UPDATED: National Parks Working To Figure Out How Best To Manage Crowding

Crowds can impact the visitor experience in parks, such as crowds at Artist Point in Yellowstone/NPS, Jacob W. Frank

Editor's note: This article was edited to remove an offensive word from a direct quote. It was from a reader comment on our Facebook page. Our intention wasn't to fan racial insensitivities. We apologize for this misstep and will work to improve our communication. We value all of our readers and will continue to advocate for diversity in the parks.

Hours spent in a line waiting to enter a national park. Crews working to maintain trails that climb through piny forests and are blighted by piles of human waste. Visitors taking out their rage against fellow visitors and park staff when they can't find a parking spot at their favorite trailhead or overlook. These are some of the issues National Park Service staff are trying to solve as they cope with record visitation.

Nine years after then-Park Service Director Jon Jarvis worried that the National Park System was becoming irrelevant to Americans, the parks have never seen more visitors. Last year a record 331 million passed through an entrance station, and that number could be challenged when all the 2018 data are in. Whether those millions are coming to experience the wonders -- natural, historic, cultural -- that abound within the parks or simply to say they visited a Yellowstone or a Shenandoah or an Everglades is a question for social scientists. For now, the question most park staff is trying to answer is how to handle these tremendous crowds while protecting not only natural resources, but the visitor experience.

"We are hearing more and more from visitors who have indicated that they are not coming back to Rocky as a result of the congestion," Rocky Mountain National Park spokeswoman Kyle Patterson said. 

Rocky Mountain isn't the only park grappling with that complaint. Congestion in parks was voiced by many who grew frustrated during their vacations this past summer. Some of that frustration actually occurred before people passed into the parks, as long waits outside an entrance station left more than a few fuming. Then, too, there was the experience of crowding once one got into a park.

"The behavior by busloads of people is beginning to ruin every tourist location in North America," Francine Deason said on Traveler's Facebook page. "Buses should be required to wait their turn in line like everybody else! I, for one, am tired of being shoved aside by rude, self-centered people whose only goal is to take endless selfies and who don't even have a desire to look at and enjoy the fantastic scenery and who prevent others from seeing it. A lot of times it is a once in a lifetime chance to see a place and it is ruined by these out of control busloads of rubes."

Roads in Acadia National Park regularly get jammed during summer months/NPS

Kim Shaffer, a Southern California resident, agreed that the crowding and poor behavior is getting unreasonable. "It's depressing when I want to stay close to home and visit some of the parks nearby. Now it seems I have to deal with crowds, loud music, a lot more trash, and graffiti than ever before," she noted.

Problems cited by Traveler's Facebook audience crisscrossed the National Park System:

* The parking area at Logan Pass in Glacier National Park can fill by 8 a.m., there are many cyclists in the area, and many hikers go off-trail and get too close to wildlife;

* In Acadia National Park, during the prime fall foilage season the only way to reach popular sites such as Jordan Pond and Cadillac Mountain was by the park's Island Explorer shuttles;

* Arches National Park in October was "out-of-control crowded," wrote Sally Brunner. "When you left Arches to go back to Moab it took an hour just to go two miles."

* Rocky Mountain National Park doesn't have enough rangers or volunteers to maintain the trails, said Thad Wright, adding that it’s the fault of "the entitled slobs that have never learned to 'pack out what you pack in' and not obeying rules or using common sense and respecting the environment!"

There were kudos, as well. 

* "We visited Dinosaur (National Monument) for the first time -- what a treat!" wrote Gail Docter. "And Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is in excellent shape right now!"

* "We went to Yellowstone in early June and loved it," said Diane Morello. "Slow driving was fine with us, better to bask in the country. Food sources were distant, but general stores were helpful. We faced crowds at Old Faithful, but not enough to dissuade us from going a second time."

