Too Many People are Going Outside

The problem is only certain state and National parks are promoted, many have virtually no attendance but have equally interesting features

I live in Moab. I grew up here for the last 30 years. I now manage my family's hotel. I am impressed with how well you tackled all of the problems there are of being a local here, with the ever-growing number of tourists. They have become the necessary evil of anyone trying to live here. I get asked all the time "where do the locals go to eat, hike, hangout in town". The answer is locals do not have any places of their own. Everything has been discovered and shared with tourists, restaurants only cater to them and charge ridiculously high prices. Even our local grocery stores are so overcrowded that we have to push our ways to get our marked-up items and a trip to the grocery store takes 2 infuriating hours. Millcreek that you showed on a map used to be a watering hole that only the locals knew about. It was only within the last 10 years that we saw tourists going there as well. Now there is a line a mile long to share the trail and get to the water. It is true that without tourism there would be no Moab but Moab is now unlivable for most people that have been here for a long time or are just trying to move here and work.

I've lived in a van for 8 years and the pandemic seemed to be a tipping point for outdoor overcrowding. Places where I used to camp for weeks without seeing another human are now crowded. I know I can't be mad; I'm out there too. But when people poop on the surface and leave their TP strewn around, or just garbage, or don't practice fire safety... White. Hot. Rage. 🤬

Once again proving that social media is the worst thing to have ever been invented

I have been backpacking since I was a little kid. I was 4 or 5 my first trip in Montana. Through the years, I've noticed so many changes as everyone and their dogs and moms hit the trails. It's great to see people outdoors enjoying nature, but so many people now have so little respect for it, are woefully unequipped, and have no inkling of trail etiquette. I just took my daughter on her first backpacking trip, a short one since she's only 6. Shorter hikes mean easier access, so it's quite popular. Someone literally shit in our campsite and left their toilet paper and shit unburied just a few feet away from our tents. People were drinking heavily and had fireworks popping off until late into the night. For the most part, it was still great, but with some very disrespectful elements. Why go into nature and blow up fireworks? What's the point?
I've also seen people just casually strolling up hikes with 4000 foot elevation gain, with like a Starbucks coffee and nothing else-- no water, no emergency provisions, no understanding of what 4000 feet gain in 5 miles really means... I've given countless people sunsceen or bug spray (or both) when I've seen them sitting miserable on the side of the trail in yoga pants the bugs bite right through. It's not a fashion show, y'all; it's bloody nature, and it'll bite back.

Thanks for making this. I miss when hiking wasn't a "cool" activity

Leave No Trace (LNT) ethic should be mandatory curriculum in elementary/high schools. The 7 principles fit on an index card. Going through an online primer could be integrated into camping reservation or backcountry permit systems and it costs nothing. You can't hope to completely perfectly manage every visitor but you can make sure they've all been given the same guiding information.

This all reminds me of the poppy feild incident in California. Groups of people addicted to social media kept stomping and crushing flowers just for pictures to their Instagram or something.
The flowers started dying out because of it. So the local authorities had to step in and ban people.
We really can't have nice things out here.

It feels like so many people are engaging in tourism in a such shallow way lately - and not just national parks. It’s to take an obnoxious amount of pictures, check a box, gamify the experience, or tell a story later, without actually appreciating the surroundings or having respect for them in the moment.

As someone who grew up in a small mountain town, stuff like this is why I usually avoid state parks in general. It's just so much more fun to go out into national forest where there aren't any tourists. You don't get charged for camping, and it's rare to ever see anybody. And if you're careful and know the biology of the area you're in, you can just wander through the woods. I really miss just going out with my friends, finding a nice spot with a campfire, and having a night of relaxing around the fire and hiking through the forest the next day

It's such a bummer. I went on a road trip, where I did see arches, zion, and the grand canyon. Some of my favorite spots of nature were actually along the way. Trust me, it's worth trying to look for other, lesser known places, because the sense of discovery you get, and the stories you get to tell of places that people you know have likely never been. Photos of things that less people have seen. Also, these places are SO popular now that it feels like you're not even out in nature. I want to get away from people when I'm out in nature, not wait in lines. Haha
At least, I hope that the popularity of national parks really pushes people to fight to not only keep the ones we have, but open up more nature spots in their local areas too. One of my favorite hikes is just in my town, not too far from where I live. Companies are BEGGING the city to let them build homes over it. We need to keep our local outdoor areas too.

A nearly identical situation is happening in Yosemite right now. There are just too many people here and they are destroying the natural resources we want so badly to protect. Someone parked in a protected meadow the other day not only harming the plants (there are signs you're not even supposed to walk in the meadow) but they also parked on the helicopter landing spot in that meadow! How dangerous! Now there are shunts in place periodically through the day at the El Capitan Crossing essentially blocking off the east side of Yosemite Valley. You could wait hours to get into the park and then be turned around as soon as you get into the valley. It's nuts here right now! Passing through the town of Mariposa on your way here you'll see multiple signs trying to put a cap on how many airbnbs there are in the town. Employees have to drive an hour into the park every morning (a lot of the closer housing itaken by vacation rentals) and now that people are catching on to arrive early, the employees are stuck in the line too.

