When Nature Needs a Break from Us
Plus, haunted hikes, a terrifying time on Half Dome, giant tree discoveries, backcountry toilet whoopsies, and more
howdy
I’ve been writing about the outdoors for almost 17 years now. As someone who didn’t grow up outdoorsy and who came to love hiking as an adult (and in the nation’s second largest city), I’ve always tried to highlight the important aspect of getting people into the outdoors to experience it on their own—regardless of how intense the activity is or whether or not they consider themselves hikers. In my mind, any time spent outdoors is good time.
But it’s no secret that more people are recreating in the outdoors these days, or that they tend to congregate in a handful of places that usually can’t deal with the increased pressure. This week, Christine Peterson wrote a piece in The Atlantic that asked if it wasn’t about time we stopped thinking of ourselves as entitled to any outdoor experience we want at any time we want it … and I’m starting to think she might be on to something.
In the piece, Peterson notes that in the grand scheme of things, outdoor recreation has a much smaller effect on the outdoors than, say, building sprawling housing developments or drilling for gas—but the effect isn’t nothing. Reviewing 274 scientific papers, she found almost 60% of wildlife interactions with outdoor recreators are negative for the wildlife. That’s not necessarily the sort of ‘touron’ behavior we see when people try to pet bison at Yellowstone, but the more subtle effects of human presence on animals: bighorn sheep burning extra calories after getting spooked by backcountry skiers, grizzly bears avoiding high-altitude areas and giving up meals because of hikers nearby, sage grouse abandoning their nests after getting stressed by mountain bikers.
Peterson acknowledges that not all wildlife is affected negatively by human presence and that more studies need to be done, but I’m sure we’ve all felt and seen the negative effects from overcrowded trails for ourselves. The piece notes that even generally more remote and less-visited BLM lands experienced a 40% increase in visitation from 2012 to 2022. The proposed solution is something some outdoor enthusiasts can have a surprisingly violent reaction to: restrictions.
She advocates for timed closures tied to specific species in a way that’s already being done in many parks and trails. Bee Rock in Griffith Park, parts of Pinnacles National Park, and even local trails like the Cape Horn Loop in Washington have sections that are closed during the nesting seasons of certain birds—with plenty of other routes nearby remaining open for use.
I think having these closures in effect might also help some of these new visitors gain a greater understanding and appreciation for the landscapes they’re enjoying, too. And as much as I was frustrated when cities and agencies closed my trails and parks at the start of the covid pandemic, I can’t argue that the landscape didn’t deserve a bit of a break from us.
Modern Hiking
Good stuff from the Modern Hiker site
Spooky Hiking Season
Fall is a great time of year to get out and hike. The air is crisp, plants are changing, snow usually hasn’t started yet, and you have a backpack full of pumpkin spiced goodies from Trader Joe’s to snack on. Last week I pointed out some of my favorite resources for fall foliage hikes, but there’s another type of trail that gets a lot of attention right now: spooky haunted hikes!
Now look—this stuff is all made up. When I wrote Discovering Griffith Park, the person who intentionally started the “legend” of Haunted Picnic Table 29 on a fake Los Angeles Times webpage reached out to me to come clean with some more juicy info on the backstory. But even though, ghost hunters still head to the park to investigate the supposedly paranormal phenomena.
Still—if you wanted a good excuse for a night hike, I’m not gonna yuck your yum. It’s fun to get creeped out! So if you’re in the L.A. area, you might want to check out some of my favorite trail haunts.
I’ll see myself out.
OF THE REALM OF THE LIVING.
OK, sorry. I’m done now.
RELATED: Spooky tales from the National Parks via Outside
Trail Updates
We added a few new trails to the site this week. Andrew Shults took us into the Hollywood Hills for a great little ramble on the Nancy Hoover Pohl Overlook Loop just off Mulholland Drive. I added a late summer waterfall trek on Mount Hood … which I think you should still be able to do even though the summit just got its first snow of the season!
Also, thank you to the three new paid subscribers to the Modern Hiker Newsletter! Y’all keep this project going, and are getting me ever closer to making this a financially-sound use of my time! This issue is the free newsletter for the month.
As a reminder, you can refer friends to the newsletter for free months of newsletters—and you can sponsor someone else’s subscription if you were so inclined as well. If you want, you can also spot me some caffeine and keep my engines running via delicious chemicals.
Your Parks
Your Places
Half Dome Horror Show
In late September, hikers climbing the chains on Yosemite’s Half Dome encountered an afternoon storm that dumped freezing rain on the steep slope and started dropping lighting strikes in the area, too. What followed was probably many hikers’ nightmare—and one of the many, many reasons I will not ever hike Half Dome: hikers froze up on the cables, multiple hikers slid off the side of Half Dome trying to descend, people huddled in caves and rock formations and were hit by lightning, and just about everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.
The San Francisco Chronicle has a harrowing account of what happened from one of the hikers who happened to be there—and because it’s 2023, there is also video. Although it seems that (thankfully!) everyone managed to make it back down to the valley floor safely, these are still tough videos to watch, so go at your own discretion. And if you were ever on the fence about doing Half Dome and still think you might at some point, I’d just skip past these if I were you.
Tech Talk
Gadgets, Technology, and Hype
Ski Barriers
Look, it’s no secret that lift tickets for ski resorts can cost a pretty penny, and the Wall Street Journal has a story about how the recent trend to sell season-long passes for multiple ski resorts and advance sales has basically made it so that beginner skiers end up paying the highest ticket prices. In one example, a recent Salt Lake City resident who wanted to learn to ski was faced with shelling out more than $200 for one-day tickets or dropping $800 for a season pass for a thing he wasn’t even sure he liked yet. Not exactly a great way to welcome new people into the sport, you know?
Bad news for slow-planning downhill folks: the prices of the Epic and Ikon multi-resort passes went up this week (Ikon’s prices go up TODAY, Oct. 12th, but you still may be able to slide in on the lower rate).
Just Spring for AppleCare Already
Outside ran a great piece recently with the exquisitely eye-grabbing title “Oh No! Another Person Fell into a Trailhead Toilet.” So, yeah, editors—I will click on that. Nice work. What’s the reason, you ask, likely noting that most people do whatever they can to put as much distance as possible between themselves and those outhouses. It seems like it’s fallen Apple electronics. In this incident in Michigan, it was an Apple Watch that somehow fell in. A little over a year ago, a similar fate befell a woman in Washington state who was trying to retrieve a fallen iPhone.
Leafing Out
Plants!
The Wall of Flores Island
Most of us don’t ever get to experience truly old-growth forests because we tend to do a much better job of cutting them down instead of preserving them. But there are still some stretches of untouched forest land left, and self-described ‘tree hunter’ TJ Watt hikes deep inside them to document massive old-growth trees that have never been documented or photographed. Recently, the 39-year-old came upon an epic western red cedar on Flores Island, off the coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The tree ended up being 151 feet tall and 17 and a half feet in diameter, and is believed to be over a thousand years old. He nicknamed it ‘The Wall,’ and has said it was the most impressive tree he’s seen in 20 years of tree hunting.
One More Thing
Oh yeah, before I go …
If you have eclipse plans, I hope you have clear skies for ‘em! Right now it looks like basically the entire state of Oregon is going to be under a cloud layer, but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed. And if not, at least I’ll have a story about making goat milk soap to share!
Until next time, Happy Trails.