* "The lesser known parts of Acadia, Schoodic Peninsula and Isle au Haut, were blissfully quiet by comparison (in fall)  and just as beautiful," wrote Kim O'Connell, a Traveler contributor. "This summer, Theodore Roosevelt National Park was uncrowded even in August. Definitely one of the best kept secrets of the park system."

Impacts from these crowds are many: road shoulders turning into parking areas with motorists running over vegetation, trail erosion becoming extensive, social trails zigzagging away from official trails, restrooms dirty more than they are clean, wastewater systems overtaxed, litter, stress impacting what was to have been a restful vacation, pressure to build a larger human footprint in the parks, campgrounds turning into dusty acres from overuse.

Against the complaints, the record crowds, and the impact to resources, the National Park Service continues to seek solutions. But the agency for the most part has ignored a 40-year-old directive to identify visitor carrying capacities for the parks and implement them. Congress gave that order to the Park Service in 1978 via the National Parks and Recreation Act. The agency failed to do so then, and again in 2006 when the agency's own Management Policies repeated that directive.

General management plans for each unit shall include, but not be limited to:

(1) measures for the preservation of the area's resources;

(2) indications of types and general intensities of development (including visitor circulation and transportation patterns, systems and modes) associated with public enjoyment and use of the area, including general locations, timing of implementation, and anticipated costs;

(3) identification of and implementation commitments for visitor carrying capacities for all areas of the unit; and

(4) indications of potential modifications to the external boundaries of the unit, and the reasons therefor." -- National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978

There are times when the entrance road off U.S. 191 to Arches National Park is closed because of backups/NPS

A small handful of parks have implemented caps of various sizes, some in response to lawsuits. Some have been moving in that direction by limiting access to certain areas when crowds become too great. For instance, at Glacier National Park the superintendent hasn't been hesitant to bring down the gate on the road to the Many Glacier area; at Mount Rainier, sometimes it can be "one car out, one car in" to reach Sunrise; at Rocky Mountain, when the Bear Lake parking lot fills up, only the shuttle buses can get there; at Arches, the entrance station will halt traffic, and sometimes the Utah Highway Patrol will close access to the park off U.S. 191, if things back up too much.

But sometimes trying to cope with numbers doesn't lead to limits.

When overcrowding near Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone was creating problems with illegal parking along the Grand Loop Road near the thermal area, park officials responded in 2017 not by limiting visitors but by building a new parking area that covered nearly an acre near the Fairy Falls Trailhead. While it was promoted as a temporary solution, it came with a new trail and a hardened overlook of the colorful hot spring. At the time, then-Superintendent Dan Wenk said the trail and overlook “provide a different view of Grand Prismatic Spring and minimize the growth of unsightly, unofficial social trails in the process.”

Now retired, Wenk commented recently that, "Our own species is having the greatest impact on the park and the quality of the experience is becoming a casualty.”

Yellowstone's new superintendent, Cam Sholly, recognizes crowding is a problem, that there are adverse impacts to park resrouces, and is aware of the visitor complaints. And yet, he's not ready to put a hard number on how many people can flood the park on a daily or annual basis. 

"We're taking these increases in visitation very seriously," he told the Traveler during a wide-ranging exchange. "As you know, any effort this large must include the right data/analysis, public/staff involvement, and accountability in our decision-making processes. We know we have a problem in many areas, and that problem is growing, but it's important that we're not implying or communicating outcomes prematurely or prior to going through a defensible process that is comprehensive, logical, and based on the right science, data, and outreach."

At Zion, Arches, and Acadia national parks, Park Service staff have been working on visitor management plans; none is yet ready for public consumption, in part because staff are studying the potential economic impacts of visitor limits. But limiting visitors is likely to be the outcome of Zion's planning.

"The way we’re looking at it, you can roll it up into annual capacity, but what’s really important is we manage on a day-to-day basis, so our emphasis is looking at the daily capacity, and within the day the peak periods how we would manage for those peak periods," said Superintendent Jeff Bradybaugh. "So yes, we’re following the 1978 National Parks and Recreation Act, the 2006 Management Policies, and we’re using the Interagency visitor use management framework as our process.”