At 19:52, the sign that should've appeared on the screen might say this:
You are entering Maine's largest wilderness
- Your safety is your responsibility
- Set a turn around time and stick to it
- Your destination is your safe return to the trailhead
- Rescuers can be many hours in arriving

I hate how big of a problem over tourism has become. I'm fortunate to live in a state with a relatively low amount of them, but as someone who would like to travel it's really frustrating to see this. All I've ever wanted is to tour the US and visit every national park to do some solo hiking, but now I feel guilty for even wanting that because then I'll be contributing to the problem. Granted, it's not like I'll ever be in a position to be able to afford to do this while still being young enough to physically handle it, but still. It's depressing that a bunch of entitled "influencers" get to go out and do this while simultaneously ruining it for everyone else. I hate this.

growing up in a family of mountaineers, the outdoors have always been my home. i'm beyond excited that others are beginning to discover the beauty of the outdoors. let these popular state parks continue to attract the NARPs (non athletic regular persons). before people wander into more sensitive and less regulated areas, allow park rangers to educate them on core principles; LNT, wild animal precautions, outdoor safety, etc.

I went on a highly technical alpine hike with tons of scrables and very difficult terrain to find a bunch of people in their 40-60's in sun dresses and button downs doing the same hike. Insane to see. I'm sure they turned back once they realized just how hard it was. Communicating difficulty is highly problematic as well.

The overcrowding problem has hit on the local level. In my small NH town and in those surrounding, we have scenic spots along brooks, waterfalls and ponds. We have mountaintops with spectacular views. We have groves of old-growth trees and a variety of native flora. And we have wildlife! In recent years, parking to access these places has blocked our narrow roads. Trash litters the trails and graffiti adorns treetrunks. Some publicly-owned areas have had to be closed for months at a time, and the owners of private property have had to put up "no trespassing" signs. The places that I used to explore freely as a kid are becoming restricted because too many people, and especially too many thoughtless slobs, are overwhelming them.

This has kept me away from popular spots in the past few years. I would backpack and ski through in the past but now it is just insane out there. I have a few places I still go that are not impacted but I try and not tell anyone about them because it just keep getting more and more crowded with people who don't respect it. I took the time to train myself to survive and support people in the backcountry. Training and volunteering with backcountry ski patrol, lifeguard certification, and swift water rescue tech, plus multiple other rescue and survival training classes more people should take the time to learn how to survive in the wilderness.

This is purely an observation I've made after exploring some parks this year, a lot of people visiting right now are by no means outdoorsy people, or not at all versed in moderate to advanced level hiking, sure some of the picturesque locales I've seen have been crowded, but as soon as you delve into an actually challenging section few will participate and sweet solitude can be found

The vapid vanity of social media influence is a disease. I am from southern Utah and grew up a frequent visitor of public land, nowadays it’s so infested with campers, off roaders and people shooting guns that it has lost the solace it had just 5 or 6 years ago. Places I used to go to be alone are now infested with crowds and it’s nullifying everything I used to love about my home.

I grew up 45 minutes outside of Yosemite valley and remember visiting with my family every weekend. I recently took my wife there remembering it as my old stomping ground, and it was unrecognizable. The traffic, good god the traffic... and it was a weekday. Sure when I was a kid there were lots of people, but it wasn't the social media theme park that it is today.
To recapture that magic, the only time to go to these awesome parks is winter.

Living in a rural area that butts up next to national forest, life has become a lot less pleasant. Starting in 2020 I noticed a lot of our local swimming holes were appearing on lists of places you could escape the city to. I tried going out to them and they had no parking and far more people than I have ever seen by a large margin. Trash has been an issue, and picking up litter from out of town food joints is a guarantee on the weekends. The increase in traffic unfamiliar with our roads (built along old Indian walking trails so very very curvy) means we end up with convoys fifteen vehicles deep or more running ten below the speed limit for miles. It's getting harder and harder to be an understanding and respectful person when I see the nonchalant and disrespectful attitude people have for my home.

My biggest problem with this is the rise of dog shit along trails.
I used to go on a desolate trail about 3 days a week as a teenager/kid up until my early 20s, overtime I noticed more people were discovering this trail and it started getting popular, which was fine, but recently in the last year I've noticed an insane influx of dog shit.
I went last week, and I literally couldn't make it 50 feet into the trail because literally every step I took was dodging dog shit.
Now I have to pick trails that are further out and too inconvenient to get to for all the downsyndrome dog owners
It kinda sucks because I officially don't like anyone with dogs anymore, the amount of dog owners who don't pickup their shit heavily outweighs the one that do. So if you own a dog, there's an 80% chance youre a garbage human being who shouldnt own a dog.

