks had full parking lots, there were signs about dangerous cliffs everywhere, and it all felt very .. different. It was no longer exploring the frontier. I wrote about it a few years ago: https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/exploration/ https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/exploration...
thedanbob 6y ago
For anyone else who was confused, BLM in this context stands for Bureau of Land Management.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Its inevitable, as population grows yet public lands remain a constant, that overuse becomes a problem. Emigrate to Mars I guess?
neurobashing 6y ago
east of the mississippi there's precious little open/public land; a few places I like to camp around the VA/WV line are often just fire roads that were abandoned. They're now most popular with poachers and teens looking to party without fear of the cops being called, along with a few campers like me. and since Covid, everyone seemingly got into the "original socially-distanced recreation", because now formerly rather low-traffic sites are packed, with all the trouble that brings. trash is often everywhere. beer cans, broken glass, shotgun shells, and spent brass abound. Once just a month ago I came across a loaf of bread and a Hank Williams, Jr. album (as in vinyl), just sitting next to a fire ring. I think I've seen a dozen shoes left along camp sites in the past month. I think somehow it got into the cultural mind that the woods are somehow maintained by a janitorial staff. i have no idea how it got so bad.
- jdc0589 6y ago
  this is exactly what I've noticed happening a lot more in the past 2 years. I've shown up to unmarked campsites where people had clearly abandoned 80% of their new walmart gear, so much I physically couldn't carry it all out to trash. finding a good drive up camp spot in the southeast is basically impossible unless you go in the middle of the week, especially if you wanna keep it 100% legal (no private land). Our few national forests and their few roads stay busy, always have.
ip26 6y ago
I was easily 100 miles from any notable population center, and I figured I would have my pick of any number of dispersed camping sites along the upper river. But when I arrived on a Tuesday afternoon [...] Every wide spot in the road was occupied I learned recently that some portion of these people are actually living in dispersed camping areas full-time, my guess being to avoid paying rent. The level of destruction I have observed, as well as the difficulty of finding sites even in remote locations in the middle of the week suddenly made a lot more sense.
sulam 6y ago
I think at the end of the day we need to reduce our BLM lands in favor of increasing our wilderness. The problems he describes are solved simply by not allowing people to RV, 4-wheel, or motorbike their way wherever they feel like. I run into trash in the more popular parts of the wilderness areas I love, but I have to look for it, and it's my personal offset for adding load to the wilderness with my presence.
- Sunny2203 6y ago
  Do you not understand that there is BLM wilderness? We don't reduce public lands to increase wilderness. Wilderness is designated on public lands by Congress and it can be BLM, USFS, USFWS or NPS lands.
  - sulam 6y ago
    I don't hang out much in BLM lands (way too noisy, way too much trash), so there's probably some nuance here that is lost on me, yes. What I mean is that we should take more of the set aside public lands and deem them off limits to motor vehicles. These "designated wildernesses" don't have the problems he describes, except in the most extreme cases (Sierras, AT).
  - cbm-vic-20 6y ago
    CGP Grey did an interesting video on the differences between the agencies that own federal land in the US: https://youtu.be/LruaD7XhQ50?t=180 https://youtu.be/LruaD7XhQ50?t=180 (Start from the beginning for more context)
tzs 6y ago
A long time ago I was flipping through very early morning local TV, and came across some sort of fishing program that was talking about a neat way to camp far away from other people. They would get a float plane and fly deep into the Canadian wilderness and find a lake far away from any roads or trails. They would land there and then camp beside the lake for a week or two of fishing and hiking without another human anywhere within 50 miles, or without any signs than any other humans had been to that spot in years or decades.
textman 6y ago
Another contributing factor is the rapid growth of offroad capable campers like some of the popup style truck campers and rugged trailers. They allow you to go almost anywhere a Jeep can go, sometimes providing as much solitude as backpacking. I like to think this particular subgroup is more environmentally conscientious than the general vehicle camping crowd.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  They're better in terms of impacting the immediate area around them than the RV/trailer/car-camping crowd but way worse than the actual off road "pitch a tent beside your Jeep" crowd because they go off the trail or stack rocks to avoid getting a scratch on the 4Runner they're still making payments on. It's like they took every bad habit they could find from the '00s Landrover enthusiast crowd and unironically cranked it to 11 Frankly I like the car-camping crowd better because they don't tend to stray far from the road.
Dowwie 6y ago
I run at a nearby state park several times a week. After running past litter for months, but doing nothing about it, I decided to take two handfuls of trash to the trash bin during most visits. After barely inconveniencing myself by picking up trash on my way to the parking area, months passed and I've thrown away more than 500 pieces of garbage! Doing a little bit over a long period of time can really amount to something substantial. It barely cost me any effort. I've stopped collecting since the pandemic but it seems like others are doing their part and helping keep an understaffed, heavily used park clean.
putnambr 6y ago
It really is modern ORVs that have made this so much worse recently. It used to be 4-wheelers, but that's a rough and rugged form of travel. You're not going to get an entire family plus drinks and food loaded up on 4-wheelers the same way people do now with RZRs. RZRs and their like have made off-roading way more accessible. What used to be outdoor gear rental shops selling kayaks and mountain bikes have turned into snowmobile and RZR rental shops In my experience it's the family who shows up at the trailhead with two trailers full of RZRs who are ignorant of LNT principles, not college students and young adults getting out to car camp with their REI gear.