Alternatives under consideration at Zion include limiting the daily number of visitors to popular areas, such as Angels Landing, the Temple of Sinawava, or Emerald Pools. Another possibility would be to institute a reservation system for visitors to the entire park.

"We’re looking at those, how we might manage those areas, either on a least common denominator approach, which is more of a park-wide approach, or area by area approach, which has a lot of complexities, but may be able to increase the capacity slightly," said Bradybaugh. 

Complicating the planning process are concerns over how a visitation cap would impact area businesses.

“I think people realize that there are crowding problems, and would like to see some solutions to that," said the superintendent. "But there’s a great amount of concern that that could have negative economic impacts on the tourism industry. And we certainly are taking that into account and have those concerns as well."

During the National Park Service's 2016 centennial celebration, overcrowding at Rocky Mountain led some to park illegally on vegetation. This year's visitation to the park could rival 2016's/NPS

As the process continues, resources continue to be impacted at Zion. A year ago the crowds in Zion Canyon, where there are 13 miles of official trails, had created roughly 30 miles of unofficial social trails. "We’ve restored some, but unfortunately some have been added," said Bradybaugh when asked whether the situation had improved.

"What we’re trying to do with those is prioritize those that are most susceptible to resource damage, like those that would erode quickly if you cut switchbacks," he said in explaining the park's trail triage. “We can’t treat them all, but we’re trying to prioritize those.”

At Acadia, a draft management plan is being reviewed at the regional and national levels by Park Service staff. At Arches, as with Zion, further refining is awaiting the results of economic information on the impact of various alternatives. While the process continues, park staff are trying to cope, but as some comments on Traveler's Facebook page noted, rangers can be too few and too far inbetween to manage things. 

At Acadia, Charlie Jacobi told Traveler last year that the road to the summit of Cadillac Mountain had to be closed a dozen times during the Park Service's centennial year of 2016 due to crowding. He retired at the end of 2017, and his replacement isn't expected to come aboard until January, so detailed examples of how this year's crowds have impacted Acadia are hard to come by. But parking atop Cadillac and elsewhere in the park continues to be an issue.

"Certainly, roadside vegetation is impacted by people parking on top of it," said Acadia's public information officer, Christie Anastasia. "Certainly, the top of Cadillac is impacted by out-of-bounds parking, and people stepping off of the trail and keep going a little further to get a photo, and the subalpine vegetation up there is very sensitive.  

"Certainly, an increase in numbers of people, especially if they’re not necessarily following leave no trace, is going to make more of an impact," she went on. "So we’ve been working more with education about how to park in the park, how to leave no trace, what to expect at different destinations so that people can make better choices about what kind of experience they want to have, and tyring to educate people about having a plan B" (to avoid crowds)."

At Mount Rainier National Park in Washington, Superintendent Chip Jenkins has been studying traffic flows, talking to surrounding communities, and trying to figure out how best to resolve congestion problems. With steady flows of visitors from Seattle and Tacoma whenever the sky is blue and "the mountain is out" all heading to the Nisqually Entrance on the park's southwestern corner, the growing crowds are turing what might have been an hour or so drive into a multi-hour slog.

"If you’re coming down from Seattle, where that could be an hour, between and hour and two-hour drive from Seattle to Paradise, that was translating into becoming a four-and-a half or five-hour drive for families," said Superintendent Jenkins "We see that that’s a problem. We hear about it from visitors that that’s not the experience that they want.

"I also hear about it from the local businesses and property owners along that road corridor, that they see it as a problem," he went on. "They’re having people that are getting out of their cars (when the lines back up) and going into the yards, using the yards as a restroom."

There are times in summer when traffic overwhelms available parking at Sunrise in Mount Rainier, prompting staff to take a "one car out, one car in" approach/NPS

One day while monitoring the backup, Jenkins had a brief conversation with one motorist who, having spent more time than he thought he should in line, told the superintendent that "he was frustrated because he was trapped."