Moving from Newfoundland, one of the more remote regions of Canada to Belgium, one of the more dense regions of Europe, I’ve found myself disconnected with the outdoors having to travel hours to get out in nature only to find it to be overcrowded and damaged by careless people. I took for granted the feeling of hiking in the outdoors in Newfoundland knowing that you’re the only person around for the next 20-50 kilometers, completely alone, complete solitude… that’s something that I would never be able to find in the Benelux and I certainly feel myself slightly sadder because of it and while being in Europe generally means having good transportation access to the outdoors, it also means there are others who take advantage of such and it only takes a few with complete lack of regard for trail and park etiquette to ruin the experience.

I'm from Manitoba, Canada, and every summer, me and my buddies canoe out to one of our thousands of backcountry lakes that are not road assessable. The experience of being completely in the wilderness is so incredibly surreal, and I consider myself very fortunate to have that opportunity.

Three years ago I went on a week-long backpacking trip in Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming. Not even a national park. it was the height of the pandemic, so even traveling there was problematic. Yet, any place that was less than two days' hike from a trailhead was overflowing with people. This was a wilderness area, and a couple of evenings we searched for up to an hour before we could find an open place to camp. it was like camping on the lower Eastside. I have found similar overcrowding conditions at Joshua Tree (every single campsite in the entire park occupied) and Rocky Mountain NP. Places in Shenandoah (Old Rag) have literal traffic jams ON THE TRAIL, where you are standing still waiting for people ahead of you to move.

This video is great. I grew up with the outdoors. Camping, hiking, fishing, becoming an Eagle Scout. As an adult I’ve lived exclusively in urban environments. But I became a touring musician able to go all over the US constantly. The Instagram nature pic culture seems completely counter to what my experience of natural beauty has been. I’m all for inviting more people in.. but not in this superficial “get experience clout” way. Because there’s often no actual experience behind it. It’s sad, there’s life changing experiences to be had in the great outdoors but they are all predicated on respect. Nature is beautiful and nature is deadly. This respect is the core experience of nature: the delicate give and take balance of life we very much find ourselves in and too often forget.

It destroyed the place where I grew up and lived. The price on our family home increased so much that my elderly parents thought they were doing a great thing by selling it for $850,000.00. They did not discuss this with me or my sister. They got screwed and it is so depressing. The house is now an Airbnb that I cannot comfortably afford to stay in with my children. It is heartbreaking and the island that holds my best memories is now a disgusting tourist trap.

Really great exploration of the importance of natures and its presence in our lives as well as the potentially harmful costs. Seriously thought provoking content. Great stuff 👍

As a Maine native who has been to the Katahdin summit, I don't think it's unfair to limit the amount of access from outside hikers. I understand being sad to not "complete the journey" but in the pursuit to achieve some competitive feat, people inevitably cause harm, whether carrying invasive species along with us or trampling the life around us on our travels. Conservation isn't for your social media, entertainment or tourism needs - it's about protecting nature.

"Too many entitled, poorly behaved people are going outside"

I noticed this happening many years ago. Some of my favorite places have just been ruined because of this social media crap. Some places, I can't even carry out all of the trash that I pass. I overheard a couple of teens at a National Park in CA say that it's okay to smoke weed because it's legal in CA, they didn't realize or care that laws change once on federal lands. Going into the wild is getting harder and harder.

I love the outdoors and gettinf lost somewhere. Nature is precious. I grew up in NYC and hiked upstate and in CT. Nothing grinds my gears more than ignorant people on a trail blasting music, leaving trash, yelling and screMing, destroying nature and crowds. The whole point for me to be out there is to escape the madness, soak in the serenity and see wildlife. I use all trails to find a spot and see how difficult the climb will be. I used to use Strava for cycling but now i stick to my garmin watch for stats. Im not interested in getting Queen of the mountain status. What we see today all boils down to a lack of respect. It is not taught in schools or at home. Selfish, entitiled, narcissistic people that only think about themselves and attention. Its becoming harder to escape this plague.

Thank you for this well researched and beautifully nuanced video. I grew up more rural, but have spent my adult life in urban settings. I’ve found it interesting how my childhood has informed my views of nature and how my understanding is definitely not universal! I appreciated that you acknowledged so many of the issues without demonizing and assuming simple solutions to to complex problems.

As someone who’s been an outdoor lover all my life and who has been hiking regularly since becoming an adult 10 years ago, I will say the big problem is social media…. Everyone wants to be an influencer apparently.
I see girls all the time dressed up wearing high heals going to the edge of bluffs just for a picture to post. People leave trash at all these places and feed the wildlife.. When we hiked Angels Landing in 2019 there were quite a few people who were shaking walking along the ledge. That is not a trail you do if you’re afraid of heights. It’s become a huge issue all thanks to good ole social media.

From somebody who spent the first 9 years of my life in Maine and then the next 10 years living 10 minutes outside of Joshua tree National park in southern ca, this hits home. Along with this is small towns being built up overnight and pricing out the locals. I saw on airbnb the other day a house in Joshua tree that was renting for $6500 a night, nice house but nothing magical. I remember my mom renting a 3 bedroom duplex 15 minutes away from that house just 8 years ago for $600 a month. People are overcrowding precious areas for sure. That’s why I’m planning on buy land way way up in Maine where it’s super rural.

