[pct-l] Rude behavior in Warner Springs

[Eric Lee (GAMES)]

Amanda wrote:
>
Our national parks are open to all as are our national monuments.  People are not required to backpack into Yosemite. We do, but that's just the way we are.

  I understand that the pride of accomplishment is deteriorated a little bit when someone completes the hike that you struggled, trained and planed for without matching your efforts.  But come on now.  With that logic, the freeways should never have been built because a less-than-hearty stock of modern-day pioneers will come west in air-conditioned comfort and stop at hotels along the way.  If they can't do it in a covered wagon, they shouldn't come!
>

I was just in Yosemite Valley last week.  It was beautiful, of course, but also heavily impacted by the crowds that are always there.  The valley is not the entire park, though - almost 95% of the park is designated wilderness that you do, in fact, have to backpack into.

I don't think the conversation is about pride of accomplishment or elitism.  It's about reducing impact to the trail and its surrounding environs.  Some impact is caused by sheer numbers of people, regardless of who they are.  Other impact is caused primarily by the *way* certain people think about the area they're in and the way they behave.  If it's easy to get to, it's easy to not care about.  People tend to care about and take care of things in direct proportion to how much blood, tears, and sweat they poured into them.  This conversation is about screening out those folks who don't care enough about the trail to think before they flick their cigarette butt onto a stump in the mountains of SoCal.  (Not that we know yet that's exactly what happened, of course.)

The problem is that while making something more difficult and challenging to access may tend to reduce the number of careless, selfish people, it certainly won't eliminate them entirely.  Some careless and selfish people are also very skilled, determined, and love a challenge.

I agree that water caches (and probably trail angels, too) tend to enable a larger volume of people on the trail.  That volume creates difficulties regardless of who they are.  (See L-Rod's recent announcement.)  They also enable the presence of some destructive elements we'd rather not see on the PCT.  (See the fire and rude behavior threads.)  Of course, they also enable some dear and wonderful people who just need a little assistance now and then.  (See most of the rest of the threads on PCT-L.)  Should we stop everything and go back to a "survival of the fittest" model?  I dunno - that's a really hard call.  It's certainly not a sure-fire solution to the problem we're discussing.

Eric