The frustration is boiling over at Rocky Mountain, where Patterson described "parking lot rage ... happening either between visitor to visitor, visitor to staff, visitor to volunteers. Which was really tied to congestion."

"People would be in long lines outside of the park through the surrounding communities, then they would come into the park and they would be in a line at our entrance stations," she explained. "Then they would try to find a parking space somewhere, be very irate that they couldn’t find a parking space, and then either again take it out on other visitors, take it out on each other, or take it out on our volunteers and staff."

The crush of visitors -- Rocky Mountain saw a record 4.5 million in 2016 and could finish 2018 very close to that number -- is taxing facilities, parking areas, and even trails. Trail crews often are finding "either toilet paper, or we’re having people just going to the bathroom, pooping, right on the trails," Patterson said.

Already the park has implemented restrictions on vehicles at Bear Lake, Wild Basin, and the Alpine Visitor Center. What that has done, however, is "push that use to other areas."

“We knew that was going to happen, and that’s happened," Patterson said. "So that’s why as we continue to move forward with looking at what our kind of visitor day use strategies and concepts are, we need to look at the park holistically, for just that reason."

Come spring, the staff hopes to have drafted solutions that can be put to work to improve the visitor experience while ensuring park resources are protected.

"We want to reach out to those people who have told us that they’re no longer coming, and ask would they want to engage in their national park again if some things were in place where they would know that they could possibly have a reservation or have a permit, or be able to plan ahead? Would that enhance their experience," Patterson explained.

At Mount Rainier, Superintendent Jenkins, who has only been on the job there since April, wants to study the problem further and talk with stakeholders before proposing solutions.

“Do they see that there is a problem, too, and how is that problem, what are those problems manifesting?" he said. "What is it that they see? Are they interested in coming to the table to have a conversation about how are we to proceed?"

While there have been suggestions that a shuttle system could alleviate the congestion enroute to Paradise, the superintendent isn't so sure.

"If the shuttle buses are caught in an hour of traffic, that doesn’t make things better," he pointed out.

Heavy traffic flows at Zion National Park has staff moving towards setting visitor capacity caps/Kurt Repanshek

Back at Yellowstone, Superintendent Sholly said he and his staff are looking at a range of potential solutions, ranging from site-specific alternatives, "tiered implementation" of actions to manage visitors, and examining whether an environmental assessment or more detailed environmental impact statement will be needed to consider the alternatives.

"I believe there are things we can do that can utilize our existing transportation infrastructure and operations more effectively - how we mitigate/eliminate impacts to resources, how we route pedestrian and vehicle traffic, how we make parking more efficient, how we handle large crowds in concentrated areas, how our busiest intersections and choke points facilitate traffic flow, and how are we working to ensure our existing personnel and resources are working in the areas we need them most to protect resources and facilitate visitor enjoyment," the superintendent said.

Sholly did acknowledge that there will be added costs involved in achieving success, but how much they might be can't be identified without more planning. The superintendent did say that he and his staff are watching how Zion officials are trying to tackle their crowding issues.

"I'd say Zion has been very progressive on this front for decades in managing visitor use. They were really on the leading edge implementing the shuttle system and other actions they've implemented," said Sholly. "Zion is much further ahead of us in their various planning processes. They have already implemented a very successful shuttle system, and honestly we're probably where Zion was 20 years ago in relationship to where we are in the process of evaluating and managing visitor use in more progressive ways here in Yellowstone. 

"Bottom line, like I've said, not every solution that works for one park at one period in time, will work in other parks.  We will definitely evaluate what Zion and other parks have done successfully and take what we can from those parks to incorporate into our decision making here," said Sholly. "I'll reiterate that doesn't mean Yellowstone is ready to jump to visitation caps and we are not considering any form of parkwide caps at this point. "