My girlfriend and I went on one of our earliest dates to Acadia... in March. There was nobody there, clear roads, empty rocky beaches, and that made it 100% better than visiting in the summer. We watched the sunset from the top of desert mountain literally alone.
If the parks encouraged people to visit more in the off-season, and promote the benefits of the park year round they would even out their visitation. All these parks have something to offer year round but visitation is concentrated on 4-5 summer months.

There's still a lot of wild out of there for those who know, but the popular areas of the Rockies are rapidly becoming choked and inundated. You're going to have to know and like navigating deep deep snow if you want to only be one of a few people at these places in a day. If you truly want no one, Nat forest and wilderness areas. Be prepared. No one is coming to help if things go bad.

It's always a little sad to hear the stories my dad has of going to every national park around the country with virtually no one around. I'll never get to go out and be left alone with nature.

I work at a state park. The amount of people coming and destroying the beautiful landscape really took all of my faith in humanity as being good natured and shoved it down the drain. Shit on rocks. Crazy amounts of trash in camp sites. KAYAKERS ATTACKING LOONS. One time I was going to clean up a campsite before campers arrived, and the previous campers were packing up. They had just had a water balloon fight. A little kid in the family asked his mom "Mommy, why don't we clean up the balloons?" His mom shushed him and quietly told him not to say that in front of me. People screamed at me and other staff for telling them that dogs were not allowed in the park. Fights. Drugs. Used needles.
When pigs walk free, they make the world their pig pen.

We have a similar issue here in Canada with what I call sacrificial sites. Personally, I welcome focusing large numbers of people to a few well known places so that those of us who are willing to put more effort into our backcountry experiences don't have to worry about large crowds. It's better to overwhelm a few locations than many in my opinion.
And as a SAR volunteer in BC, I can vouch for the increased numbers of rescues we perform these days due to people being woefully unprepared to be in the wilderness.

Thanks Wendover for making this video. It’s a big topic to navigate, and your team presented superbs! I presume most everyone who loves spending time in public wilderness areas has contemplated where the sweet spot lies between “do enough people know and care about this land to keep it public and protected from malevolent and greed driven interests?” versus “do too many people know and care about this land to keep it pristine and protected from masses of the selfie seekers?” When the NPS, BLM, and NFS restricts or closes access to federal lands (which happens regularly in Arizona), as a citizen who has a large tax burden every year, who buys an annual parks pass every year, and who is hyper-focused on my leave no trace and fire prevention behaviors both on the trail and at the campsite- I get very pissed off and frustrated…it’s like being thrown out of an establishment after you just bought a round of shots for the whole bar. No bueno.

As a Moab local, this video is both accurate and terrifying. Terrifyingly accurate. The tourists have gotten so out of hand. During the increasingly longer tourist season, I have to plan my routes so i don't have to make a left-hand turn onto Main street. :'(

I got disillusioned with "traveling and visiting" about 2 years ago when during a particular vacation, I went to visit beautiful outdoors and i was absolutely shocked how busy they were. In photos it looks like a nice calm outdoors place, in reality it's right near a parking lot, there are cars everywhere and thousands of people everywhere

A lot of people not from maine have bo concept of how isolated many areas are. My aunt is an entomologist with the forestry service up in Maine and when she did field work she would have to access areas by helicopter because there were no roads. Maine also had a big invasive bug problem which explains the no outside firewood rule. Invasive bugs can kill trees and cause great harm to the ecosystem.

As someone living in SOCAL as a Michigander. There are countless National Forest and other non NPS systems all over the Southwest but people avoid them like the plague. I love conservation but, the biggest boon to our Public Land as highlighted here is giving people the go for the other options. The small towns would love the overflow traffic. I think as the outdoor boon continues, more Lakeshores, rec areas, etc. need to get their day and more people will be able to enjoy nature outside of the crown jewels. That solace is truly missing from so many places.

As a lifetime avid skier, we've seen the same effects in our sport. Specifically, with the rise of helmets, and broader awareness of backcountry skiing. As helmets for skiing became more pervasive, many more people started taking more risks, sometimes to truly absurd levels of stupidity. As people became more aware of sidecountry and backcountry stashes, more thoroughly unprepared folks started ducking ropes at resorts, or worse skinning into the unknown without any of the concomitant safety and survival gear (avalanche beacons, probes, shovels, etc.) Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people enjoying the sport, but rope-duckers place extra burden on resort staff, and unprepared backcountry skiers increase the burden on non-resort wilderness SAR folks. It's a thing.

I remember when I was about 14, my Boy Scout troop went to Moab to see the arches. We were dang near the only people there. We saw one other family. It’s crazy that now there’s so much traffic that they have to shut down.

I lived and worked in Yellowstone National Park doing wildlife research for a summer in 2016. This is 100% accurate. You get all the drawbacks of living in a remote area with lots of big city problems like traffic, noise, disease, etc. It's still true though that as soon as you get on any non-major trail, these problems usually go away. However, when the major solar eclipse occurred it was like a nearly literal apocalypse where you couldn't go anywhere for the 3 days around it due to traffic.
There's very little these parks can do to accommodate this increasing tide of people. I don't see any solution other than limiting access to tourists.