68 points by thehoff 6y ago

I share alot of the same feelings as expressed in the article. Parks, camping, and 'wild areas' are victims of their own success. Where I live the largest Provincial Park is an 8 hour drive away for me, but only 4'ish hours from Toronto. The article talks about car-camping and towed trailers but even areas that require a 2 hour canoe trip and multiple portages to get to and it is still decimated by tourists. Even though the barrier to entry is high, and isn't in the same ball-park as these car-campers there are far too many people trying to spend some time under the trees, and the park is being damaged. Contrast this period with the 1980's. Disposable income is (apparently) lower now then it was back then. Back in my childhood several of my neighbours would have campers, or boats, or snowmobiles; and many opportunities to use them throughout the year. Now when I look around I only see 1 on my entire block, and with entire segments of the economy closing for good, factories being emptied; I see the golden era of the union, and 'extra' money as a thing of the past. So how are all these people able to afford crowding our parks? The article talks about this decline almost as if it's a recent thing, but I have seen this same pattern going back over 10 years. The only way I can find a reasonable amount of peace and quiet is to goto Crown Land, and multi-day canoe trips into the wild.

sandworm101 6y ago
>> So how are all these people able to afford crowding our parks? It is younger people. Whereas young families might once have gone to places like disney world, provincial parks are now the cheap family vacation. Reliable GPS, weather forecasting and cellphones have also made previously "remote" areas very accessible. There are no secret places anymore.
- Isamu 6y ago
  We did family camping when I was a kid because it was the cheapest vacation. It was never a luxury good.
  - analog31 6y ago
    Likewise here. Camping was certainly the cheap way to go, especially if the alternative included the cost of restaurant food on top of lodging. Now that I'm grown up with kids, we still camp, though we've also done a number of vacations where we rent an apartment for a week, with a kitchen. But there were other benefits to camping as well. Small kids don't belong in hotels and restaurants -- it's a nightmare for everybody. And the process of getting them in and out of those accommodations eats up half the day. And if you're camping, that itself becomes the entertainment, so the sightseeing side of it doesn't have to be as spectacular. Last summer we made our way across the northern shore of Lake Superior -- possibly one of my favorite places in the world. There are no bucket-list tourist destinations unless you count the Wawa Goose, yet it was just a blast and quite relaxing.
    - beamatronic 6y ago
      >> Small kids don't belong in hotels and restaurants Uh, what???
      - ticmasta 6y ago
        I think what they mean is that (from my experience on both sides) small kids are noisy, messy and very active. This makes parenting in a shared environment (if you care about your neighbors) hard. When you go camping the kids have space, can get dirty, get tired and go to bed early. I'll take a crying baby camping over banging and yelling through a hotel room wall any day.
        analog31 6y ago
        Yes, precisely. Now of course not all kids are the same, but hoping for several hours of quiet behavior after being cooped up a car -- possibly strapped into a child seat -- all day was unrealistic in our case. There are other problems as well: Finding a restaurant with healthy food that everybody will enjoy, without breaking the bank. And hotel rooms are filthy. Granted, it could be a matter of personal preference as well. I enjoy the outdoors, and my own cooking, more than the inside of a restaurant or hotel.
- mercer 6y ago
  While I agree with the other commenter that camping was always a cheap option, I think you're right on the money about GPS/weather/phones and young people. I think the problem is a result of a combination of tech as well as cheap camping gear making all of it easier, and the popularity of it with young people more than perhaps in the past.
Robotbeat 6y ago
Overall, disposable income is up significantly since the 1980s. Like about double. (Which isn’t to say we couldn’t do better with unions and increased minimum wage.) https://mobile.twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1303370250755272705 https://mobile.twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/130337025075527...
joelwilliamson 6y ago
Just an FYI, Algonquin is the third largest Provincial Park in Ontario. The largest is Polar Bear (3x larger than Algonquin), but it is only reachable by air and you need special permission to visit. Wabakimi is also a bit larger than Algonquin and has road and rail access.
- UI_at_80x24 6y ago
  Very true, and my apologies. I mentally added 'Southern' without typing it. I live a stones throw away from Detroit, MI so all of the good parts of Ontario are a long ways away from me.

