
One point of clarification though - the NFS does provide significant grant dollars to trail building organizations such as CFI and Rocky Mountain Field Institute.
Sad story. The elephant in the room: exponential human population growth that cannot be sustained by our planet, including what is wilderness today. The wilderness will not be safe from humanity, there are too many of us and counting....schrund wrote:An article in this morning's Aspen Times on possible use limitations in the Elks: http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20120 ... ofile=1058
Mandatory fees: NO…. More awareness of how to donate and why at the trails: YES…Aug_Dog wrote:If it keeps Texans off our mountains, I'm for it!!!!!!
It seems that most of the problem with overcrowding really comes down to non-existent law enforcement. If you're going to have fire bans, then you need to enforce the law. If you don't want people camping near the shore of Snowmass Lake then you need to have a ranger camp up there most weekends and ticket people who choose to ignore the law.schrund wrote:An article in this morning's Aspen Times on possible use limitations in the Elks: http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20120 ... ofile=1058
Going to have to respectfully disagree with you. I have climbed over half of the 14ers and there are only a few that I would characterize as being even remotely close to "overused" (not surprisingly they are all in the front range). There might be a case to consider something like this on a few of the ones that get large crowds (Grays and Torreys, Evans, Sherman, etc), but many times on peaks I only see a handful of other people the entire day. 10-20 people a day, times 7 days a week, times 4 months a year (vast majority of climbs are June-September) on a huge mountain hardly constitutes "overuse". This is provided, of course, that people take care of the place, don't leave trash, etc.Urban Snowshoer wrote:Although it's not politically correct to say this, especially on this site, the ever-increasing numbers of people on 14ers will run up against sustainable limits sooner or later. I do commend the CFI for the work they do; however, improved trails won't resolve sustainability and overuse issues alone. You can only improve or build trails so many times on a peak before you, for lack of a better description, end up destroying the peak in order to save it. Moreover, improving trails does not resolve issues of human waste when hundreds of people a day are involved.
I'm not sure fees are the best approach but some kind of limits (e.g. permits) are going to become necessary on peaks like Gray's and Bierstadt, during the summer months, to keep the number of climbers in line with a sustainable carrying capacity.