This is happening so much here in Montana.. used to be able to just pack up and head out. So many camps and parks now require reservations, sometimes a year in advance, and it's just not fun. I'm excited people are getting out and exploring but looks like I won't be able to get into Glacier or Yellowstone anytime soon in the summer.

This is kinda what I felt during my US visit as well. Some parks where just overflowing, like Yosemite, they where so full you could barely walk without falling over other tourists.
And then there where others, less known State Parks that where really beautiful but nearly empty.

The nice thing about loving the outdoors is that if you hike for 3 days, the odds of seeing other people get increasing lower. The first mountain outside Anchorage has lots of trail runners, dog walkers, etc. The next one has only a few, and 2 days in, you see nobody all day. If it is not famous and it is strenuous, I find that no matter where you are in the world, you will find a few days hike worth of solitude and natural beauty if you really want it.

It’s not just national parks. Mammoth Lakes, home of Mammoth Mountain, has been very negatively impacted by tourism. Just too many people everywhere all year long. It’s a bummer to see such a beautiful place change for the worst.

I've been subscribed to you since the illegal number video and I think this is one of the most important pieces of content you've produced so far. When you said that parks which completely exclude everybody are unnatural, I was reminded of what a friend told me about how indigenous people don't actually want to leave a forest untouched because pre-agricultural humans were basically all park rangers/conservationists for thousands of years; they maintained healthy animal populations, and spaced out activities like wood gathering to reduce canopy crowding. We as a species need to be more conscientious and respectful about maintaining and interacting with the areas we spent 90% of our history within.

I’m currently reading Edward Abbey’s “Dersert Solitaire” and his chapter *Industrial Tourism* made me want to become an activist. One of his solutions to overcrowding national parks is to stop paving roads all the way up to the sights of interest. Make people hike, bike, or horseback.

Great video! It made me think of the juxtaposition of Katadhin, which is pure conservation and Mt. Washington which you can drive up and practically has a city at the top. It also reminded me of hiking as a kid and hardly ever seeing other hikers to now where trails seem as busy as city sidewalks. I also loved your point about how knowledge was formerly transferred from person to person that was very insightful and helps explain many of todays current headaches.

Thank you for exploring this topic. I only visited some of the mentioned NPs in the Western USA for research in 2009 and remember how quiet Moab and the Parks were (to me, as a foreigner, this part of the world appeared rather "empty" of people, except for Grand Canyon and Yellowstone perhaps.. i did run into crowds there)

There’s a state park near us famous for waterfalls that gets a lot of visitors. You can see the best of the falls via a short flat walk from a parking lot, and naturally that’s where everyone goes. But you can go on a three hour hike in the forest beyond the falls, and never see another person.
This problem is like what happens in famous cities, for instance Paris, where most of the tourists are only there to visit the Eiffel Tower and see the Mona Lisa.

I had a work assignment in Moab a week ago and I was shocked. Shocked. The last time I was in Moab was roughly 25 years ago. I expected the town to be bigger, but it’s ridiculous.
I was blown away by all the “beautiful people” behaving poorly.
The downtown area was as congested as downtown Las Vegas

Wow, if everyone started hanging out in nature all the time we may realize we don’t need photos of ourselves doing it because we could just have that person come with and then it would be like it was for me in the 70s !

Living in Lake Tahoe for the past 18 years, I’ve seen a clear distinction between pre and post Instagram Tahoe. There used to be certain beaches and trails that only locals and the most adventurous visitors would ever see, but ever since social media began blowing up every hidden gem there have been more people in more places. In some aspects it’s nice that more people are gaining an appreciation for the natural environment, yet there are so many disrespectful people who are now coming up just to boost their social media profiles that negatively impact our community and environment here. It’s important that we consider the changing uses and impacts on our natural resources so that we are able to adequately manage and preserve our natural resource assets for future generations to experience.

I'm soo glad I hiked over 400 miles on the A.T. around 2012. No phones/people filming 24/7. I'd see maybe 5 people a day. Even if we left the same camp that morning, I'd rarely run into those same people at all during the day's hike until we'd meet up in the next camp that night. I still wish to finish the trail with that same gear: Arc'teryx Bora 80. Super comfortable but overweight even by standards back then. Just ignore the gear attack people will throw at you. I had never considered shoe weight to matter for anything, let alone hiking. I've worn hiking shoes my entire life, despite having never hiked until I randomly decided to hike that chunk of the trail, they are just that good for back and ankle support in my opinion. In retrospect that must be why my calf muscles have always been pretty large from the shoe weight over my life time. Just hike your own hike and ignore the ridicule.

I say seasonally close parks or limit new visitors occasionally to allow nature to heal.
Also, reducing number of car roads within park really does wonders. Only the willing people who are willing to venture out to wild without their metal cages will get to enjoy nature.