wlkr 6y ago

The article raises some key issues regarding sustainable tourism. I recall some recent posts on here that had some great discussions in the context of high profile destinations (e.g. [0] and to a lesser extent [1]). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20675096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20675096 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19996108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19996108

strict9 6y ago

As I've grown older I've noticed this, though at a slower pace than described in the article. When I was younger and lived in the appalachians, there were countless of waterfalls, overlooks, and camping spots isolated and away from everyone. But as time went by, these places became less isolated and full of litter, even the more remote spots. As much as I dislike Instagram and its effect on natural areas, I think another large factor is the population count. The US has 46 million more people than 20 years ago, and that's more people looking to get out and have fun in nature. One hope is for state and federal conservation agencies to buy more private land and enter into more conservation land trusts. We need more public space for people to enjoy, hopefully with fewer ATVs and campsite garbage.

djsumdog 6y ago
There's a great book called Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey where he talks about the old national parks that were free, and where driving was banned. You had to hike/bike/horse your way in, and people came to spend long periods traveling through the parks. He watched as the park services started building roads through national parks, and more parking lots, and how that changed absolutely everything. It also has a lot of old stories about the area. It's an amazing book.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  Friend of mine mentioned one place that used to be protected BLM land. To get there you needed to drive down a 10 mile dirt road. Usually there would be 0 to 2 cars/trucks parked there. It was handed over to the park service to 'protect it' now there is a paved road, a parking lot with pit toilets and two dozen cars and trucks. This sort of thing is why I'm totally opposed to giving the park service more stuff. Park Service should stick to managing Public monuments and the half dozen national parks that serve as sacrifice areas that draw tourists way from everything else.
  - wetmore 6y ago
    This is complicated. Certain areas see too much traffic in their primitive state and need infrastructure like a bathroom. In this case causation may be going the other way.

gumby 6y ago

This seems at first unlikely yet ATVs (even where not permitted) have made attractive places close to trailheads accessible. I used to think 10 miles in was enough to get away from most people, but like the author I have found some of those places colonized by modern life. Fortunately the world is still large and a lot of places are only accessible by foot. But a lot of those ecosystems done recover quickly. A few weeks ago I was up in the emigrant wilderness and it looked like a majority of the visitors were using brand new gear. I hope what this really means is we’ll have a greater appreciation of backpacking and more support.

ghaff 6y ago
I try to be tolerant of people who prefer more motorized recreation than I do. But ATVs (and dirt bikes) really tend to rip things up--to say nothing of the noise. There are one set of trails in my town forest that are basically unusable if it is at all wet because there are basically lakes where ATVs have ripped up the trail. One ATV can really rip up a trail at a wet time of the year.
- liability 6y ago
  I'd be very surprised if even one in a thousand ATV campers had a legitimate physical disability (being a lazy fatass doesn't count, and I can say that because I'm a lazy fatass. If I can walk a few miles, so can they.)
  - gumby 6y ago
    I assume people drive them 1- for fun, 2- to transport extra gear like coolers, babies, etc. I wonder really if any of them are overnighting it, rather than heading out and car camping. Carrying everything on your back and traveling 10-20 miles on foot to make camp seems to cut down the number of people you’ll run into by a lot.
  - yencabulator 6y ago
    Hi. I fulltime RV'd around the US for about 3 years, mostly dispersed camping. I never even once saw anyone using an ATV (quad, side-by-side, anything) for the purpose of overcoming a disability. What I saw was exclusively motor"sport" enthusiasm. Revving the engine, driving at unsafe speeds, etc.

