In the summer of 1962, I worked for the White River National Forest’s Aspen District. My job was working trails in the Maroon Bells Snowmass Wilderness Area. My partner and I repaired and constructed new water bars, removed down timber, and shoveled snow from trails. Why snow? Every year the Trail Riders of America rode a loop from Maroon Lake over to the Gothic area and back. Snow on trails usually melts from the ground up, thus making it dangerous for horses that might break through the surface of the snow and injure their legs.
We’d usually hike out 4 miles and improve the trails. That meant hiking 8 miles a day and performing hard labor usually over 10,000 feet. Once the close-in trails were improved, we’d pack up our mule, Old Ike, with our gear and supplies and spend the entire week at specific locations.
From the Snowmass Lake trailhead, we hiked to Snowmass Lake, beyond the beaver ponds, repairing the trail as we went. After setting up camp, we’d work the trails to Buckskin Pass and to Trail Rider Pass. In those five days we never encountered another human being.
A few weeks later we hiked up Conundrum Creek to Conundrum Hot Springs. On a nearby slope there are five springs gurgling to the surface. Four of them produce cold water. The spring in the middle produces hot water, thus getting its name. The hot water flow was dammed creating a small pool, about 5 by 10 feet.
We stayed in the ranger cabin that included three double bunk beds with mattresses, a table and four chairs, a food supply, cooking utensils, firewood, and a wood-burning stove. The code of the trail, honored by all, said that if you used firewood you would replenish the wood pile before leaving. If you used food stuffs, you left a like amount for the next campers. In that entire week from Monday to Friday, we never saw another human being.
Years later, after my wonderful week at the hot springs, I heard the hippies trashed the cabin and its contents so badly that the Forest Service was forced to demolish the cabin. I felt a sense of something valuable lost.
When my wife and I went camping, we’d load up our camper without a definite plan. We didn’t need a reservation because reservations didn’t exist in a national forest. The campgrounds were rarely full. Camping in a national forest was free. The campgrounds were maintained by forest service employees, not private contractors. There were no campground hosts poking their noses into your campsite telling you what you could and couldn’t do.
I’ve climbed 20 fourteeners. Many of them solo. Almost all of them were done without meeting anyone else. These hikes were done on weekdays. A friend of mine and I spent all day hiking Mt. Elbert and encountered no one else. The only exception was Longs Peak. That climb was crowded. By crowded I mean seven or eight other climbers.
That was then, this is now.
Today, the terms backcountry and wilderness experiences have become oxymorons, especially if your goal is solitude.
Recent White River National Forest data for 2014 reveals how much has changed since my summer in the Bells. I was saddened and shocked to learn that now, if you want to visit Maroon Lake, you must ride a shuttle bus in the summer. In 2014, more than 123,000 people rode the bus.
In 2006, there were more than 4,000 permits issued for overnight camping in the Bells. In 2014, there were over 11,000 permits granted. Today, if you want to “enjoy” the Conundrum Hot Springs, the Forest Service will provide you with specialized plastic pooper bags that hikers can use to haul out their human waste. Last year the Forest Service provided more than 1,500 bags. The report doesn’t say how many people declined the bags.
According to an Aspen Times article, 18 designated camping sites are within a one-quarter mile of the springs. On busy weekends, there can be up to 120 people camping within that area. The Forest Service has declined installing pit toilets because, they say, it’s counter to the wilderness concept. But isn’t it just as counter to the concept of wilderness to have 120 people looking for a place to do their business? So, it’s not uncommon to find human waste and garbage. Dogs are banned but many people ignore the ban. I’m wondering how 120 people are able to share that small pool.
The current condition at the hot springs and at many other places in the West isn’t manageable or sustainable. This overcrowding teeters on the brink of absurdity. To quote from The Wilderness Act of 1964: “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” We don’t remain but leave plenty behind!
In the August/September 2015 issue of Nature Conservancy, they mention an article from another periodical, PLoS Biology, that there are 8 billion (that’s a B and not an M) annual visits to protected natural areas around the world. Can protected natural areas be protected with that many people visitations? I doubt it.
Recently, my daughter and her husband decided to hike Grays Peak, a “fourteener” near Denver. They told me they encountered between 200 and 300 people on the trail. Other horror stories abound, like hordes of people hiking from the Gothic area over Pearl Pass to Ashcroft with their kids and dogs, leaving behind a trail of trash, dog do-do and human excrement.
Today, camping requires advanced planning weeks ahead if you desire an approved Forest Service campground. Once you get there, you’ll probably encounter at least one Taj Mahal motor home running its generator all night even after the temperature has cooled. I’ve often wondered who those people are because you rarely catch them outdoors. What are they doing in there?
Have a secret hideaway in the boonies? Don’t tell anyone! And pray that your Treasure Island never gets published. If you have ever visited Calf Creek Falls in southern Utah, you know what I mean.
What looms in the future is some kind of lottery, not unlike the time share craze a few decades ago. Joe and Jane Citizen will be awarded a three-day pass to camp somewhere on federal land on specific dates in a specific year. Definitely not the year they apply. These dates will be passed down to their kids like Broncos season tickets. And if they can’t make it on those days, try again next year. Scalping campsite “tickets” will become an everyday occurrence. And beware of counterfeits!
I subscribe to all the glitzy, full-color environmental magazines and all of them either sponsor eco-trips or advertise them. These trips go to all the remote places in the world taking hundreds of people in large groups into the “wilds” with their high-tech gear and solar powered cellphones so they can text as they hike, camp, and ride zip lines. These periodicals hardly ever criticize the outdoor recreation industries but are quite eager to criticize the extractive industries for polluting the environment.
With increasing pressure from human encroachment into wilderness areas, it seems counterproductive and hypocritical for environmentalists to profess a desire to preserve the planet while at the same time advocating expensive eco-tourism vacations to pristine places. Anyone for Bhutan?
You can help preserve what’s left of wilderness and other remote places in the lower 48 by not sponsoring or attending conferences held in plush hotels or at exotic places that require hundreds of people to travel thousands of miles to hear speakers pontificate on how to save the planet.
If you want to preserve what’s left of wild places, retreat to your man cave. You want solitude? Turn off the TV and computer, disconnect the phone, and close the curtains. If the doorbell rings, don’t answer. Pull out those Wendell Berry, Aldo Leopold and Edward Abbey books and don’t forget Wallace Stegner, Bernard De Voto and David Lavender. Watch “Jeremiah Johnson” and “Dances with Wolves.” Read the journals of Lewis and Clark; revel in the days of the mountain men. Play Scrabble. Write a novel.
If you want to reduce your carbon imprint, stop flying thousands of miles to remote places around the globe; stop driving hundreds of miles every weekend to camp with dozens of other people.
And stay home!
K.R. Spooner is a retired educator and the author of 10 novels.
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