Yellowstone National Park officials, struggling to deal with greater and greater visitation year after year, have responded by increasing the human footprint with a new parking lot, trail, and hardened overlook of Grand Prismatic Spring.
Crowding had turned into a huge problem in areas of Yellowstone with limited parking. When the existing parking lot at Grand Prismatic Spring fills up, visitors park on the roads.
"People sometimes will park literally in the middle of the road. Or half on, half off the road, and that further slows down road performance and creates huge safety issues as people are trying to cross the major roads, back and forth," Ryan Atwell, the park's social scientist, told the Traveler early this year. "In an ideal world, we’d have 10 staff people in that area helping manage parking, helping interpret visitor experiences. But on a given day, we have very few staff in that area. Usually just a volunteer or two, and it’s an overwhelming job for a volunteer. We literally don’t have the staff to get to those areas."
The solution, for now, was to build what park officials have described as a temporary gravel parking area on three-quarters of an acre of previously disturbed land near Fairy Falls to handle 70 or more cars.
There is no trail from Fairy Falls Trailhead and the proposed parking area to the Grand Prismatic boardwalk. Park officials said they would be monitoring to see if any visitors who parked on the gravel lot walked the three-quarters to 1-mile distance down the Grand Loop Road to the Grand Prismatic boardwalk.
On Wednesday park staff announced that the parking lot, trail, and overlook were open.
"Significant resource damage and visitor safety concerns from off-trail travel on the hills south of Grand Prismatic Spring led the park to construct and recently open the Grand Prismatic Spring Overlook Trail. To alleviate traffic congestion, safety concerns, and resource impacts, the park also made a parking area near the Fairy Falls Trailhead at Midway Geyser Basin. Parking is very limited at this popular destination," a park release said.
"Trail crew rehabilitated the hillside resource damage. They also designed and built the trail with assistance from the Montana Conservation Corps and Yellowstone’s Youth Conservation Corps. The new trail gradually climbs 105 feet over 0.6 miles from the Fairy Falls Trailhead to an overlook with views of Midway Geyser Basin.
Superintendent Dan Wenk said that the trail and overlook, “provide a different view of Grand Prismatic Spring and minimize the growth of unsightly, unofficial social trails in the process.”
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Comments
This is a solution to a very serious problem. Not at all a good solution, but perhaps the only one available in the face of crisis level crowding. It is better than some other options I can think of, though.
Have our parks ever faced a greater threat than they do now from overvisitation?
Get rid of the tour buses. This would free up parking and slow the volume of people traffic. When 60 people can show up at once in one vehicle it lleads to a bad experience for all.
Come on, Lee. No one in the Park Service is interested in "solutions." Meanwhile, more parking lots is all they know. They certainly don't remember the history of how they got into this mess in the first place.
https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2017/05/saving-national-parks-clim...
Our family was there this Monday and it was quite an effort to park and get around. We entered the park at 9am and left at 8:30pm and that was the time needed to see the south loop. We had an amazing time but agree something needs to be done to preserve this beautiful place to its natural beauty. My kids couldn't believe how many people's hats blew off into many of the thermal areas- it was quite sad to see.
If they determined to set a daily limit of vehicles by selling park passes ahead of time I would be fine with that. Means just planning ahead to ensure you have a good experience and keep Yellowstone magical.
I realize that people could take advantage of this like they do buying playoff tickets or concert tickets in bulk and increasing the price to the general public but I am sure they could figure something out.
Leigh..
Your logic escapes me. Getting riid of the bus will just bring 60 cars instead of one bus.
Yes, Alfred, as Ed Abbey wrote, the park service always has money for more asphalt.
But the trouble is that the park service is fighting a continual losing battle against all sorts of abuses of the parks and too often have few other alternatives available given Congressional reluctance to allow master plans such as the Yosemite Visitor Use Plans that have been sitting on shelves for years beause implementing their provisions would upset some of their campaign contributors.
Let's not blame it ALL on the NPS.