dmurray 6y ago

> This is the kind of behavior that will reduce our dispersed camping opportunities...More damage will lead to more closures by land-management agencies, and rightly so. What would banning people from these areas achieve? Sure, you'd have an unspoilt wilderness, but...for whom? The easily accessible areas are a tiny part of America's public land. Litter and vandalism don't significantly damage the local ecology in somewhere you already have hundreds or thousands of people passing through even with a leave-no-trace policy: they mostly make it less attractive for other visitors. I'm not arguing that people should vandalise or litter public areas, or that the likely practical response wouldn't be to close affected areas. Just challenging the assertion that this would be a useful thing for the likes of the BLM to do. One possibility is that by closing them to RVs you keep them available to walkers on day trips or camping in tents, who may cause less damage if only because they can carry less stuff.

paganel 6y ago
> but...for whom? I guess that for animals, and rightly so, I may add.
- mikelyons 6y ago
  We need to get in the cultural habit of looking at things for their own being, rather than for how they can be used by humans.

dbrueck 6y ago

I just got back from a week of backpacking in a wilderness area in Wyoming and saw about 6 people over the course of the trip, and it was great. Unfortunately for the author, he's probably going to have to sacrifice the camper if he wants any immediate relief - if you have to get their on foot (or by horse), it drastically affects who is going to go there. IMO the longer term solution is to educate people. One idea (not a cure all, but it might help): offer free classes on nature conservation, good camping practices, etc. Each person who hasn't taken the class in the past N years pays a much higher access fee to the campground.

say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
the people who are blighting the wilderness are ignorant, uneducated urbanites who would never take a free course even if it were available
- dbrueck 6y ago
  That's the whole point of the fee on the other side: spend a little time to get educated, or pay a higher rate. The rate can be raised as high as needed.
  - say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
    and then this crowd will see their low $5 fee as a right to litter
- jerry1979 6y ago
  Was just camping in the ozarks. FWIW, the isolated forest service road camping spot had bullet casings and broken glass. The more popular watering hole area was completely clean.
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    I hunt and camp around the ozarks regularly. Locals regularly drink and target shoot around the area. The majority of trash is localized by the roads though. If you go through the woods, most of the trash you find looks to be at least a couple decades old.

jwiley 6y ago

Cached version of the article since it seems swamped right now http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pyUsrEAkoqsJ:https://www.hatchmag.com/blog/end-dispersed-camping/7715118&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pyUsrEA...

say_it_as_it_is 6y ago

It's not that people can't do dispersed camping but rather that low-class urbanites who never learned wilderness culture and etiquette are now venturing to places they never used to and are quickly destroying sacred places. Graffiti and litter are growing problems. Tampons and toilet paper behind every rock and tree. Boombox radios. They blight where they live and are now blighting wild areas. Downvoters: my opinion may be negative but it is accurate. This is a growing class problem.

pwinnski 6y ago
Your bitterness has blinded you to any options other than your own nasty belief. It also runs starkly counter to my own experiences camping in Texas. You're not just "negative," you're also wrong.
- Zippogriff 6y ago
  Yeah, I've been in contact with the kind of people who might attract the label "redneck" or even "white trash" all my life (I'm from such stock) and when I think of people I've heard express and witnessed exhibiting a willingness to litter freely and generally make a mess of wild areas, it's them who come to mind, not city folk. I'd go so far as to say that for some significant set of them, wrecking nature and abusing commons are fundamental to the way they approach both living and recreation. Though plainly there are some city-dwellers very much willing to make a mess of their cities to a sometimes astonishing degree (anyone who's ever, like, walked around an American city has seen that) I don't think they're the ones going out to BLM lands or national parks and junking them up, mostly.
  - pnutjam 6y ago
    "Boombox radios" is your clue this guy is just ranting some rascist rant.
    - say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
      Not race related. It's multicultural. You're playing a dangerous game.