The same thing has happened here in the UK, in places like the Lake District and Isle of Skye. People now flood to these locations in the summer and often have little respect for the locals or mountains. Additionally a lot of rich people are buying second homes there for the summer and are out pricing the locals leading to a lack of workers.

This is such a valuable and nuanced exploration of the issues, thank you

I just came back from doing some fieldwork in the Scottish Islands. It's fairly important work (and indirectly enables the outdoor lifestyle many people like). However, we've found it very hard to find reasonably priced accomodation (if we can find any at all) or sometimes any accomodation at all. The roads and ferries are packed with campervans and large vehicles, which makes getting ferries harder because less people can use it than if they all had cars or were going on foot. Plus the single-track roads are slow and tiring to drive when you're stuck behind badly driven campervans. Sorry van-lifers but you're really, really unpopular in places like Skye, Mull and Uist. The campervan crowds we see in the highlands tend to buy everything in a supermarket, they park in laybys (or worse, passing places), leave a mess and don't spend money in the local businesses. Unfortunately for us, we need good weather for our work so we don't really have much of a choice in when we go. It's high season or bust really. We can't afford to get a day with high winds because it'll waste six days of staff time, hundreds of miles of fuel and hundreds of pounds of fees. I don't think I'd like to go on holiday in the highlands at this time of year.

I have so many thoughts about this. A lot of them come back to just making things nicer closer to home. More small local parks, trails and campgrounds. More greenspace and plants in cities. More spaces where people can hang out for free.
I don't want limiting access to be the go to way of protecting an environment. I think we should just make those places feel less appealing by making the places we already are more appealing. Then folk that just want a taste have more options and people that want a fuller experience don't have increased barriers to deal with.
There should be more ways to dealing with feelings of isolation and disconnectedness than overwhelming a handful of large parks.

My first trip to S Utah and Moab was 1989. So few people went there or even knew about it. It was glorious to have campgrounds all to ourselves and saw no people on trails. Moab was a dinky lil old mining town. I watched the area get more and more popular every time i went back which was roughly every 5 years or so Last time I was in S Utah and Moab was in April 2019. Even during a "shoulder season" the place was packed and Moab was bustling. I get it why people go there. Its a spectacular and inspiring landscape. I'm so glad I got to experience it before the hoards of people discovered it. I hate crowds and don't go to nature to be around tons of people. I go to nature to get away from tons of people. S Utah is simply amazing but it is being loved to death

Incredibly well done video of an immensely complicated issue! Kudos!

The fact is that there are so MANY other state and national parks that aren't popular and largely go untouched except by locals in those places. Other parks of all sizes could use the attention and support. We should be encouraging people to look for the forgotten parks and spread themselves out instead of concentrating at all the traditionally popular places. Small and forgotten parks need money too!

As a mainer this was extremely insightful and honestly extremely true from word of mouth i never heard anyone go deep in it but ive heard tale of lines and amounts of people or cutoff times never seen before now. Ty for content and information m8

I love excuses to get outside, and I appreciate this reminder to hit up the less-known state & national parks!

This is happening in Canada too. My favourite way to explore is getting lost and finding new spots that are a bit more remote , but people are so disrespectful. The rule is always pack out what you pack in, people !!

I’m so happy Colorado still has a lot of National Wilderness and State Wildlife areas, a lot more restrictions to avoid the ridiculous overcrowding lately

I'm defending Baxter. It's better to restrict access than let in too much.
It'll upset people, sure, but oh, well. It'll keep the parks intact and in good enough shape to last.
If you want trees and grass and plants, go to your local city park.
As also pointed out by other commenters, there are parks that don't get ad coverage. Go to one of those.

I work in tourism in the Yellowstone NP region. I end up creating day trips for so many people, taking them into less popular state parks, national forests, even campgrounds. They see the geothermals and often some stunning wildlife, but thought they were going to have a quiet "out in the wild" moment. I wish city people did as much research about outdoor & rural vacations as we do when we visit an urban area. So many miss out and if they had asked, they would have bern guided to a good location for a nature moment. Even the least experienced are safe in a campground with 14 feet of dense woods around them but an RV 15 ft away lol.

This is why my kids and I constantly seek out new destinations with minimal "improvements" and 4wd access only. We still visit the over-loved places, just in late fall/winter when the crowds die down. But it's an amazing feeling to hike a trail named Sound of Silence and have it be just that, or wake up to sunrise on the lip of the Little Grand Canyon and have it all to yourself.

I'm doing my part to keep hiking paths clear, by never hiking.

I do feel like this is a phase that's been instigated by the lockdowns, and it may not calm down for a few years still. Once people get the sight seeing out of their system they may do other things and hopefully towns and parks can finally relax a little. Larger cities should really put more focus on making nature (even if artificially placed) available to people within the limits of the city too, it could help.

I target ones that are less visited during the work week to avoid people. I went to Yosemite many times in the 80’s before it got crazy. The problem is partly due to people being cooped up for many years during the pandemic and realizing that getting outside now good for their health and quality of life. We have too few areas for people to “get away from it all” when they realize more than ever that their lives are short. And Clip-Sharers for $$$.

