Survey: Hikers support parking limits, fees
KEENE, N.Y. » A majority of hikers support limits on trailhead parking, temporarily closing eroded trails, and mandatory education to prevent damage to sensitive parts of the Adirondack Park, a survey says.
Findings are contained in an Adirondack Council report, conducted last fall, which questioned hikers climbing 4,059-foot-high Cascade Mountain, one of 46 peaks required to become an Adirondack 46er.
Most hikers said they were more interested in taking a hike with a view than in bagging one of the 46 tall peaks. Conservationists view this as a good sign because the eastern High Peaks Wilderness Area has been negatively impacted by overuse, which threatens hiker safety, degrades natural resources, and detracts from people’s overall experience.
Adirondack Park tourism has grown considerably in recent years, from 10 million people in 2001 to more than 12.4 million in 2018. About 80 percent of all visits occur in the six months from May and October.
“People love the Adirondack Park and the High Peaks,” said William C. Janeway, the council’s executive director. “Hikers are keenly aware of the problems caused by too many people in one place at the same time. They see the trail erosion, damaged vegetation, trash and human waste. Because of the damage being caused, people are willing to be redirected to new locations and to be educated on how to leave no trace of their visit. There is very strong support for parking limitations and enforcement.”
A majority of those surveyed said they were willing to pay a fee to hike if the money was spent on protection and better management of the Forest Preserve, the council says.
The 2017 survey was developed working with the state Department of Environmental Conservation and conducted at the Cascade Mountain trailhead in Keene over two days last Columbus Day weekend. More than 200 hikers stopped and answered a series of questions related to their visits.
When asked why they were climbing Cascade Mountain that day, 96 percent said they wanted a hike with a view; 75 percent wanted to climb a “High Peak;” 62 percent wanted to climb above 4,000 feet; 50 percent wanted the solitude of a wilderness hiker (despite the typical crowds at Cascade’s popular roadside trailhead); and, just over 15 percent heard about the hike on social media and decided to try it for that reason.
Survey takers found that a significant number of people, when told about the availability of a shorter nearby hike (Mt. Van Hoevenberg) with a good view, chose that non-Wilderness Area destination, which involve
climbing a 4,000-foot-high mountain.
Hikers support education by a two-to-one margin (58 percent versus 30 percent), such as requiring all hikers to watch a video on how to hike and camp without damaging the forests, waters or wildlife, the survey says.
They also supported parking limits by a margin of 68 percent to 20 percent, including enforcement of “no parking” zones outside of parking lots and on roadsides.
The survey was a preliminary test, with data also collected on how to conduct a larger, more comprehensive survey in 2018, with a smaller margin of error.
The Adirondack Council, after working with university professionals prepared and started to conduct a larger survey in 2018. The Department of Environmental
Conservation issued a temporary revocable permit for interviews on state land, but is not the entity that constructed or is fielding the survey.
Preliminary results and 650 interviews find that by more than two-to-one, hikers disagree with the statement “overuse is not a problem” and a majority disagrees that “the state should prioritize recreational opportunities and infrastructure over wilderness character and sense of solitude.”
An online version of the survey is available at: http://bit.ly/SurveyADK.