Shivetya 6y ago

This is not confined to camp sites, on sub reddit dedicated to our own city there are always pictures of trash left behind by people in our city parks. I would just suggest the BLM apply a surcharge too all camping, they provide you two bags, one for trash and one for recyclable materials; labeled on the bag what is acceptable; and upon leaving and turning these over you get a refund on the deposit. Perhaps a bag per three days with a twenty dollar deposit.

boring_twenties 6y ago
BLM "campgrounds" are usually unstaffed, there's only a lockbox and some envelopes for you to leave the fee in.

cameronfraser 6y ago

The lack of understanding of Leave No Trace by the general public is pretty astounding. Even among people who self identify as hikers. Lately there have been a lot of instances of people painting on rocks or painting rocks and leaving them out there as well as stacking stones for aesthetic reasons instead of a navigational aid. Both of these violate Leave No Trace but I've seen a lot of people flamed for bringing it up in casual hiking groups. Neither of these have as much environmental consequence as littering for example, but it is still an eyesore and a reminder of human civilization when one is trying to get away from it. If you really want to get away from civilization then you should consider remote backpacking trips. Wilderness backpackers, in general, are strict followers of Leave No Trace and unless it is a super popular trail there won't be too many.

mnky9800n 6y ago
yes, i was climbing a couple days ago and some teenagers started stacking rocks right in the middle of the trail head for exiting the climbing area. i don't understand why stacking rocks is something anyone cares about.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  Back in 2014, I was hiking through Alligator Falls in Queensland, AU with a friend. We probably bit off a bit more than we could chew and started an 18km hike at 2pm. When we were making our way back, we were lucky the moon was out and bright. We were afraid we might be lost or off trail, but luckily we saw and recognized this Rock Totem: https://journeyofkhan.us/photo/rock-totem/ https://journeyofkhan.us/photo/rock-totem/ It kept us on the path and we thankfully made it back out to the car.
  - joecot 6y ago
    Well then it's a good thing you found an actual trail marker rock totem, and not something some teens decided to build that lead you into the middle of nowhere. Which is why this trend is pretty dangerous.
- 6y ago

gkop 6y ago

A little book called The Monkey Wrench Gang suggests this trend began 50+ years ago.

mnky9800n 6y ago
its like the eternal september. it has always been happening. I wonder if prehistoric man was like "man, do you remember when it was just us and the mammoths but now the mammoths dont even come here anymore because grog is always splashing in the water with his family."

brudgers 6y ago

Link at archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/20200909133530/www.hatchmag.com/blog/end-dispersed-camping/7715118 https://web.archive.org/web/20200909133530/www.hatchmag.com/...

djsumdog 6y ago

I went to a small college town and there were some amazing wildlife areas that were not well traveled. Some were actual parks, but with poor signage and little parking. Others were private land with neighbors who were alright with people traveling in so long as we kept off the grass when parking. I went back recently and those private areas were now public parks, the public parks had full parking lots, there were signs about dangerous cliffs everywhere, and it all felt very .. different. It was no longer exploring the frontier. I wrote about it a few years ago: https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/exploration/ https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/exploration...

thedanbob 6y ago

For anyone else who was confused, BLM in this context stands for Bureau of Land Management.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

Its inevitable, as population grows yet public lands remain a constant, that overuse becomes a problem. Emigrate to Mars I guess?

neurobashing 6y ago

east of the mississippi there's precious little open/public land; a few places I like to camp around the VA/WV line are often just fire roads that were abandoned. They're now most popular with poachers and teens looking to party without fear of the cops being called, along with a few campers like me. and since Covid, everyone seemingly got into the "original socially-distanced recreation", because now formerly rather low-traffic sites are packed, with all the trouble that brings. trash is often everywhere. beer cans, broken glass, shotgun shells, and spent brass abound. Once just a month ago I came across a loaf of bread and a Hank Williams, Jr. album (as in vinyl), just sitting next to a fire ring. I think I've seen a dozen shoes left along camp sites in the past month. I think somehow it got into the cultural mind that the woods are somehow maintained by a janitorial staff. i have no idea how it got so bad.