I am sure this is happening all over the place, but Moab is an extreme case I would imagine. Along with all of the national parks nearby, there are also lots of state parks nearby. Moab is only an hour South of I-40 and is only a few hours from the Provo area where almost every single college student and their mom enjoys hiking/mountain biking/camping so there was already a huge population that enjoyed moab, I was one of them.
Not to mention, that the off-road trails and mountain biking in Moab is genuinly world class one of a kind terrain so everyone wants a piece. This has been an issue in Yosemite for a long time. It seems to me that social media is a huge constributing factor to this as well.

With the advent of timed entry tickets for nearly every state and NPS land that exists right in my own county, it’s very difficult as a local to access those lands. It nearly eliminates last minute decisions to go to your local public state or NPS land. Even some National Forest lands have restrictions like these. I don’t know of a better alternative for land managers but it’s certainly catering to tourists who plan their visits months or a year in advance. Because of this, I hardly visit the state and national parks that I’ve loved and helped care. I honestly think that these places should provide added benefits to full time locals. I would have no problem if full time locals in Moab didn’t need timed entry permits to the parks or other benefits . They are the community and it’s not fair to them that these rules are unfair to them.

My biggest take away from this documentary is that the internet was a HUGE fucking mistake, and social media will be the end of Western civilization. I am extremely thankful that I lived in Estes Park for five years in the late 90s early 2000s. I spent so much time in RMNP, hiked all the trails and enjoyed the town. It was busy, but nothing compared to now. If you want to enjoy the national parks now, your best bet is to go off-season and to be super flexible.

Last year we did the Devil's Bridge Hike in Sedona, AZ, and I don't think I've ever seen so much dangerous trail behavior before. People were filming themselves running across it as fast as possible, performing precarious yoga poses right on the edge while shouting instructions to friends tasked with taking photos -- it was nuts. There were even arguments breaking out because people were demanding that others get out of their shots even though there wasn't enough space to stand anywhere else. Living in Maine, we at least have a lot of opportunities to experience solitude, but it's definitely busier here that it was when we first moved 10 years ago.

This is a discussion that's not just about "the outdoors," it's about tourism in general. Look at how many people think they're clever holding up the leaning tower. Or the case of glass beach, a place created by what was essentially litter and now putting up signs telling people not to take the "litter."
It actually makes me want to support the idea of manufactured experiences and resorts, places designed to work with a capacity while attending to the need for a vacation.

As someone who grew up in Flagstaff AZ and spent my childhood summers at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (where my parents met), Zion, Sedona, and other camping areas, it breaks my heart to see how crowded those places are now, with people who don't even know they SHOULD educate themselves on proper outdoor behavior, let alone actually put in the effort to do so. To their credit, the National Parks are doing their best to keep with up with trash and other impacts, but sometimes it's impossible.
Outside of the parks, on Forest Service and BLM land, sometimes nothing can be done. Flagstaff has suffered a string of devastating forest fires and resulting floods, nearly all human caused, and now they have to close forest access every summer. This results in hikers who have always lived there and know how to respect the land losing out. In the winter half of Phoenix comes up and leaves broken sleds and other trash all over the snow play areas, as well as causing huge backups on the interstate. There are no rentals available for residents because they're all short-term vacation rentals, similar to what's going on in Moab.
My mom and I are on a couple of Grand Canyon facebook groups that are nice because people can ask questions and get informed answers, but some of the questions are just so disheartening to read. "What resorts are in the park?", "Is there a tram that takes you to the bottom?", "Which hotels have fine dining?", "What kids activities are there?" To be fair, most questions are about how to actually be prepared for the weather and what shoes to bring, but there are already attempts to open resorts right outside the park (South rim, thankfully, but still) to cater to the kind of tourists who don't understand or desire an actual National Park experience. So far they've been rebuffed but it's only a matter of time. The people fighting against the new resorts have cited light pollution and water use, because the proposed designs were more appropriate for a city.
Then there are the yearly deaths from heat and falls. It's sad enough that people are getting their own dumb selves hurt, but they're also endangering rescue personnel through their negligence.
It sounds mean to "gatekeep" the outdoors from those who want to see it but have less experience, and sadly there's no way to vet people to see if they actually want to learn or just want to gawk and exploit. It sounds mean but I don't think it's entirely inappropriate. I love what that park in Maine is doing, calling people out on their entitled attitude. I recently camped at a place in Colorado that I hesitate to even name because it still felt kind of undiscovered. It was operated by a land trust with lots of firm rules in place, and it was amazing!

I feel like part of the issue is that the US has so little publicly accesible nature. At least here in texas most property is private so the few places you can enjoy the outdoors are the local, state and national parks. In Germany there is so much publically accessible nature, even though the country is also densely populated.

I visited Baxter a couple years ago and it was so beautiful and peaceful due to those limits. We saw essentially no other people when we went on the trails. The cabins there (if you can get reservations) are picturesque.

