Research firm’s report complements ongoing visitor data collection in High Peaks
By Gwendolyn Craig
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a link and download to the Adirondack Council’s report.
A newly released Adirondack Council-sponsored report could provide hints of what’s to come in a state-funded study of visitors in the High Peaks.
The council commissioned the Oregon-based research and planning firm, Otak, to collect data on visitors to the trails and summits of Algonquin and Marcy, the state’s two highest peaks, each above 5,000 feet. Otak has a national reputation for these projects, including helping Acadia National Park in Maine develop a reservation system for viewing the sunrise on Cadillac Mountain.
The council and state say studying the number of High Peaks visitors is important to determining the area’s social carrying capacity. That is how many visitors the natural resources in the High Peaks can withstand before negative impacts, and what to do when those limits are reached.
The council’s research was conducted over the 2021 hiking season. At the beginning of 2023, the state Department of Environmental Conservation announced it, too, had hired Otak for its own visitor use study of the High Peaks region.
The field work for that study is ongoing and is expected to end in August, according to a timeline on the project’s website. Otak, the DEC and other stakeholders held a public meeting in May and continue to collect feedback via a website: https://highpeaksvum.com/get-involved.html.
On Monday, the Adirondack Council shared Otak’s key findings from its July 2, 2021 to Oct. 31, 2021 data collection.
Otak found that in a four-hour span, a person hiking toward Algonquin could expect to encounter as many as 32 groups of other people. A hiker on the Van Hoevenberg trail could expect to encounter as many as 40 groups of people. That translated to seeing another person on these trails every six or seven minutes. The report noted that visitation was remarkably down that year, likely due to rainy weather and the Canadian border closure around the COVID-19 pandemic.
The state’s two highest peaks are part of the High Peaks Wilderness. Wilderness has a specific meaning in Adirondack Park policy. It is a land classification defined as a place “untrammeled by man” that “has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation.” The council said the amount of foot traffic documented in the report points to a diminished sense of solitude.
Otak recommended the DEC and the Adirondack Park Agency, a state body charged with long-range planning for the approximately 6-million-acre park, focus on “numeric thresholds” and devise “long-term management strategies,” according to the council’s report.
The study also found that vehicle arrivals to the Adirondack Loj, a popular High Peaks trailhead run by the Adirondack Mountain Club, began at 4 a.m. and peaked from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. There were, on average, 260 visitors to the Loj per day.
The council spent $150,000 on the study, but had been prepared to spend $500,000 if the DEC did not begin its own visitor use investigation, said Raul “Rocci” Aguirre, who was recently named executive director of the council.
In March, the DEC announced it had hired Otak for work that may be covered by $600,000 in the state’s Environmental Protection Fund in the 2022-2023 budget. Aguirre said he was grateful the DEC was able to secure funding.
“We hope to keep seeking the funds needed to make this project successful and provide the DEC the tools they need to manage the ongoing challenge of visitor use in the High Peaks and other high use areas across the Forest Preserve,” Aguirre said.
The DEC said it is reviewing the report and called it a “complement” to the work underway in the Adirondacks. Otak was also hired to study visitor use at Kaaterskill Clove in the Catskill Park.
“Protecting the regions’ natural resources while promoting safe access to the outdoors are top priorities for the state, and the comprehensive visitor use management effort currently underway will inform future strategies to advance these goals,” the DEC said. “Public input throughout the process to develop recommendations and monitor the effectiveness of their implementation over time is critical, and we look forward to working with the Adirondack Council and other stakeholders throughout the park as these efforts advance.”
Aside from parking which is an ongoing problem and not likely fixed by selectively reducing trail numbers, please explain how establishing lower user numbers can significantly improve the natural resources in the HPW.
Reducing groups from the 32 (Algonquin) and 40 (Van Hovenberg) numbers cited to say half of that would have no discernible positive impacts on the trail as erosion is primarily a product of rain and snowmelt. With the introduction of summit stewards some decades ago, the summit vegetation has improved despite the increased visitation.
These studies seem more an attempt to manage the user experience than a clear evaluation of the actual impacts to natural resources. Perhaps having these two peaks along with several others receiving a majority of the visitors is a good thing as it leaves the scads of other peaks and valleys less crowded.
Dang good assessment.
“Resources” encompass many aspects of the natural world as valued by humans. Some value solitude as a resource. Some value scenery. Some value quiet. Some value easy access. Some value remoteness and wildness. Fresh water, fresh air, vibrant wildlife communities, healthy forests, etc. can certainly all be considered resources.
We know that education and trail engineering can benefit some of these resources, but increased usage can still detract from others. Who is right? Who should have “say” over which resources are most important?
I encourage these studies to at least help quantify and qualify certain aspects of usage – especially in the HPW. How taxpayers, users, and other stakeholders want to interpret and act on the data and recommendations will likely never be settled. But the bottom line is, we need to LISTEN to each other – not just raise our voices in order to talk past the people that have opinions with which we don’t agree. It will be a long slog, but keep one foot in front of the other and stay on the trail!
Whew! I’ve read some doozies in my day but this one is really out there. No offense intended whatsoever to Gwendolyn Craig for this article where she did her due diligence by reporting the study’s data, but in what world are we supposed to take the Council and OTAK’s “data” seriously?