jdc0589 6y ago
this is exactly what I've noticed happening a lot more in the past 2 years. I've shown up to unmarked campsites where people had clearly abandoned 80% of their new walmart gear, so much I physically couldn't carry it all out to trash. finding a good drive up camp spot in the southeast is basically impossible unless you go in the middle of the week, especially if you wanna keep it 100% legal (no private land). Our few national forests and their few roads stay busy, always have.

ip26 6y ago

I was easily 100 miles from any notable population center, and I figured I would have my pick of any number of dispersed camping sites along the upper river. But when I arrived on a Tuesday afternoon [...] Every wide spot in the road was occupied I learned recently that some portion of these people are actually living in dispersed camping areas full-time, my guess being to avoid paying rent. The level of destruction I have observed, as well as the difficulty of finding sites even in remote locations in the middle of the week suddenly made a lot more sense.

sulam 6y ago

I think at the end of the day we need to reduce our BLM lands in favor of increasing our wilderness. The problems he describes are solved simply by not allowing people to RV, 4-wheel, or motorbike their way wherever they feel like. I run into trash in the more popular parts of the wilderness areas I love, but I have to look for it, and it's my personal offset for adding load to the wilderness with my presence.

Sunny2203 6y ago
Do you not understand that there is BLM wilderness? We don't reduce public lands to increase wilderness. Wilderness is designated on public lands by Congress and it can be BLM, USFS, USFWS or NPS lands.
- sulam 6y ago
  I don't hang out much in BLM lands (way too noisy, way too much trash), so there's probably some nuance here that is lost on me, yes. What I mean is that we should take more of the set aside public lands and deem them off limits to motor vehicles. These "designated wildernesses" don't have the problems he describes, except in the most extreme cases (Sierras, AT).
- cbm-vic-20 6y ago
  CGP Grey did an interesting video on the differences between the agencies that own federal land in the US: https://youtu.be/LruaD7XhQ50?t=180 https://youtu.be/LruaD7XhQ50?t=180 (Start from the beginning for more context)

tzs 6y ago

A long time ago I was flipping through very early morning local TV, and came across some sort of fishing program that was talking about a neat way to camp far away from other people. They would get a float plane and fly deep into the Canadian wilderness and find a lake far away from any roads or trails. They would land there and then camp beside the lake for a week or two of fishing and hiking without another human anywhere within 50 miles, or without any signs than any other humans had been to that spot in years or decades.

textman 6y ago

Another contributing factor is the rapid growth of offroad capable campers like some of the popup style truck campers and rugged trailers. They allow you to go almost anywhere a Jeep can go, sometimes providing as much solitude as backpacking. I like to think this particular subgroup is more environmentally conscientious than the general vehicle camping crowd.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
They're better in terms of impacting the immediate area around them than the RV/trailer/car-camping crowd but way worse than the actual off road "pitch a tent beside your Jeep" crowd because they go off the trail or stack rocks to avoid getting a scratch on the 4Runner they're still making payments on. It's like they took every bad habit they could find from the '00s Landrover enthusiast crowd and unironically cranked it to 11 Frankly I like the car-camping crowd better because they don't tend to stray far from the road.

Dowwie 6y ago

I run at a nearby state park several times a week. After running past litter for months, but doing nothing about it, I decided to take two handfuls of trash to the trash bin during most visits. After barely inconveniencing myself by picking up trash on my way to the parking area, months passed and I've thrown away more than 500 pieces of garbage! Doing a little bit over a long period of time can really amount to something substantial. It barely cost me any effort. I've stopped collecting since the pandemic but it seems like others are doing their part and helping keep an understaffed, heavily used park clean.

putnambr 6y ago

It really is modern ORVs that have made this so much worse recently. It used to be 4-wheelers, but that's a rough and rugged form of travel. You're not going to get an entire family plus drinks and food loaded up on 4-wheelers the same way people do now with RZRs. RZRs and their like have made off-roading way more accessible. What used to be outdoor gear rental shops selling kayaks and mountain bikes have turned into snowmobile and RZR rental shops In my experience it's the family who shows up at the trailhead with two trailers full of RZRs who are ignorant of LNT principles, not college students and young adults getting out to car camp with their REI gear.