As a 2022 AT thruhiker, I can tell you that Baxter is a headache to work with. Me and my buddy, just pressed on and we skipped the birches all together. I still remember the faces of the people who saw us skipping the line to even be able to camp at the birches, to summit the next day. We were lucky to be stronger hikers and be able to be in and out in a day.

I have to agree with Baxter, people need to follow the rules. Not ever place can be a frat party and more reverence should be shown to the areas reserved with little or no human alterations.
I feel for Moab, as well. I have little to no desire to venture out west so I’m one less tourist they have to worry about. There are state parks in southern Illinois and Indiana that have really blown my mind and I still haven’t seen them all. There are areas in Minnesota that I lived that had scenery and geological features and I would think, “how is it that no one else seems to recognize this?” Utah is nice and has cool stuff, but it’s really just hype and marketing. The real gems are the parks that you pass by and say, “I’ve never heard of that park.” Chances are no one else has either. Free parking and no lines are an added bonus.

just got back from Moab...Can confirm all these things. Advanced ticketing works in Arches for sure. I grew up in a tourist town and I felt all the pain/frustration of Moabites there. I watched an influencer almost fall into the "bowl" at Delicate to get that .5 I heard from a local that Grand County Utah has the largest amount of SAR emergencies/extractions in Utah due to out of towners getting in way over there head. So much that the ambulances have bike racks on them.
Im getting to the point of seeking out the underrated parks. Climbing to Delicate and doing the parks and riding was cool, but all the tourists both foreign and domestic just disregard and disrespect the parks and hard work really just got annoying. We enjoyed going to the parks in the early/late evening when all the "tourists" leave.

I’m gonna throw in my two cents for places people should go that aren’t crowded (at least from my experience): Bannack State Park. It’s a ghost town in southwest Montana, near Dillon. The ghost town is full of history and it’s cool to walk around the town and learn about and document what you see, such as the buildings, what they were built out of, and how they were built to some extent. It’s also right in the middle of a beautiful set of valleys and there’s also hiking trails, so you can get a vantage point where you can see the town.
Overall, great video, but I wanted to put in my two cents so people have somewhere new to go rather than Zion, Yosemite, Yellowstone, etc…

I went to Mammoth Cave a few years ago and was honestly upset that there were so many people there. I just wanted to enjoy nature and tour the caves and take a few pictures and I had to avoid all the people. And when I went to the GSM/Newfound Gap & Clingman's Dome a few years before COVID, I did not enjoy the trip. I remember going to Mammoth Cave and The Smokies as a kid and enjoying it, but now, there's too many people there. I sometimes enjoy going to my city's forest management area because the people density is lower.

I enjoy heading to a raptor sanctuary at hawk mountain where you pay to enter the trail and it’s quiet nice. Part of their trails connect to the Appalachian trail and I do hope to someday hike it into maybe New York or perhaps head south instead.

One factor is when everybody is working 40+ hours a week, they don't have time to research and explore. So they have to go with options that are widely recommended for outdoor locations to not waste the time they don't have available.

This is why I like Geocaching, because it takes me to local areas that most people don't know about.

Arches has now gone to reserving times you can drive in the park. We were seriously thinking of visiting there again this summer but now we're going elsewhere. Still, this is a great video and presents the problems facing the parks in an intelligent manner.

Its very sad. I have been a backpacker since 1996 and sadly around 2015 started seeing that once you got pass the 6 mile point into a hike usually you could escape the partiers, litter, abuse of trails. Now, with permits required on numerous trails its gotten SO much worse

"Now his life is full of wonder but his heart still knows some fear
Of a simple thing he cannot comprehend
While they try to tear the mountains down to bring in a couple more
More people, more scars upon the land
And the Colorado Rocky Mountain high
I've seen it rainin' fire in the sky
I know he'd be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly
Rocky Mountain high"
- John Denver
This video does a good job at highlight the fragile balance of maximizing human access while minimizing human impact.
The US, in particular, is intimately tied to this problem. Some of the first pre-eminent American artists and thinkers were naturalist that saw, loved, and drew spirituality from the natural world while simultaneously fearing the changes humans were causing, even when most people saw the new world as limitless as the that roamed its prairies.
This is not a new problem. This is not a new problem, but, this time, untrammeled natural areas are reaching there limit. There is virtually no wear on this planet that is not touched by something of human origin - not the peak of Mount Everest nor the very bottom of the Marian Trench. In a way, we have mastered access. Our power to modify our environment with post-industrial technology has transformed the world over, which is playing out, perhaps most directly and observable to the average person, in the struggle between recreation and conservation playing out in our public lands.

I think the problem is less that more people want to spend time outdoors than ever before, and more that they are only going to the same few parks. Given how much land in Utah is Federal or State govt owned, there is plenty of space for people to go for camping, fishing, hiking, and a lot more. A lot of those spaces are just less well known. I've been on spelunking trips as a teen before in Utah, and it was a very interesting experience I wouldn't ever give up, even if my fear of small spaces would make me unlikely to go again. The millions spread over more of the land would prevent a lot of these issues