So of those supposed up to 40 groups, how long of a stretch of trail are we talking about? What’s the group size? Are these hikers negatively impacting the trail surfaces by causing erosion, or was this study intentionally conducted on two trails which haven’t changed due to anything besides natural storm weathering in 20+ years?
Maybe the Council and Otak should take a Tuesday stroll up Seymour or Allen. Both provide a lot of mileage to encounter hikers, neither are officially maintained beyond minimal work along very small sections of their respective approaches, and in all likelihood they wouldn’t encounter more than a dozen individual people sharing the trails with them all day, and most of those people would be locals.
I’ve seen a lot of bad takes but this one might take the cake.
I am not clear – are you refuting the published data??
You can not print an article about a report and not include a link to the report in the article. That is not journalism. If their report is not online then it is not worth considering. The Adirondack Explorer should be ashamed of themselves for such low journalistic standards.
Sorry about that! The story has been update with the report.
Having read the report, it appears that the Wilderness designation for the Eastern High Peaks (EHP) may be incompatible with managing the natural resources with even significant reductions in visitors. Reclassifying the EHP as a high intensity backcountry unit would allow better trail and facility management, and not be straddled with the Wilderness classification and its implied quiet and solitude.
There were several very busy periods as is normal. Should policy be crafted on the busiest days?
Todd,
Even without the report, I think reclassification of at least the EHPW needs to happen. The current Wilderness designation is unrealistic and wishful thinking.
Pilsner agree more Todd. That’s the most sensible thing I’ve read in a long time.
In the White Mountains USFS hardens heavily used trails and implicity acknowledges the most popular trails will be high traffic. As Todd Eastman suggests, a policy designating, or at least acknowledging, Marcy, Algonquin and a few other high peaks (e.g., Giant) as high-intensity may be appropriate.
We could save the state a lot of money in studies by just telling them “make it like the Whites”. The whites get four or five times as many visitors and they’re every bit as special as the Adirondacks; both ecologically and recreationally. Yet there’s no so-called overuse and no one complains about crowding. Four or five trails to every summit (instead of one), 24 hour weekend shuttles that people love (instead of 12 hours that people hate), acres of parking at popular trailheads and the trail infrastructure and hardening to support that use. And dozens of other less popular trailheads for people who want “solitude” instead of making them use the exact same trailheads that the tourists and peakbaggers use. Everyone wins, including the environment.
This comment/suggestion here by Rogie, I bring up frequently when the conversation turns to High Peaks usage. Native to the Adirondacks, I’ve lived and climbed all across the USA and so got to experience first hand the many different ways that regional entities/government have resolved usage issues within high-use sectors. Right off, one size does not fit most. But in taking Rogie’s example of Whites management, as he says, the Whites get way more usage than the Adirondack High Peaks without the drama that ensues year after year. Nothing is perfect, but snap into place the Whites management protocol here in the Adirondacks (or at least some variation of it) and things are going to change for the better within the first year of implementation. I’m with Rogie here; no need for studies. New Hampshire is only a couple of slim States over. Pay them a visit….
As someone who has about 30 years of experience in data collection via surveys on human beings in all kinds of settings from observational studies to surveys on opinions attitudes and experiences, in myriads of locations and settings, I don’t believe the data to be accurate without knowing exactly the QC mechanisms that were used in the data collection, the training process of the staff involved, as well as the data verification processes i.e. QC going on while the data collection was ongoing and also after the testing period. So. It’s all crap unless it was closely monitored. which I can assure you is highly unlikely. It is very costly to do such research now, very costly in remote areas, and few have the competence or staff to get it done now. Very few agencies could do it and as for an out of state agency, they have even less chance of getting it right due to manpower costs, and logistics generally.
So, without knowing the QC and other methodologies, it is all completely crap. You too should assume it is crap too without knowing the details.
Verify then trust.
If it were my data I would split out encounters into two categories.
Encounters and frequency when climbing.
Encounters and frequency when descending.
I’d expect encounters when climbing to be much less frequent than descending.
Otherwise there’s a bias.
Of course Adirondack Council must understand that and has built it in to inflate the numbers,
Don
Seems like the Council is inventing a new “problem” to complain about because every scientific study shows rainfall is the primary cause of erosion and not hikers. So now they’re trying to push “social carrying capacity”. What the hell is that? That’s not mentioned in the state constitution or any UMP.
Besides that there’s no way the study is valid. Since 80% of people hike at the same pace the only people that are going to run into other hikers are the really fast ones and the really slow ones. The Loj was full nearly yesterday and I only met seven people in total the entire way to Algonquin.
Besides that, only Boomers want “solitude” when hiking. Gen X and millennials want to meet up with their friends and make new ones on trail. If you don’t like it then just die already and don’t mess things up for the generations coming after you.
Why does the Adirondack Council even exist? Can we just disband them and take their money to pay for more parking? Everything that comes out of their shop is either completely biased, utterly false, or is stated as fact when it’s really opinion from within their own echo chamber. “Social carrying capacity”? That’s not a thing. It doesn’t exist. Yet they talk about it as if everyone just knows and agrees it’s a thing. It’s not.